Being a booth babe is grueling work at ChinaJoy, and show girls catch naps anywhere they can.
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The unique, oddly sexualized culture of China's game industry in pictures (photo gallery)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

The organizers of ChinaJoy paid my way to Shanghai. Our coverage remains objective.

SHANGHAI — China’s rise as a gaming nation was best captured at ChinaJoy, the huge expo that drew more than 250,000 attendees to more than 100,000 square meters of exhibit space in Shanghai. The event was a huge spectacle, but it bore little resemblance to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big game-business showcase that drew 48,000 people to Los Angeles in June.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.