Why China’s video gaming industry needs more titles like Black Myth: Wukong

Wukong’s commercial and political success in China has boosted the country’s struggling video gaming industry

Zhou Xin

Published: 7:00am, 27 Aug 2024

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China has long had an uneasy relationship with video games.

On the one hand, the video gaming industry has been the subject of scrutiny by authorities – just three years ago, an official newspaper had accused the sector of churning out “spiritual opium” for Chinese youth. On the other hand, a boom in the industry in recent years has made games a lucrative business.

But that tension magically dissolved with the arrival of Black Myth: Wukong, probably the most successful video game ever made in China. The so-called AAA title, which took “a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of resources” to make, has not only been a huge success commercially, but also politically.

Over 10 million copies of the game have been sold since its launch on August 20, paying developers and investors handsome returns. But the biggest win is on the political side, as state-run media outlets shower the title with more praise than any other video game has ever received in the country.

The government has many reasons to endorse Wukong. The game is, first of all, totally Chinese. Its plot is adapted from Journey to the West, one of the four greatest works of Chinese classic literature. Its central protagonist, the Monkey King, is a household name in the country. The game contains images of real Chinese temples and relics, and plays Chinese folk music in the background.

For many players, the game is an unprecedented digital masterpiece that is steeped in Chinese culture. Its popularity among overseas players has fanned hopes that the game could become a powerful tool for boosting China’s soft power on the global stage.

Wukong has broken long-standing norms in the domestic game industry.

China’s hard-to-please censors, for example, seem to have tolerated many of the game’s violent and dark images, from blood pools to headless monks, to preserve the game’s unique feel. And in a country where video gaming can be considered an evil – one of the rumoured “sins” of Sun Zhengcai, a former party secretary of Chongqing who is serving a life sentence, was being addicted to a popular mobile game – Wukong has not only been tolerated, but embraced.

Chinese social media is abound with video clips showing fathers getting help from their teenage children to defeat the game’s bosses, even though these appear to be contradictory to mainland regulations limiting children under 18 to playing video games for three hours a week from Friday to Sunday.

The significance of Wukong’s success is that it has elevated video gaming to the status it deserves. It has greatly boosted the morale of China’s gaming industry, as Wukong has shown them the possibility that creativity can be rewarded, both financially and politically. This is a luxury that was once out of reach for most of the country’s video gaming industry talent. For many years, China’s game developers and entrepreneurs were regarded as morally questionable.

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Still, it remains to be seen whether the political capital earned by Wukong can translate into meaningful relaxations of government control over the gaming industry. China continues to maintain a rigid licensing and censorship mechanism for games, which creates huge uncertainty for studios, particularly for big productions like Wukong.

Wukong received its licence in February this year. Who knows what would have happened if it did not get the approval in time?

For the Chinese video gaming industry, Wukong is a belated beacon of hope. The market is reaching, if not already reached, its peak due to the shrinking youth population and weak consumer spending. Big titles like Wukong, which usually require many dedicated hours to play, are going out of fashion, with gamers choosing to spend more time and money on smartphone titles.

For all these reasons, the success of Wukong is worth celebrating. But let’s not forget, China’s gaming industry still needs more titles like Wukong to flourish.

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