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Are looter shooters the next big thing for Tencent?
Sharkmob, founded by The Division creators, is now a ‘Tencent games studio’
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
The emergence of popular titles such as Borderlands, The Division and Destiny have given rise to the looter shooter genre. By acquiring Sharkmob, the world’s largest gaming company might be looking to capture a new genre after conquering battle royale.
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Shenzhen-based Tencent recently bought out the Swedish game developer for an undisclosed sum. If you haven’t heard about Sharkmob, don’t worry: They haven’t done anything yet. But the two-year-old Swedish company is founded by a group of ex-Ubisoft employees led by Fredrik Rundqvist, former chief operations officer of Massive Entertainment and executive producer of the looter shooter game The Division.
“Sharkmob, as the new studio from ex-Division devs, will be completing Tencent’s approach to loot-n-shoot games as Borderlands 3 seems to storm the video game world once again in 2019," said Xuan Li, co-founder of Chinese gaming company Zodiac Interactive.
But what exactly is a “looter shooter” and why is Tencent so interested?
In general, the genre encompases live service games in which players… well, loot and shoot. Contrary to the traditional shooters, in which campaigns can be finished within a certain number of hours, looter shooters are open-world games that players can explore endlessly just to get better in-game items.
Tencent has already leveraged games that have no end, like Honor of Kings -- China’s version of Arena of Valor -- and PUBG Mobile, allowing them to be monetized seemingly forever or until gamers tire of them. Looter shooters are now a big up-and-comer. As a hybrid of traditional AAA games and MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, the genre is increasingly popular.
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Josh joined the Post in 2016 to cover politics and business in mainland China and Hong Kong. Since 2018, he has covered China's emerging tech sector. Having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in English and philosophy, he is now pursuing a master's degree in law at the University of Hong Kong.
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