After spending much of the past six months at no better than a four-star rank, Shanda Games (Nasdaq: GAME) has impressed enough top-performing members of our 160,000-strong Motley Fool CAPS community to recently climb all the way up to five stars. A total of 225 members have given their opinion on the Chinese online gaming company, with many of them offering analysis and commentary explaining the recent optimism.

With the amount of upside potential that the online gaming market in China offers, thanks to the vast and growing numbers of Internet users there, many CAPS members are finding more reasons to like Shanda Games, a spinoff of Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA). And the recent dip in the stock has shares trading at an even further discount to last year's IPO price, and has spurred even more long-term investors to consider the opportunity in Shanda Games.

Similar to peers NetEase.com (Nasdaq: NTES) and Changyou.com (Nasdaq: CYOU), Shanda Games is coming off of a solid fourth quarter, with net revenue increasing 39% and earnings growing at a faster 44% clip. Many investors, as well as Shanda Games' management, remain bullish on further growth this year, even though the company's first-quarter outlook included a significant sequential decline in revenue. The company plans new game releases for later this year, and the acquisition of California-based Mochi Media will provide an outlet for international expansion as well.

While the Chinese market has been a big draw for U.S.-based companies such as Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI), Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS), and Take-Two Interactive (Nasdaq: TTWO), the deal with Mochi allows Shanda Games to tap a growing trend of casual online gamers in the U.S. With a solid share of the Chinese market and a financially sound balance sheet, many investors believe Shanda Games is well-positioned to expand in smart ways, and they expect more international opportunities like this one to arise in the future.                                                                         

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