The action/RPG Black Myth: Wukong, released on August 20, 2024, has become one of the main games of this year. The Chinese studio Game Science took the setting of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and turned it into an exceptional adventure that adapts the best of the soulslike genre and third-person action in general, but also adds its own fresh ideas. The intense boss battles, abundance of secrets, variety of the protagonist’s techniques, and Asian style quickly found a response in the hearts of players and critics alike.
But the success of Black Myth: Wukong is notable not only because it is just a good game. Good games are released every year and in sufficient quantities, even if the conspiracy theorists in the gaming industry think otherwise. However, the discussion around Black Myth: Wukong has gone far beyond its qualities as a video game product and even managed to enter the territory of geopolitics and soft power influence.
The case of Black Myth: Wukong
Black Myth: Wukong is called “the first AAA game from China” and its production is indirectly related to the corporate culture and plans of the megacorporation Tencent, which has been actively strengthening its presence in the video game market for a long time. The game’s development also shows that Asian studios are capable of producing world-class games on budgets that Western companies may not have enough for even a mid-level game in today’s realities.
A few numbers to understand: the development of Black Myth: Wukong cost $70 million, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 cost all of $300 million.
Black Myth: Wukong was a risky idea both for Game Science, which was also publishing the game on its own, and for investors. But the risk paid off. Former Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Ken Kutagari said that the game sold 20 million copies in the first month of sales. Similar figures are given only for Steam by the statistics of independent player counting services collected by SteamDB. More than 70% of the game’s copies were purchased by Chinese players, who are now the largest driving force behind Steam and account for almost 38% of the service’s users.
The developers do not disclose official sales numbers, but the announced plans to create an entire Black Myth franchise that will touch on other Asian myths eloquently indicate that Game Science is doing well.
Analysts already believe that Black Myth: Wukong is an extremely important game for both the Chinese and global game development industry. It can symbolize a paradigm shift for Chinese developers, who previously focused mainly on mobile players. If the studios start mass-producing projects for PC and consoles, the interactive entertainment industry could change dramatically.
Increased Asian expansion in gaming has the potential to significantly change the balance of power among global game developers, who have been suffering from one of the most serious crises in the industry for several years now. After all, there are enough specialists in China who are able to work on AAA projects on a massive scale for money that is significantly less than the amount of money asked by US studios and publishers.
But let’s talk about everything in sequence. After all, the gaming industry has long accepted at least one large Asian country. We are talking about Japan, of course.
Such a familiar Japan
If we talk about the history of the gaming industry, Japan will always occupy one of the leading places in it. The release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console in 1983 alone is worth mentioning, as it actually saved the video game market after its catastrophic collapse, also known as the Atari shock. It was with the NES that the focus of video game fans began to shift from the West to the East.
Sonic, Mario, Pikachu, Pac-Man, Solid Snake, PlayStation – all these and many more were created by Japanese developers. Even today, Japan remains a leader in game development. In 2024 alone, we got at least Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Tekken 8, and Persona 3 Reload. All of these games can compete for the title of the best games of the year, if not in general, then at least in their respective genres.
How did Japan manage to become one of the leaders in the video game industry? This development is rooted in the cultural, social, and historical context of Japanese life. The defeat in World War II suppressed the country’s imperial ambitions and also directed its life in a completely different direction. The Japanese began to seek self-affirmation by spreading their culture. And cultural exchange with other countries has even become one of the main pillars of foreign policy. Video games have become one of the fresh and interesting ways to interact with the world around us.
On the other hand, the Japanese are proud and diligent people who are also very respectful of their national traditions. The combination of these qualities in different proportions will be noticeable to anyone who has played at least a few Japanese games. That is why in the conventional Super Mario Odyssey, every moment is thought out with mathematical precision, and No More Heroes III, which represents the crazier and more unbridled side of Japanese gamemaking, actively refers to niche Japanese anime and movies.
By the way, Japanese animation and cinema is another of Japan’s main “weapons of influence” on world culture. Today, it’s hard to find a person who hasn’t heard of anime. Even people who actively dislike this medium have come across it in one way or another. The influence of anime can be found in the most unexpected places.
For example, the key battle of Creed III was filmed with the peculiarities of Japanese animation in mind, because Michael B. Jordan is a big fan of anime. And Japanese cinema has long been a joy for cinephiles and a source of inspiration for other directors. For example, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is still quoted in one way or another. Even Zack Snyder’s recent Rebel Moon referred to this movie.
Japanese games are also becoming trendsetters of genres and game design traditions. The long-suffering soulslike genre, which From Software invented in 2009 with the release of Demon’s Souls and perfected in Dark Souls in 2011, is still very popular and has become a kind of trend for developers. It even influenced Santa Monica Studios, which decided to focus on souls-like elements for God of War 2018. Japanese studios also make the best fighting games (Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear), and the JRPG genre has found a response in the hearts of fans from all over the world.
But does this mean that the efforts of Japanese developers have always been rewarded, and all their games are undoubted hits? Of course not. The Japanese gaming industry has also had its share of hard times, and one of those periods was during the life cycle of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Many famous game series such as Final Fantasy and Resident Evil received mixed reviews from critics and players, while hits such as Gears of War and Uncharted drew gamers’ attention back to the West.
We still feel the results of that period. Sony’s management decided to pay more attention to Western developers and audiences. The PlayStation itself became more “Americanized,” and wild Japanese projects like Mister Mosquito stopped being released on it. But Nintendo has not changed under the influence of circumstances and has continued to bend its line for many years.
It is worth considering that Japanese developers have long and often taken into account the wishes of Western players. Many well-known series from Japan were created with the West in mind. These include Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Metal Gear Solid. Japanese developers combine Western aesthetics with their own spiritual and intellectual ideas about the world. The result is a mix that appeals to almost all players.
But the Japanese game developer does not forget about its own culture. Persona, Yakuza, Nioh, and many other series are based on Japanese aesthetics. Through video games, the Japanese share the nuances and interesting details of their culture with the whole world.
At the same time, in 2024, it has become much easier to access Japanese games than before. For example, just a few years ago, Japanese games received English localization and were released in the West with a significant delay. For example, the original version of Persona 5 was released in Japan on September 15, 2016, and only reached the West on April 4, 2017.
Also, in the past, many Japanese releases either completely ignored the existence of the PC, or the ports were of such terrible quality that it was physically unpleasant to play them. This happened with the PC ports of Devil May Cry 3, Resident Evil 4, and the first part of Dark Souls. This is due to the fact that in Japan, a PC is more of a working device than a gaming platform. The only exception is visual novels.
But recently, the situation has become much better. Once again, Japanese developers have begun to take the needs of Western players into account more. However, the share of PC gamers in Japan itself has grown significantly.
No matter how strange Japanese games may sometimes seem, they continue to be a business that must bring money to its owners in order to continue the adequate work of the development team. That is why many decisions of Japanese developers, such as ignoring certain gaming platforms, are related to market and audience analytics. Yes, Japanese games are becoming more and more familiar to Western players every year, but preserving their own style while adopting successful ideas from the West is one of the key tasks for Japanese studios.
“As for games, it has proven difficult for Japanese companies to implement Western systems. Japan has a long history with companies developing their own engines, and it was hard to move away from that. We were very late with incorporating rendering tools and middleware from the West. Even to this day, many schools don’t teach this to new developers. I think that Japanese people are not good at adapting technology from overseas. Chinese and South Korean games were much faster to use engines like Unreal for games with a Japanese aesthetic,” Nier series creator Hideo Taro commented on this situation in an interview with IGN.
For a long time, the West was Japan’s main competitor in game development. The competition between different schools of game development drove the industry forward, because competition between companies is always good for the end user. But in this quote by Yoko Taro alone, we can see that the situation has recently begun to change.
And this is largely due to the fact that China also has its own ambitions for video games.
Chinese appetites
The People’s Republic of China, or simply China, is one of the major powers in the modern political arena. It is actively competing with the United States in politics and other spheres of life, and in many cases, it is even winning. Most likely, right now you are holding a smartphone or reading these lines from a screen in which almost all the parts are made in China.
The video game market in China is the largest in the world. The number of Chinese gamers in 2023, when the Western gaming industry was feeling the effects of the crisis and recession to the greatest extent, amounted to 668 million, which is an absolute record. This is almost half of the total population of China. Analysts believe that by 2029, this figure will grow to 894.7 million players. These are absolutely crazy figures, considering that sales of an AAA game even at 10 million copies are considered a great success.
But then why are game developers suffering from the crisis and financial problems if there is such a huge pool of players in the world? And they are willing to spend money, given that the video game market in China is expected to reach $94.49 billion in 2024. The problem lies in the political system of China. After all, nothing happens in China without the supervision of government agencies.
We have already talked a bit about this situation in the text about video game bans. In China, absolutely every game has to be pre-screened and receive a special license. Even seemingly innocuous words and moments in Chinese contexts can lead to a game being banned in China. Therefore, developers of various works, not only video games, try to take into account all potentially problematic nuances related to China at the early stages of production.
Because Chinese money can really be a lifesaver for a wide variety of projects. In this regard, the situation with the first part of the movie Aquaman is illustrative. China alone brought the movie $291.9 million. Not all films can earn that kind of money from around the world, but we’re talking about one country. By the way, Aquaman was also successful in other Asian countries. So don’t be surprised why Hollywood is so worried about Chinese viewers. After all, withdrawing a movie from theaters in China can almost instantly “kill” it in terms of money.
Video games in China are even more complicated. A developer cannot simply release their project on Steam or Google Play. The latter is not available in China at all, like many other Google services. Apple’s App Store is available, but it is so strictly regulated that its availability does not make life much easier for developers. Add to this the big problems with translating almost any language into Chinese-even several variants of Chinese-and you get a huge barrier that prevents developers from entering the Chinese gaming market.
But China has its own gaming companies that do very well thanks to Chinese players. However, for a long time, they have been focused on free-to-play and mobile games, as they brought in the most money and the most stable gamer base in the country. You’ve definitely at least heard of companies like Perfect World (Forsaken World and Perfect World itself) and NetEase (Revelation Online, Marvel Duel). MMORPGs and other games with a strong emphasis on social interaction are one of the most successful segments of gaming in China. It is all the more ironic that any social activity in them is subject to enormous censorship.
However, other countries still managed to take an interest in the success of Chinese companies. After all, their monetization model is time-tested, and their games gather millions of players. That’s why Perfect World is working on Persona 5: The Phantom X, a mobile spin-off for Japanese Atlus, and NetEase Games, known for the controversial Diablo Immortal and the “Overwatch killer” Marvel Rivals, has every chance of success at least thanks to its recognizable characters. NetEase has been actively cooperating with Blizzard since the beginning of time.
So it’s no longer news to anyone that Western studios are looking for support and cooperation with Chinese ones. It turns out to be a win-win situation: Western developers get a potentially successful project with excellent financial performance and for a relatively small budget, while Chinese developers get access to new markets and experience in interacting with businesses from other countries. And there would be no problem if Chinese studios limited themselves to this.
But this is not the case. Chinese appetites are much more aggressive and ambitious than Japanese ones. While Japanese studios are primarily concerned with “cultural exchange,” so their games mix the West with the East in bizarre combinations, for China video games are quite simply “soft power” and a potential element of propaganda. And the largest companies are not limited to cultural influence alone and regularly turn to financial influence.
You’ve probably heard of Quantic Dream, the studio that gave the world the controversial but unforgettable interactive stories of Detroit: Become Human, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls. But did you know that since 2022, it has been fully owned by NetEase? The same goes for SkyBox Labs, which previously worked with Microsoft on Halo, Age of Empires, and Minecraft, and since 2023 has been part of the Chinese company.
However, NetEase is still a very modest company when compared to Tencent. Tencent Holdings specializes in various technologies, such as Internet services and artificial intelligence. But video games are of particular interest to the company. Again, you might not know this, but if you look at the size of the investment and the distribution of shares, Tencent is considered the world’s largest gaming company. In many ways, it is the company that is trying to make it easier for global games to be released in China, but its activities are not limited to doing good for China.
Tencent’s influence can be found in a wide variety of gaming companies, even the largest ones. Here are just the most striking examples:
- Riot Games – fully owns
- Funcom – fully owns
- Sumo Group – fully owns
- Don’t Nod – 42% of shares
- Epic Games – 35% of shares
- Bloober Team – 22% of shares
- Ubisoft – 9.99% of shares
And Tencent’s management has no intention of stopping. Recently, the company invested 15 million euros in Remedy Entertainment, with the condition that it could potentially return the investment in shares. There is information that amid Ubisoft’s financial problems, shareholders are asking to sell the company to Tencent. Given the latest news, Ubisoft may soon cease to exist as an independent publisher and developer.
The aggressive purchase of shares and companies is reminiscent of the situation with Embracer Group. A few years ago, the company was also actively buying studios, inspired by the extraordinary rise of the gaming industry amid coronavirus and quarantine restrictions, when people were staying at home and actively playing games. But as a result, the company closed many studios and laid off more than 1000 people, and eventually split into three parts.
Tencent is not acting so crazy yet, but the general pattern is still noticeable. Moreover, for many years, the company has been accused of copying the work of both other studios and its own. There is a long-standing saying in the Chinese business community that “there is nothing that Tencent can’t copy,” and other Chinese giants such as Alibaba Group and NetEase have been among the company’s accusers.
And here is the most interesting thing. Game Science was founded by former Tencent employees. That is, many features of the cultural code have flowed into the new company.
And we haven’t even begun to discuss MiHoYo, which gave the world Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, and other games that are equally successful in draining your time and money. MiHoYo deserves a separate story, because its Genshin Impact was unusually successful, but at the same time became one of the strongest examples of “soft propaganda.” Censorship of all uncomfortable words like “Taiwan” and “Tibet,” constant collaborations with Russians during the full-scale war in Ukraine, cultural appropriation of the Japanese artistic style. These are just a few of the sins that MiHoYo has been found to have committed.
However, the company’s example shows one danger that Chinese expansion into the gaming industry poses. If Chinese politics becomes too prevalent in Western studies, the Chinese leadership may begin to impose its ideals and principles. If not directly, then at least by excluding any acute political statements, “whitewashing” all the plots. And the data of players exchanged within the games will end up in Chinese police databases. This has already happened with Riot Games.
Moreover, the development culture in China is significantly different from the Western one, which can cause controversy. Something like this has already happened with Black Myth: Wukong, whose developers were accused of sexism and censorship. It’s interesting to look at the situation after the fact, as we can see that it didn’t affect sales.
This is probably due to the fact that most of the sales of Black Myth: Wukong were in the Chinese region. According to available information, about 17 million copies were purchased by Chinese players. And they keep a distance from the information agenda of the Western gaming community.
In other words, Asian developers can to some extent ignore modern trends in the appearance of characters and the structure of plots. After all, the Chinese market has completely different needs. But there is already a demand for premium quality games from Chinese developers. And at every game presentation, you will find a huge number of games in Asian aesthetics. So China may well not only make the gaming industry better and more diverse, but also more politicized. We just have to wait for a wave of releases from Chinese developers to fully appreciate the impact of Black Myth: Wukong.
Of course, Asia is not just Japan and China. It’s just that these countries, thanks to their economies and labor force, can afford to be particularly diligent in the video game industry. However, other Asian countries are also gaining momentum in terms of interactive entertainment.
Boundless Asia
Stellar Blade – це ще одне ігрове відкриття 2024 року, яке подарувала нам Азія. Якщо конкретно, то Південна Корея. При цьому студія Shift Up і раніше почувалася чудово завдяки мобільній грі Goddess of Victory: Nikke. Її основна фішка що продає буде зрозумілий усім, хто побачить хоча б кілька моментів із гри. Але при цьому існує думка, що в ній ще й досить продуманий сценарій.
Stellar Blade was the fourth Shift Up game and the first attempt to reach console quality. Moreover, the game turned out to be one of the few full-fledged PlayStation 5 exclusives. And even though it’s unlikely to be a reason to buy the console, it’s still a good game that only lacks originality.
Creating a console project, and an exclusive one at that, was a risky venture for Shift Up. But the developers went for it primarily because they loved console games themselves.
“We were initially thinking about creating Goddess of Victory: Nikke into a duology game for the Android and iOS platforms. It was during that process that the urge to develop a console title emerged as our second project. I have been a long-time fan of video game consoles and have always wanted to develop action games for them. The idea attracted a group of members with a shared passion, and that’s how the idea of developing Stellar Blade emanated,” admits the game’s director Kim Hyung Tae.
Add-ons and a sequel are planned for the game, so you don’t have to worry about the developers’ fate for now.
Another prominent representative of the South Korean gaming industry is Krafton. It appeared in 2018 as the parent company of Bluehole. The studio owes its emergence to the success of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and, by the way, investments from the same Chinese Tencent Holdings.
The company is actively supporting the PUBG franchise, but it also tried to enter premium gaming. And not just like that, but with the help of a new project by Dead Space author Glenn Schofield. The Callisto Protocol was supposed to be his triumphant return to AAA video games, but poor sales and a lukewarm reception from critics put an end to his further ambitions.
However, Krafton itself did not cease operations. Moreover, it saved the developers of Hi-Fi Rush by buying out Tango Gameworks after Bethesda and Xbox decided to close the studio. This is a very noble act, given the current realities of the gaming industry.
Another interesting studio is based in an equally interesting region – Taiwan. We are talking about Red Candle Games, which is known for Detention and Devotion horror games. These are good games, but the scandal around Devotion is particularly memorable. The developers left an Easter egg in the game related to the Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping. China did not like this, the game was withdrawn from sale in China, and the developers were accused of provocation. They had to remove their game from digital stores. You can only buy it in Red Candle Games’ own digital store.
This is another telling moment, because it helps us understand how intolerant China is of dissent, even if it is an indie game. And how important the word China is in the world. In addition, Taiwan is a problematic region of special interest to China, whose independence the ruling party does not recognize. That is, the situation with Devotion turned out to be particularly politicized.
As a result, Red Candle Games released a wonderful metroidvania, Nine Sols, which combines cute animals with cyberpunk aesthetics, Taoism, and extremely violent moments.
The video game market continues to grow in almost every region of Asia. Both Asian countries and Western countries are actively investing in interactive entertainment, hiring employees from Asia and opening local branches. Moreover, while the region has been a leader in hyper-casual, gacha, and other mobile games for a long time, Asian developers started developing console AAA projects only a few years ago. With the exception of Japan, of course. However, 2024 shows that Asia can significantly change the balance of power in game development.
On the one hand, competition will force Japanese, American, and European developers to actively search for new ideas and approaches to players, which will only benefit the gaming community. On the other hand, the activation of Asian developers can reveal a new layer of social, political, and cultural problems. And let’s be honest, players, developers, and gaming media have enough of them today.
To summarize, there will be more games, and they will most likely be better. But what kind of thoughts these games will instill in players, whether they will bring even more discord – this is the key question that the entire gaming community will have to answer in the near future.
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