Black Myth: Wukong, China’s first AAA video game which has taken the world by storm since its launch in August, has inspired Chinese gaming studios to try and achieve similar success in overseas markets, according to delegates at an industry conference in Beijing.
International expansion was the major topic up for discussion during the annual conference hosted by China’s Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, the country’s semi-official gaming industry body, with a number of company executives saying Black Myth has boosted their confidence and set a good example for going abroad.
“[Its] success did not come out of nowhere. It has a strong industrial foundation in terms of support and operations,” Huang Haoqi, in charge of the domestic operations of Nintendo Switch at Tencent Holdings, said on Thursday. China has an advantage in video games when it comes to promotional activities and operations “in the internet era”, he added.
Zhang Xiaodie, founder and chief executive of Beijing-based studio Youxigu, which develops games based on Chinese history, said one example of so-called “cultural confidence” is that the game has inspired the use of more Chinese pinyin instead of English to describe characters and items in video games.
For example, “Wukong” is the pinyin equivalent of “Monkey King”, the character from the 16th century novel Journey to the West, while “yaoguai” is used in the game to describe monsters.
Tang Jiajun, secretary general of Game Publishing Committee of China’s Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, said that the association has received many inquiries from foreign embassies, including the US embassy, asking if more Chinese studios are in the process of developing similar AAA games after the success of Black Myth: Wukong.
Chinese video gaming companies, led by majors like Tencent Holdings, NetEase and miHoYo, are betting big on foreign markets to seek new opportunities amid slower growth at home.
