ChinaJoy 2011 Round-Up

China’s yearly gaming expo, ChinaJoy, isn’t quite on the level of an E3, nor does it have the pure nerd appeal of a PAX or Comic Con. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty going on! This year’s ChinaJoy expo ended on July 31st. In case you didn’t attend, here’s what you missed:

A New Dress Code

ChinaJoy, like most geek expos, is famous for its booth babes — the ladies in the skimpy outfits who entice you to visit a particular company’s booth. This year, responding to an official directive, those outfits were a bit more restrained than normal. From Reuters:

A recent government crackdown on “vulgarity” in the online games sector is forcing the girls [at the ChinaJoy Expo] to cover up, the Shanghai Daily said.

“The length of my dress is longer than before,” said Zhou, a model who has been a ChinaJoy showgirl twice.

The new policy prohibits costumes that show more than two-thirds of a showgirl’s back and bans the girls from sticking printed logos on “sensitive positions” like over their breasts, the paper reported.

The Games

Casual gaming was the big buzzword at ChinaJoy this year, just as it has been at other major international trade shows. While traditional games are as popular as they ever were, mobile gaming and browser games have exploded over the past few years, and so have the developers trying to take advantage of those new platforms and customers. Even Angry Birds is getting in on the Chinese casual gaming action with a Mid-Autumn Festival-themed update.

But ChinaJoy certainly wasn’t all casual, and in fact, some of the most impressive games on display were RPGs, MMOs and shooters — traditionally popular genres in Chinese gaming that don’t seem to have lost much ground to the incursion of casual and social games on mobiles and in browsers.

There were some major international brands on display. Final Fantasy XIV, which is being developed by Japanese company Square Enix, was one of the most anticipated games to make an appearance at the show, and Sohu also showed off a new military shooter called “Battlefield OL” that’s being developed jointly by Neowiz, a South Korean firm, and DICE, the American developers behind the “Battlefield” and “Bad Company” series. EA was also there showing off their Need For Speed series, complete with a shiny blue car for fans to ogle (pictured, image via games.qq.com).

The Cosplay

What’s the point of having a gaming convention if people aren’t dressed up like their favorite videogame characters? The organizers of ChinaJoy get this, clearly, as they organized a multi-day group cosplay contest, and the entrants were impressive. Here are some of the most impressive entries; you can find the full lineups here and here.