Why Successful Games in China Rarely Obtain the Equivalent Success in the West
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Players in China are used to outright horrible software (QQ, Qihoo 360, and in fact the majority of Chinese-produced software installed on a Windows computer of a typical user), bland repetitive art, bugs, grinding and paying to win.
A strong nationalistic sentiment makes Chinese players favour games based on their culture and history, which is mostly unknown outside of China because of how closed the country has been for centuries and the "foreign barbarians can't possibly understand our culture" attitude. In addition, the content is usually limited to the Four Great Classical Novels because that's the only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with. But also, due to censorship, it is impossible to use more interesting settings without getting unwanted attention from the government. A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC) and English words.
Combined with a large potential player base and lack of foreign competition, even the most atrocious abomination of a game can make some money in the internal market.
[1] https://www.techinasia.com/mobile-game-devs-pissed-chinas-ce...
QQ supports over hundreds millions online users every day, and numerous group chat rooms at the same time. QQ is far more advanced than any IM softwares outside of China.
Really? Full of ads, automatic censorship, scummy monetization strategies, a ton of bundled bloatware. And it is an ICQ ripoff anyway.
In general homegrown software from China is not comparable in quality to US ones. But they are not horrible. Actually, Chinese companies' software might be inferior only to US produced ones. AFAIK, there is no prominent software that are produced outside of US and are compared favorable to Chinese produced ones.
Your examples of QQ and Qihoo 360 are quite bad examples of "horrible software". They are indeed bloat ware, horrendous privacy invader, outright money seeking in their features, etc. Those cannot be taken granted as evidence of their overall horribleness. In fact, they are prominent software that address Chinese people's everyday needs (IM and security); and their overwhelming popularity is a strong evidence that they achieved their goals successfully.
To say they are horrible without specific qualifications and evidences are a sign of biased views.
> bland repetitive art, bugs, grinding and paying to win. Copy cats are prevalent, bugs are often ignored, paying to win is quite a popular options for players.
B.U.T., these qualifications cannot be used to describe the players. Actually, Chinese game players are such a huge population that a large number of them quite closely follow western trends. They play ps4 and xbox1, they know all the memes about trending western games.
But there are many of them do enjoy the low-quality stuff you mentioned. Many of them lack education and healthy attitude towards gaming and life.
But this statement clearly blended diverse reality into a stereotype.
>A strong nationalistic sentiment makes Chinese players favour games based on their culture and history, which is mostly unknown outside of China because of how closed the country has been for centuries and the "foreign barbarians can't possibly understand our culture" attitude.
Frankly speaking, I have no idea where did you draw such conclusion... This statement is outright a demonization of general Chinese public...
There is no strong culture of "foreign barbarians can't possibly understand our culture". Foreigners are routinely treated with better-than-normal-Chinese standards. Foreign cultures are always described as superior to status-quo of Chinese society. etc.
"A strong nationalistic sentiment" This might be true. But link it with "Chinese players favor games based on their culture and history" seems overly general. I mean, A.N.Y.O.N.E. would naturally favor games based on their culture and history. Given the fundamental difference between eastern and western culture, I see no possibility for Chinese players favor non-eastern games. Actually, Japanese players favor their own games, I doubt anyone would link that to Japanese "nationalistic sentiment". In reality, Japanese games are generally very well-received in China. Considering the bitter history between the 2 nations, the claimed "nationalistic sentiment" hardly play any role in players' preference to games.
> In addition, the content is usually limited to the Four Great Classical Novels because that's the only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with.
First that's not true, there are diverse genres of games, most of them are not based on the classic novels. In reality, only 1 of the four, i.e., "Legends of the Three Kingdoms" is predominantly a material for popular games. In reality, there are a huge number of copy cat games of games are popular outside of China. This statement is plainly false.
Second, only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with. I have to counter this. Typical Chinese high schoolers learn history and classical Chinese literature. They learn hundreds of poets and novels from ancient china to modern ones. China has a high-school graduate rate of 98% [1]. They even include modern wuxia novel from JinYong and SciFi classics from Cixin Liu. If you think such a population who are exposed to a huge collection of historical and modern arts are only familiar with 4 classical novels, I have to say that you must be irrational.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_China
> But also, due to censorship, it is impossible to use more interesting settings without getting unwanted attention from the government.
I do not think censorship has much to do with the game genres. As I said, there are a huge collection of diverse games. If you ever play those games, you know that as long as you do not touch politics (for which most countries exercise similar policies) you can do whatever you want.
> A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC) and English words.
> A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC) and English words.
I am not familiar with this. But I dont think banning traditional Chinese and english words have much impact on producing popular games for mass Chinese players. They are not educated to read in traditional Chiense. On the other hand, if missing English words cause trouble for players to play the game, then the game wont be successful anyway...
> Combined with a large potential player base and lack of foreign competition, even the most atrocious abomination of a game can make some money in the internal market.
Well, lack of foreign competition is a thing, lack of competition is another. Trust me, if there is one thing that China does not lack, it is domestic competition... The brutality and amount of hard work you need to put in to survive in Chinese market is beyond imagination. For example, most companies have policy like 996, working 6 days, 9am to 9pm.
The claim that "even the most atrocious abomination of a game can make some money in the internal market" is just a huge exaggeration of the reality. Sure, the most popular games are not comparable in quality to non-Chinese produces ones, but they are not rubbish... At least, LoL, the most popular Moba in China, is not rubbish...
I don't like this kind of argument because you are technically correct even if prominent software outside the USA exists but you simply don't know about it or don't want to know about it. It's basically meaningless to say this phrase.
Since we are talking about games. The major companies outside USA that immediately pop into my head are Crytek (Germany), Ubisoft (France) and EA Dice (Sweden). I won't mention japanese companies because there's just too many of them.
Really?
> Chinese game players are such a huge population that a large number of them quite closely follow western trends. They play ps4 and xbox1, they know all the memes about trending western games
Ugh, no, unless they live abroad. First and foremost, it's because Chinese players usually can only play on Chinese servers which are cut off from the rest of the world (examples - League of Legends, all Blizzard games). Xbox Live is segregated from the outside world too.
> There is no strong culture of "foreign barbarians can't possibly understand our culture". Foreigners are routinely treated with better-than-normal-Chinese standards. Foreign cultures are always described as superior to status-quo of Chinese society. etc.
This isn't true. Foreigners are often taken advantage of, and the Chinese are outright racist to non-whites.
> LoL, the most popular Moba in China, is not rubbish...
It's also not Chinese-produced.
> as long as you do not touch politics (for which most countries exercise similar policies) you can do whatever you want
No. https://www.techinasia.com/china-releases-censorship-rules-f...
Come on... I am a Chinese. I know how much western gaming videos are trending on bilili.tv, acfun.tv, youku.com. Why are you repeatedly claim things without evidences?...
> play on Chinese servers which are cut off from the rest of the world
Sure, if you are talking about playing with foreigner players. That's certainly not possible. But that's not the same to claim that Chinese gamers do not play western games...
> Foreigners are often taken advantage of
You shifted the topic to taking advantage of. That's not the same as you previously claimed "western barbarians".
> the Chinese are outright racist to non-whites.
I am not sure where did you get this. It's pretty well-known fact that African people live in Guangzhou have been treated preferentially. They are real African people. They are a pretty popular meme about African people live in China and should be exported because they do not have legal residence status. But that's about it.
To say Chinese people are racist based on some online memes, it's itself a racist claim. Applying same logic to US people, I can claim that US people are outright racists too. But that is nonsensical.
> It's also not Chinese-produced. I was referring the competition. As you claimed that there is no real competitions and any rubbish games can make a lot of money. That is not true.
> No. https://www.techinasia.com/china-releases-censorship-rules-f....
As I said, politics is very sensitive. And also as I said, banning traditional characters and english words has little impact on the popularity of games, because the majority of gamers are not educated to communicate in these 2 channels. That's my point that such bans do not have big impact on how a game should be produced in China. There are some impact, but none of them causes a game to succeed or fail just on them.
You've lost your last ounce of credibility. And, for your information, preferential treatment based on race is also racism. You don't seem to understand what you're talking about.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/27...
As for my credibility, I am not sure how my credibility is damaged anyway.
This sound like you are an apologist for the book burners, metaphorically
> The brutality and amount of hard work you need to put in to survive in Chinese market is beyond imagination. For example, most companies have policy like 996, working 6 days, 9am to 9pm.
Spending more time producing junk doesn't make it not junk. In fact working 72 hours continuously sounds like a great way to burn out and produce poor results.
Not sure what are you referring to here.
> Spending more time producing junk doesn't make it not junk.
I did not claim they are producing junk. What I was saying is that 1) the competition is fierce, which counters the parent's claim that Chinese gaming industry has no real competition.
As I stated repeatedly, the quality is not par with western games. But they are not junk or rubbish just because they are not the best...
I am not much of a gamer but have played great Chinese games with impressive graphics, deep historically-informed game worlds and references to poetry, literature, art, philosophy.
I think you are confusing low-ball RTS/mobile games/MMORPGs with Chinese games.
I also think you are confusing nationalism with cultural touchstones. English or American people play games like US Army and WWII flightsims, RTSs and FPSs, Colonization/Civilization, Europa Universalis, Risk, etc. Is that nationalist? Perhaps, but it's pretty equivalent, and a whole lot more current nerve. If Chinese people released a game about bombing Americans in the South China Sea I'd give you a point... reality is, the US did the same for almost every modern conflict to date, and their army actually have an outreach unit for propaganda/recruiting through games/other media. China, AFAIK, doesn't.
From a money perspective, it's all MMORPGs and mobile equivalents. There is an argument that those types of games tend toward a formulaic approach and weak content by default.
I never heard about banning traditional characters, and I strongly doubt this to be a blanket ban as suggested, because they are critical for historical settings.
Can you please name some examples? I'd love to check them out.
> I also think you are confusing nationalism with cultural touchstones
You have a point here. After re-reading the post, I wanted to add "and a lack of awareness of the outside world and culture", but it was already too late to edit it.
> the US did the same for almost every modern conflict to date
This is whataboutism, we're not talking about the US.
> I never heard about banning traditional characters
Well, see the link in my original post.
As I said I'm not much of a gamer, so I don't often play Chinese games. However, as early as 10 years ago I played an amazing Three Kingdoms style game where the feel was like being inside a moving version of a traditional Chinese watercolor painting ... clouds floating around, inkbrush style architecture and characters, etc. Unfortunately, I don't know what the name was. However, if that was 10 years ago I'm sure there's better out there now. I do remember that it was in traditional characters!
lack of awareness of the outside world and culture
This is pretty rude and baseless. There are interesting statistics about Americans placing major countries on maps, and I'd wager China has more foreign media consumption than the US.
This is whataboutism
No, I was pointing out the senselessness of your line of argument and mode of reasoning. If you can think of an -ism for that, go ahead. Perhaps logic-ism?
the link in my original post
The only thing the link says is that rules for approval of games to be published in the mainland include that they have to be in simplified characters (traditional character games, such as those from Taiwan or Hong Kong, have to be translated first). That's not very strange, it's like saying "games in Turkey have to be written in Turkish (not Arabic)" or "games in Croatia have to be written in Romanized form (not Cyrillic)". It's just the dominant method of writing, where others exist. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's censorship in any form, just a basic enforcement of the country's existing standardization, which brought 1 billion+ people to literacy in the last 100 years. That's a pretty good achievement in my book, which is good reasoning for a whole lot more than the government asking games publishers to spend $0-100 flipping strings local market.
Pro-tip: You can do this automatically, almost always well enough to perfect, using a lovely part of the Wikipedia codebase - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/master... - instantly, automatically, for free.
I think you need to look up what "whataboutism", or "appeal to hypocrisy" means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
> I'd wager China has more foreign media consumption than the US.
With Hollywood being located in the US, I'd be surprised if this wasn't true.
> The only thing the link says is that rules for approval of games to be published in the mainland include that they have to be in simplified characters
This is a quote from the linked article: "SAPPRFT’s rules also forbid the use of traditional Chinese characters." How is this not "banning traditional characters"?
To support your 'Chinese games suck because the Chinese market sux because Chinese people suck' argument, you claimed that Chinese people have no idea what's going on outside the country, which is an offensive and baseless statement. If anyone needs to brush up on reasoning, it's you.
With Hollywood being located in the US, I'd be surprised if this wasn't true.
It may surprise you that some of the more intelligent television and film produced does not come from America and finds huge popularity in China. One recent example is Black Mirror[0], a series of seven sketches pregnant with social commentary of the likes rarely found in US film production. China loved it. I note someone is busy making a US version... to follow your reasoning in jest, no doubt because they are dumbing it down for the dumb audience who have no idea what's going on outside of their own country.
I think you really need to look up what "whataboutism" means :)
so far it seems like you're avoiding the facts in order to feel good about being/working in china. also the original poster never said the chinese people suck, he said that their attitude to culture is very close minded(which from my exploration of their gaming and geek culture seems to be true- everything has to be related to their history in some manner, novel ideas rarely take off) and market forces driven by the government produce drivel
Singapore uses simplified characters too.
really? If true, that sounds bloody brilliant; how I wish to play some game based on "dream of the red chamber"!
What would it be; a huge, sprawling point&click intrigue adventure game with hundereds of deeply characterized NPCs maybe? Can you recommend a title? Any fangroup made english titles for it?
But in general, I agree that 99% of current Chinese-made games, when compared to their equivalent western counterparts, are inferior in quality by a strong margin. I however feel it is much more sophisticated than the reasons people associate with QQ, 360, etc. . I remember reading that the most successfully designed Chinese games were made around 2003 until piracy drove quite a lot of the companies behind the games out of profit, so now for the sake of profit a substantial portion of Chinese game companies forgo better game experiences for quick cash instead.
edit: last sentence found irrelevant
A huge issue is that the Chinese gaming companies are accustomed to very little international competition for Chinese themed games and in the last five years or so, limited competition at all. It's similar to how Youku thrived in China (especially after YouTube got blocked) but can't compete internationally. Winning in China and successfully entering a market where US and Japanese game companies are unrestrained are two very different challenges.
Not true!
See:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49x7m0/chinese_wow_cen...
There were political hurdles and that's why Blizzard partnered with The9, but the market was satisfied enough with the art assets to spend gobs on WoW.
I would attribute most of the difference to this, but I would go further in that there just aren't that many successful international games period.
Any game which requires language for cooperation is a non-starter. So, you either have to be individually based or competition.
Most of the really successful ones are individual: Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Puzzles and Dragons.
Some competition ones do exist: Hearthstone, Clash Royale, Words with Friends. However, you have a bootstrapping issue for competition--how do you have competitions until you have competitors and vice versa?
LoL, WoW, Hearthstone, DotA 2 are some of the most popular games and they're popular world-wide, not just in the US and they're competitive games. DotA 2, for example, has servers for different regions so at least the language barrier issue is not as bad.
Bootstrapping is not an issue when you have good marketing, because you can have a large "launch" that people were waiting for. Maybe a single-player mode is useful to bring in people who are not confident in their skills as well.
Some games have a fixed set of messages/soundbites which is enough for some basic coordination, which then can be translated in all client languages. Sure, for high-level play you often will want voice chat, but it works for normal online games.
And of course very basic English can go a long way in text chats.
These games, all huge successes in Japan and in the west, have all the issues described -- radically different art styles, very different pacing, and complex and unfamiliar user interfaces compared to what westerners were used to. Even worse, during that period, Japanese games got little if any localization for the US and European markets, beyond hastily done and poorly proofread translations of the text.
So what's different about Japanese games?
It's more the accident of being in possession of an entire market to themselves I think than anything.
Oh the many ironies. Things have truly come full circle.
I think it's worth noting that Japan is fairly unique when it comes to this topic. You can't really group it as "Asian" along with the Chinese/Korean market.
Korea would like to weigh in with "Blade and Soul" for a stunning counterexample.
The people that write about games in the West have little in common with the average player. They project their bubble's academic norms of identity politics on an audience that they hold in undisguised contempt. I wouldn't trust them for critical analysis or social commentary on any group but other angsty liberal arts majors.
This is also why I do not like the culture around cuteness (e.g. from Japan). These thoughts just give me chills.
Furthermore, it's less risky to go the route of the "strong female protagonist" if you have to choose one (binary) gender, as it engages women more and has negligible impact on men vs. a similar male protagonist. That's one I remember clearly but would have to dig a little to find the source for again.
Of course, targeting may fall differently if we're simply looking at conversion on a banner ad, as in the infamous "Evony" ad campaign:
[0] https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-o...
Yet the first major major change in World of Warcraft's character line-up was adding Elves to the Horde (Orc) faction, one of the reasons being that a very large portion of female players did prefer their idealized fantasy representations to be conventionally attractive.
To anyone who is bothered by female video game character: I want you to look at the four original Horde female models. Orc, Troll, Tauren, Undead. I want you to note how sexualized they are. And I want you to note that horde was less popular among players of all genders because they were not sexualized enough.
I'm not saying this attention is unjustified, but it surprised me a bit in volume and frequency.
The image caption "Popular Art Style among Game Players in China" could be much better phrased as "The Art Style of popular Chinese games" imo. The original caption gives the impression that the art style led to popularity, which is not true: it is probably because the settings of these game, of ancient China, fill a niche that few foreign competitors are interested in.
It only makes sense that they might be influenced in that direction, given the runaway success StarCraft, for instance, enjoyed, and still enjoys in Korea.
I do not know much and this is pure speculation, but I feel like WoW's art change is a result of constant tweaking while in the Asian markets instead of a deliberate trend. This intrigues me into asking if Chinese games' traditional style (not the anime ones) will have any luck in western markets at all or it will be force to be westernized to gain popularity in western markets in the first place.
edit: grammar
One thing I would add is that from the little of mass-market stuff that has reached the west, is that Chinese writers are really bad at story. The Detective Dee films are a great example. Nice aesthetic, fun action scenes, but the story is barely Michael Bay Transformers level at best. They you get into the horrid nationalism, like in Ip Man.
Here's a recent Chinese kung-fu movie, (mainland, not Hong Kong) fully approved by the government and Party.[1] This has a game-like look to it. It's a sense of the style expected. Even though this is set present-day, it looks like a historical drama.
[1] http://www.gooddrama.to/chinese-movie/the-bodyguard-movie