How Is Chinese Game Development Influencing the Global Gaming Market?

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to Lisa Cosmas Hanson, CEO of Niko Partners.

Transcript

00:00Lisa Cosmas Hansen is CEO of Video Game Consultants Niko Partners.

00:04Joining us now, Lisa, 2 million users in the first 24 hours of the global release.

00:09How significant is that?

00:11It is significant.

00:13It shows that there is global demand for this type of martial arts,

00:18beautiful, beautiful art-style genre.

00:20But I think that really it is popular because it's free

00:24and there aren't very many of these big immersive RPGs

00:29like this that are free.

00:31And it's also available on Steam

00:33and a free Steam game of this nature is not common.

00:38It's also notable that this game has been out in China for a year

00:41and it has been a good game, a strong game,

00:45but not an off-the-charts game in China by any stretch.

00:49And so I think that what this demonstrates

00:51is the global demand for some of the Chinese culture,

00:54the Chinese art style, the Chinese game development style.

00:57It wasn't just a one-hit wonder with Black Myth Wukong

01:00or another recent RPG with the same sort of martial arts genre.

01:05It was Wuchong Fallen Feathers.

01:09And now we see this a third time, at least, with this new game.

01:14How quickly is Chinese gaming and Chinese development of gaming growing, actually?

01:19How quickly is the development growing?

01:23Well, we've been studying Chinese games and the China games market

01:28for more than 20 years.

01:30And this market has, I wouldn't say quickly,

01:32I'd say very steadily and, importantly,

01:37methodically grown from a domestic development expertise standpoint,

01:41starting off as an in-source development powerhouse

01:46for global game developers such as Ubisoft or, back in the day,

01:52others, maybe Bandai or Namco, which were separate companies 20 years ago.

01:58And then, as the game developers in China developed expertise,

02:02they went on to being kind of full game developers,

02:06perhaps doing outsourcing,

02:07and then finally developing, you know,

02:10building their own development studios domestically.

02:13And then, as we've seen, some powerhouse giants like Tencent and NetEase emerge

02:17with many studios underneath them.

02:19We can see that the skills are just growing.

02:22The depth is going deeper.

02:23And, really, it has not been a sudden entry.

02:27I'm not saying you said that it was sudden,

02:28but it has not been a sudden entry.

02:31You know, it's interesting.

02:32If we look at, you mentioned, yes, it's free.

02:34That's part of the draw, obviously.

02:37But there's an interest, it seems, in Chinese history and martial arts,

02:40the so-called wuxia theme.

02:43Both Where Winds Meet and Black Myth Wukong seem to be focused on Chinese history,

02:48mythology, martial arts.

02:49Do you think that's part of the interest?

02:52It is part of the interest.

02:53There's another game that's not an RPG.

02:55It's a different genre, but it's called Naraka Blade Point.

03:01And that game has even found more success globally than, you know, these other games have.

03:07And I think that when we look at this, the display of the art style, the sort of cultural history,

03:16and the beautiful gameplay elements of martial arts coming from China,

03:22the rest of the world is embracing this, I believe, to look and see what's going on there.

03:27I think, importantly, also, games like Black Myth Wukong or even this new game,

03:32Where Winds Meet, where looking at the cultural kind of sightseeing, the scenes of China,

03:40and the developers are spending great amounts of time traveling the country

03:46to incorporate actual artifacts and actual art scenes and actual locations,

03:52which has really helped loop in tourism to the success of the games domestically

03:57and shine a light on things that foreigners might not be able to have access to otherwise.

04:03Completely fascinating. Very interesting indeed.

04:04Thank you so much for your time, Lisa Cosmos Hanson,

04:07CEO of Video Game Consultants, Nico Partners.

04:10Thank you so much for your time, Lisa Cosmos.

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