With more than 25 million game playing Chinese, mainly in net cafes, it's a well established fact, that games are serious business in the Middle kingdom. At the end of 2005, Chinese players spent over $600 million on online games.

With these numbers, it's reasonable to assume that venture capitalists may be standing ten deep at the scheduled Piper Jaffray-ChinaJoy Online Game Symposium and VC Conference to be held in Shanghai on July 28.

According to senior analyst, Safa Rashtchy, the Online Game Symposium will feature approximately 20 company executives, including those from The9 Limited and Shanda Interactive. It's newsworthy that Shanda's widely popular game, MMORPG, World of Warcraft, which has well over 1.6 million players in China, saw its revenue rise nearly 60% to $43.7 million in the second quarter 2006.

This symposia may be all about games but you can be assured that it's really all about increasing market share and VC investment appetites in the industry.