China's 'Wukong' Hit Sells 10M Copies in Three Days | Hacker News Reader

China's 'Wukong' Hit Sells 10M Copies in Three Days

bloomberg.com

47 pointszaikunzhang60 comments

Journey to the West was very popular on Chinese TV in the 80s-90s, and almost everyone watched it more than once. The game was promoted for four years, and in the end it presented much more than what was shown in the PV. The story of the GUAI, the animation between the chapters, this is a love letter to one generation (maybe two). Beside, at present, China's economic environment is not good, and I would like to call this sales volume China's lipstick effect.(A $500 ps5 then you are good to go).

I'm having a few snags with Bloomberg.

However I do get to read your comment and I suspect that what you write is quite complicated and involved.

Would you mind defining G_U_A_I and C_N lipstick effect. Feel free to use convoluted terminology.

hhh GUAI is the Chinese pronunciation of monster/yokai. Game Science retains this appellation in the game.（Black Bear Guai for example, it's a Black Bear Monster actually） The lipstick effect in China means that people are turning to cheap entertainment, such as games. I used a translation tool, sorry for the unclear expression.

I understand now. Thank you. There is no requirement to separate capital letters with _.

"lipstick effect". I understand your explanation but the phrase is still unclear. If I had to guess: lipstick is a Western affectation and so are computer games. All nations have sayings that range from mildly unpleasant to outright racism and inflammatory. The lipstick effect sounds like "mildly offensive".

I wish you all the best and I hope this translates correctly 8)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_effect

Can someone explain to me why this huge success?

Is it because of the back story of it being based on a Chinese mythical book and that it rings a bell with this billion person sized market?

So far, only looking at the trailer, I did not see anything particularly special that would differentiate it from other recent AAA games.

It's just first PRC AAA game. It's pretty good or rather not bad. Curious Chinese consumers (of which there are many) voting with their wallets because they want more. Helps that it's based on significant literary canon, think LOTR + harry potter + Shakespeare with 500 years of cultural presence. Total War Three Kingdoms also sold well due to PRC consumers, an indigenous production just gets even more attention. I think the game is pretty mid like most assassin's creed games but I like the environment design and how production scanned a lot of temples.

Genshin Impact from miHoYo is also a PRC AAA game before Wukong, but it’s a copycat of the Japanese ACG culture rather than the Chinese culture in Wukong:

https://expertbeacon.com/is-genshin-a-aaa-game/

IMO AAA gotcha mobile =/= AAA single player. I'd argue AAA gotcha service probably harder to produce but easier to finance due to profitability. Wukong signally there's potential market to justify PRC studios / investors spending 40-50M on big single player productions. I don't think subsequent efforts are going to bring in nearly as much due to Wukong being first/novelty, but it's progress towards establishing market other than live service. Of course knowing PRC media scape, we're just going to get increasingly large budget wuxia rehashes.

It's a fairly good AAA game with souls-like elements, people are very happy to have it.

Monkey Magic computer game, I am very happy with this.

From a different thread I saw a Chinese user note that this game includes references to the most popular adaptations in Chinese media including some of the theme music and the most popular written version so many in the Chinese market have a familiar cultural touchstone.

Not sure if it counts as part of the Chinese media canon, but if it has references to Japan's adaption, Monkey Magic, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series) they'l catch a few Gen-X anglos with those touchstones too.

They took Elden Ring and added Kung-Fu. It's very similar to what a huge audience already knows, but it's just different enough to feel fresh.

Todd McFarlane likes to say that all you need to do to make a hit is to take what's already out there and make it 10% sexier. That's exactly what they did.

Huh. Three downvotes for a fairly innocuous post. People here must really dislike the Spawn comic books.

Gameplay footage of this game was out long before Elden Ring, so saying “they took Elden Ring” is super strange.

Elden ring derives from souls like games, and Sun Wukong's combat is in the same family.

Nothing wrong with it. Combat styles in gaming are inherently derivative.

Nothing wrong with derivative, just about every game derives from previous ones. But saying this one is directly derived from Elden Ring makes little sense.

The top selling titles generally don't have super unique gameplay. They are frequently sequels.

There are many factors here. Two of the most obvious things that I can think of are: almost all Asian kids from the '80s, '90s, and 2000s grew up watching or reading Journey to the West (see how people react to Celestial Symphony OST), the movie was shown on TV every summer. And it's being marketed as China's first AAA title. These things get a lot of people interested.

Imagine having a book that was written centuries ago that's considered one of the four pillars of great Chinese novel classics.

Have that book be arguably the most popular of the four. (Debatable with 3 Kingdoms)

The story is told to children since they're young.

During a time where the story was adapted into plenty of derivatives like Dragon Ball, one TV show stood out. Every single Chinese, and Southeast Asian kid has watched it growing up. It was THE weekend TV to wait for. The theme songs are extremely catchy. The TV show is put on reruns every once in a while. Entire nations have watched it.

Then China, who arguably never had a AAA game title this widely marketed before, writes a sequel loosely based on the original novel and lined the game full of homages and music remixes from the TV show.

Western audiences can review however they want, any person who can hear this song in their head "dun dun dudun dun dun dududuuuun pewpewpew pewpewpew" is going to love it even if it's only mildly playable, let alone being actually fun to play.

And have you seen the animations?

If power rangers were a centuries old story, with statues, temples and mythos around them, and it's the first ever AAA game from the US to be published. The moment you hear "Go Go Power Rangers" you're buying the game.

I thought the big problem was that most Chinese gamers were biased to mobile multiplayer games, or at least 2D isomorphic games that could be played on tablets. Those games are already pretty famous outside of China at least, this is the first time I’m seeing a 3D game take center stage instead.

There are so many versions of the monkey king that I lose track. Like the one that was reincarnated in the modern world as a handsome brother for some reason (late 90s?), then there was a movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li in it 15 years ago. It made 53 million in the USA at least, which was more than it made in the mainland.

They were biased to mobile games because it's the most lucrative, and so game studios index on that. If you go further back, there were wildly popular CRPGs that just weren't very widely marketed outside of China. They were AAA grade of that era, but never officially translated nor marketed.

Jinyong Heroes, Calamity of Heaven and Earth, Heroes of the Celestial Sword were all popular CRPGs within China on the level of Final Fantasy, but were merely cult classics outside the country. None of them were homages, and didn't have this ethnic level of cultural influence.

They were (are?) widely regarded and almost always based on costume dramas, which are very Chinese in cultural influence. It will be interesting to see how this wukong plays out and if it sets a new gaming direction for the mainland.

It is popular because the devs posted that they were blackmailed by DEI consultants, and it blew up since most people are also fed up with it.

As always, the DEI bogeyman probably has little if anything to do with the success(or failure) of something.

The game and the story are good but are nowhere near as polished as some AAA titles (eg it has bad English dub). The DEI contraversies around it caused streamers to talk about the game often and served as advertisement (since the narrative was DEI vs Gamers).

there are literally memes about it

I think besides the points made by others about popularity with asian audiences, there's also the point that western gamers have likely at least heard of Wukong as a character, so it doesn't immediately come off as intended only for asian audiences. They also seemed to advertise a lot on X.

Yeah this contributes to it as well I think. I don't play a lot of video games (I haven't played this one either), but I know the name Wukong and its origin from various video games I've played such as Warframe and WoW. So when I saw a trailer for a game called Wukong it caught my eye immediately.

It's not a "Chinese mythical book", it's one of the classical novels of Chinese civilization. Think of it as a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Iliad, but containing extensive references to ancient Chinese tales, culture, religion (especially Buddhism), and history (the central monk character in the story is based on a real, and revered, historical monk).

It also has beloved and well known characters who have featured in all kinds of Chinese stories and media for centuries: e.g. Erlang (no relation to the programming language), who is prominently in the opening cutscene, and is often found in stories accompanied by Nezha (who is so popular that generations of Chinese kids grew up hearing this[0] song and watching that show).

And this is by no means just a Chinese phenomenon. This story, Journey to the West, is a cultural keystone in all of Asia: Dragonball is very much based on Journey to the West[1], and "Son Goku" is just the Japanese pronunciation of the name "Sun Wukong", who is the monkey protagonist of this game. The two share many of their powers and characteristics, including flying around on a magic cloud and becoming powerful enough to challenge literal gods.

Finally, this is perhaps the first "postmodern" retelling of this extremely popular story. The game is called "black myth" because it is clearly darker and more serious than previous retellings of this story. For someone who knows this story well (i.e. basically anyone who grew up in Asia), it is a fresh version of an old classic. In this sense, this game is the equivalent of what The Witcher was for (mainly Eastern) Europeans; it takes legends, stories, superstitions you grew up hearing about (e.g. vampires, werewolves, etc) and breathes new life into them.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TG_KTrCetcM

[1] even down to having a cowardly pigman companion, Bajie, who is also in this game.

Another American equivalent might be Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed, or any of the Wild West cowboys; Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp. For this crowd, maybe the story of Steve Jobs and Apple.

> So far, only looking at the trailer, I did not see anything particularly special that would differentiate it from other recent AAA games.

It has absolutely crazy gorgeous graphics, games at this level do not come out often at all.

It is tied into an extremely popular mythology, and one that western audiences are warming up to.

It implements the popular "soulslike" genre, which is massively popular with hardcore gamers.

It is VERY rare that a new franchise, from a new company, in a niche genre is released with this level of graphical fidelity and polish. Everything EA and Ubisoft and Sony produce these days, who are mostly responsible for the high-fidelity games made recently, is copy-paste open world collect-a-thon bullshit for a casual audience.

This game is well designed, has good word of mouth, and is cool! And yes: people in SEA are interested because it is an implementation of one of THEIR popular stories, as opposed to another Tolkien rehash.

And it is super cool! Kung fu is cool!

Almost every Chinese person is familiar with this myth and its characters. When I was a child, I used to watch the TV series multiple times every year.

This mythological story not only features vivid characters and a grand setting, but also contains subtle metaphors about life philosophy that continue to be interpreted to this day.

It's just a very good game. There aren't that many good AAA games recently; quite a few of them are, to put it bluntly, garbage (e.g., Starfield, Suicide Squad, Concorde, Star Wars Outlaws).

(I'm not saying there aren't any good AAA games recently, just that they're less common now, and Wukong is one of them)

Here in Southeast Asia we have a wealth of myths and histories that barely made it into popular culture.

AAA games are expensive, multi-year projects. Completing such an endeavor requires a ton of faith and persistant backing that cannot be taken for granted in a developing country. The success of this game fills me with hope.

> Here in Southeast Asia we have a wealth of myths and histories that barely made it into popular culture.

This is definitely not one of them, though. Journey to the West is the opposite of obscure. Dragon Ball, one of the most popular franchises ever is overtly inspired by it and even freaking lego made a show about it. If you’re going to make an action game about an eastern myth, this is the safest, most obvious choice you can make.

Do you have any favorite myths or histories you could link to? I'm under-exposed to a lot of culture I'm slowly learning about as an adult haha.

Zheng He's travels would make for very good worldbuilding. He made a lot of stops in SEA and had a massive impact on local cultures, including on the Malacca Sultanate where I'm from.

This game also has been notable for observing how power is shifting from traditional media companies like IGN to individual streamers. For those who haven’t been following closely, IGN has accused the game developer for being sexist (based on some poorly translated social media posts) and gave it a low score before properly playing/testing it. The kneejerk reaction from the fed up gamers propelled the game to greater heights. Things have been brewing between big media and streamers for a while and this is probably the wake up call for the big media if it’s not already too late.

Wait people took IGN seriously? They've been tabloid grade trash for at least 15 years.

I don't read their articles but they are likely still relevant. Gaming platforms (steam, ps, etc) usually doesn't offer much to publishers for marketing beyond the basics. My guess is that you end up working with influencers and larger review sites with varying success.

Yep. The game review websites all got taken over by “journalists” who really are there to use their position for personal political agendas. And while everyone has known this for a while, I think the vicious attacks by social justice activists against this game have finally triggered gamers into mass rejection of the institutions that have been captured and corrupted.

The translation thing was especially egregious. It was clearly a machine translation, but they denied that it was, despite there being huge flaws in it. My take is that they purposely used an inaccurate translation to manufacture a narrative that matched what they wanted.

To me, it's an incredible case of projection that people are so accusing of creating a fictional universe. These takes are so bitter, so distorted, so slanted, so derisive.

> The game review websites all got taken over by “journalists” who really are there to use their position for personal political agendas.

I feel like I'm not living on the same planet as anyone who would straight facedly make such bold, completely unnuanced, in my opinion absurd statements. I cannot stress enough how badly folks should avoid following these dark paths, reducing the whole world around you to a single dark angry point of bitterness, conspiratorial thinking that the whole universe has been bent against good.

Look, I love gnosticism as an idea, that the archons create prisons around us and only gnosis can help us break the spheres of control around us, but this, to me, is putting your mind in a cage of thought and thinking where you are desperate to believe in vast alignment of the universe against you.

Don't do this shit to yourself, don't do it to others.

> IGN has accused the game developer for being sexist (based on some poorly translated social media posts) and gave it a low score before properly playing/testing it.

What score did they give it? Because I just checked and they seem to have awarded it an 8 out of 10. I don't follow game reviews, but surely review inflation hasn't gotten so bad that people are on some sort of anti-"woke" bent over an 8 out of 10?

I figured "well maybe they changed it after publication, those sneaky skags", so looked at the ol' Wayback Machine capture for Aug 16th, four days before launch, when the review embargo lifted: https://web.archive.org/web/20240816141422/https://www.ign.c...

8/10 there too- "Despite some frustrating technical issues, Black Myth: Wukong is a great action game with fantastic combat, exciting bosses, tantalizing secrets, and a beautiful world.". Really a horrible thing these journalists have done, ripping into the game like that.

Now, I did also find a report from IGN about 6 months ago that some people claim used "mistranslated quotes". But I don't speak Chinese, and the people online who I've found yelling at IGN about this appear to have used ChatGPT or Google Translate to translate things themselves! So- do you speak Chinese? If not, how do you know the claims of "mistranslation" are correct (again, for a thing that is not a review)?

I've seen news floating online that some employers in China gave people a day off to play the game. PS5 is getting sold out there because of the game, Sony's stock is also up because of it. Crazy!

This game is interesting partially because it's triggering a realization in the west on how rich China is and how close they are to the west in doing high quality stuff.

https://archive.is/e6fWs

Didn't China ban video games?

Yes and no.

It’s a PRC game. But they limit the number of hours people can play games.

The limit applies to children under 18.

They limit the number of hours children can play video games, and this restriction is mandated to be built into the software itself by the developers/publishers.

Not fully, but the Chinese government has been a thrown for their industry's development.

Hence why we are talking about this: the sales are happening on global Steam. Not the China-government-approved games version called Steam China.

And these restrictions only exist in online games. In fact, there are no restrictions for single-player games and console games.

There is a huge backlash from progressive gamers and gaming journalists against this game, claiming it lacks a diversity of characters and isn’t inclusive. This attack has resulted in many gamers trying the game just to spite the political bias of journalists. There is also just a huge backlash from prominent streamers and YouTube personalities against the corruption of gaming by “social justice” oriented journalists, DEI consultants, etc. This controversy is a big part of the game’s success.

No there isn't. There was some discourse around a pretty weirdly worded set of T&Cs sent to early reviewers (they were instructed to not include 'feminist propaganda' in their writing, whatever that means).

There is no 'huge backlash' from anyone other than the ghouls trying to make 'DEI' the next nonsense culture war strawman.

You can easily find many YouTube videos documenting the corruption of video game reviews (reducing score for this game due to activist pressure), fake reviews on Steam commenting on its lack of inclusivity, and various left leaning journalists going on Twitter tirades about this game due to their DEI expectations.

Your denial feels out of place, since this has been a major topic in gaming for the last week.

Fake reviews on steam? Is this something like abuse of the family sharing system to be able to post more than one?

I am not sure how it works - I’m not a gamer. But I’ve seen many articles and videos pop up about this game and the controversies around it. I think the fake review thing involved buying one copy of the game and posting a political rant about how everyone who enjoyed the game is immoral, and then having friends or followers or whatever upvote the review. But I really have no idea. By “fake” I mean that it is a review not focused on the game itself or fun, but some weird agenda.

https://www.ign.com/articles/how-black-myth-wukong-developer...

https://www.thegamer.com/black-myth-wukong-game-science-sexi...

https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/black-myth-wukong-devs...

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/black-myth-wukong-dev...

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/rs-gaming/black-myth-wu...

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