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We talked to Giant Interactive about how Battle of Balls is leading the Trendy Gaming charge [Sponsored]

An emerging phenomenon in the Chinese game market

We talked to Giant Interactive about how Battle of Balls is leading the Trendy Gaming charge [Sponsored]

Trendy Gaming is an interesting new movement in the Chinese mobile game market in which casual and competitive games become incredibly popular and are played by the masses if they fulfil a certain criteria.

Battle of Balls is one of those games, and could be seen as leading the charge once you look into the impressive figures it's raking in.

More on that later though. What Battle of Balls is is a competitive multiplayer game in which you have to eat as many balls as possible in an arena to grow bigger than the other players and, well, swallow them.

It's easy to pick up but rather difficult to master, as there are a number of different strategies to learn if you want to be the best.

To learn more about the success of Battle of Balls and Trendy Gaming in general, we reached out to Nick Chen, an Overseas Media representative at Giant Interactive, who talked to us in great detail about what Trendy Gaming is and why he feels Battle of Balls qualifies.

What is Trendy Gaming and how do you think the movement started?

"Trendy Gaming is an emerging phenomenon in the Chinese game market, and refers to a game that perfectly blends casual with competitive, is easy to get into and fun to play, and is visually appealing.

"If a game fulfils the above criteria, it can be described as Trendy Gaming, as it has the ability to attract loads of users."

Why do you think Battle of Balls qualifies as Trendy Gaming?

"In the Chinese market, Battle of Balls has achieved 7.5 million DAU (daily active users) - an important figure to observe when measuring the success of a game. "According to a recent survey, a DAU that is over a hundred million in the Chinese mobile market is very rare (Mobile QQ, WeChat), fifty million can be counted on the fingers of a single hand (Mobile Baidu, Sina microblog, Mobile Taobao), and ten million is considered to be a success. "Therefore, a mobile game with over a million DAU can be treated as a success. "We describe Battle of Balls as "easy to play but hard to master". In Baidu post bar, Battle of Balls has 180 thousand users, and more than 4.5 million posts have been released to discuss tactics, strategy, and team cooperation. We believe this demonstrates the game has competitive depth."

What aspects of Battle of Balls do you think most led to its enormous success?

"Battle of Balls is a high-quality mobile game with an innovative core game play design that's different from mainstream casual mobile games.

"It's got real-time PK (player killing), fantastic visuals which are loved by our players, and a friendly community which our team really prides itself on.

"We chose an opportune moment to release Battle of Balls, as at that time there was nothing else quite like it out there, so it quickly captured our player’s hearts.

"Our team works very hard to improve and optimise Battle of Balls, as we believe that's an important aspect of progressing the game."

Do you think you've learned enough to replicate its success for future titles?

"It's really hard to duplicate this type of success - we're just really grateful that has achieved so much and really prize the experience we've gained working on this game.

"It's doubtful that we'll try and duplicate its success, but we will learn from others and always strive hard to make the best games possible as a show of appreciation for the love our fans have shown to Battle of Balls."

If you could start development from scratch, what would you change?

"Firstly, we'd get rid of all of the bugs, but most importantly, we'd make some adjustments to let players experience the interesting content early on, so they'd realise much faster how awesome Battle of Balls really is."

To check out this mobile gaming phenomenon for yourself, head on over to the App Store or Google Play right now.