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- [00:00]
A
Games exist in this like magical limited space because like the Chinese government is like too scared to shut down Steam to piss off all the gamers.
- [00:09]
B
The developers from Black Myth Wukong developed arguably one of the most technologically impressive games ever. And they did it very fast, like two and a half to three and a half years. Gaming is more likely to become the spearhead of soft power from China, much more than we could ever hope to.
- [00:26]
A
See from movies gaming in China in 2025, 2026 and beyond. We have today as our illustrious guest, Daniel Camilo, a Portuguese national who has spent the past decade plus in China working in the games industry. We are going to talk about the most exciting titles, different trends in game publishing and development in the PRC and games you might want to check out to get a sense of what's, what's being made in China and where all of this, you know, where, where all this ends could end up going for the Chinese game development industry. Daniel, welcome to ChinaTalk.
- [01:12]
B
Hi. Hi. Very happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jordan.
- [01:17]
A
So one of the, aside from games being fun, one of the things that has been really interesting for me to watch over the years is the, is game development as almost a like industrial upgrading story along the lines of like lots of other industries in China where the sort of, the industry itself started doing the kind of most straightforwardly commercializable, least technically difficult, maybe least capital intensive versions of game development. So we began with sort of like very simple 2D PC games and then moved on to mobile games which were like free to play and. But now we're entering into a world where Chinese developers are taking big swings and having big hits, doing the sort of triple A titles with you know, eight plus figures of development costs with outcomes in, in sort of like game quality that are rivaling the biggest and most renowned studios in the world. So Daniel, is that, is that a reasonable generalization of what we've seen over the past decade? You've been in this game?
- [02:36]
B
Yeah, the big stereotype. And it's not far from the truth. Of course, China was mostly about mobile. It still is, of course, but mobile was really the main focus and the main pie of the market. And in the last, I think really if we want to highlight one title, I guess that changed everything. Perhaps many people will say black me through Kong, but I would go before that. I would say Genshin Impact is really the game that really actually changed expectations that people have from Chinese gaming being a free to play game that really felt more like a AAA game. And available across different platforms. And it really showed the ambition and the ability really from Chinese developers to do something that really had not been seen from Chinese developers but also had not been seen in general on mobile from any developers really at that scale.
- [03:32]
A
So why don't you give folks a little 101 on what, you know, who made Genshin Impact? What was it, how big a hit it was?
- [03:39]
B
Yeah, I mean Genshin Impact is made by Mihoyo, I believe it released already in 2020 if I'm not mistaken. It's a free to play game. It's an open world, we could say story driven rpg, very anime inspired aesthetically speaking. Available on mobile at first, I believe on PC as well and on consoles. Now more recently I think it's on all consoles except for the Switch. The Xbox was the last platform where it was released and it became a huge success. It really elevated not only Mihoyo, the company into becoming one of the most famous developers and publishers really in the world in the gaming industry. And it elevated the whole industry, the whole Chinese gaming industry. The game has tens of millions of registered players across all platforms and all over the world.
- [04:40]
A
Billion dollars were spent on players. Spent $10 billion on it in 2025.
- [04:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, I mean it's a life service game which is the thing, the Dragon that all the big companies, all the game companies are trying to pursue, trying to have a successful life service game. Right. That keeps giving that constant revenue. And really Genshin Impact is exactly that. It's the template and it has been the template. We can talk more about that. But it has been a template in many ways for other Chinese developers in particular and for themselves as well, elevated the whole expectations and ambition from Chinese developers and what people around the world would expect from Chinese developers. Although I would say that Genshin Impact in particular and many other games of the genre from China, I think a lot of gamers still around the world still don't really realize that these are Chinese games just because of how they look, because they have that anime, Japanese art direction and visuals. So for the more casual user, the fact that the games are Chinese still doesn't really get into the, it's, it's really not perceived as being, being a Chinese game. And I, I, I noticed that just from anecdotally, just from talking to people and whatever. It's not like Black Me Through Kong, which is very distinctively a Chinese game.
- [06:08]
A
Well, let's, let's, let's compare that then. Because Genshin Impact, it was this Fascinating artifact of one of the very few mega hits which game developers around the world are all chasing, where you can kind of make multiple billions of dollars a year. There's not a ton of risk because you're just doing updates like you've already. You already have the kind of golden goose, but kind of beyond beyond. But like, it wasn't. It's not like blaring, hey, we're from China. Like, look at us. Like, this is like a national pride thing though. They've had like, they've had some expansions which have been more like kind of like Song Dynasty inspired or whatever. But if you look at it, I think the vast majority of players, like don't even know or just assumed it was from it from a Japanese developer. Now the two biggest hits, the two biggest triple A hits of the past two years, Black Myth, Wukong and Wu Chang Fallen Feathers. They are very much both in their marketing, their esthetic, their story are kind of like Chinese culture loud and proud, which I thought was both an interesting kind of like domestic marketing ploy as well as a, I don't know, sign of cultural confidence. Like there used to be this fear, I think, among kind of a handful of Asian develop Asian developers that like, unless we had like wizards and castles and sort of like western coded esthetics, it would be hard to make something that would appeal to the rest of the world. So I'm curious, Daniel, for your sense of like, the calculus of what? Of whether or not, like how that sort of mindset faded away among these developers. Is this just a reflection of the Chinese market kind of developing enough that they weren't, you know, all that concerned that, you know, Americans or Europeans would end up buying it or not? Like, what, what, what do you think gives here that allowed these games to end up being made and made so successfully?
- [08:11]
B
Let's start with Black Me through Kong, really, because it's like, you know, it's the pinnacle so far. I think that's obviously a sort of a passion project from the developers, from the team. So they had that vision and they produced it, they realized it in a very uncompromised way, thankfully. And I think what they learned very quickly and what gamers and developers and everyone learned very quickly from the very first trailers is that gaming truly is universal. And once gamers saw the first trailers and it looked amazing, so amazing that a lot of people were skeptical about how truth that was, me included. To be honest, at the beginning, I really thought it was very much just vertical slices, very scripted and whatever but turns out, know I finished the game, I loved it. It's really that. But people quickly found out that gamers were interested in the game regardless of the aesthetics or the themes or whatever. I don't think that's very surprising because we already had the precedent for that, in particular for from Japan, JRPGs and whatever. Very intrinsically Japanese games. We had that since really, since the 80s. And those games already proven from the last few decades that audiences in the west are very open to that. And obviously we could argue that whatever, that Japan has many other tools that enable Western audiences to be familiar with their themes through anime and through movies and through other things, other elements of pop culture from Japan. But still, the point is the games being intrinsically Chinese, like Black M Kong or Wuhan. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if I think if the games are good enough. And. And gamers. Gamers know game, let's say, and. And if a game is good, that's really what it matters. And it's very universal in that regard. And we saw that very clearly with sales. Black mythical consoles, at least, and this is very conservative estimates, but at least 7 million copies outside of China. It sold millions in. In the US In North America and in Europe. So I think that made it very clear that there is no. There's no barriers. You know, like, the games just need to be good. That's. That's pretty much it. So the fact that it's based on the, you know, the Monkey King or whatever you. Yes, of course, of course. Americans or Europeans or South Americans or African gamers or whatever, they might not be very familiar with that, with those stories, but it doesn't really matter as long as the game is good. It's. Yeah, it can reach. That's. That's what I think.
- [11:03]
A
And I think the other kind of big takeaway is that. So Black Myth made about $2 billion, 75% of its sales were domestic. And then I think the US was like 10%. So, you know, regardless, it's like. It's like not even relevant anymore. I'm curious, Daniel, because one of the sort of challenges for more technologically intensive games in China in the 90s, 2000s, and even early half of the 2010s was just hardware where, like, people had phones, but they didn't necessarily have gaming PCs or consoles to play at home. So you would either like, go to a gaming cafe or just like, opt for something like a Dota or League of Legends that you could play on a, you know, $500 computer at home. How has the sort of like, you know, household gaming, upgrading of what people can run in their homes changed, changed the market dynamics?
- [12:05]
B
Yeah, China, like in the 90s, there were consoles, but they were mostly like kind of like those bootleg consoles or whatever. And there were some imports as well that reached the market, but it was very niche PC in the very early 2000s, but really then with smartphones starting 2007 or so, really created the boom of mobile game in China, which would become and remains the biggest slice of the market in China and the world. Really. But more recently, yes, I mean, we have, we have a huge, we have a huge middle class in China, but we have hundreds of thousands, hundreds of millions, I'm sorry, of people in China in the middle class that can afford easily, I should say can easily afford to have good desktop PCs, laptops or whatever in their homes, not even to mention gaming consoles. So yeah, nowadays really, it became very democratized, I would say the options that people have to play games before people would play on mobile because they had their phones already. It was a very utilitarian consequence of having their phones that they would play on mobile. But now in the last, I would say the last 10 years in particular, and even more so in the last five to six years, this growing middle class really has risen and has options. They very much choose to consume these products just like in most other developed and matured markets around the world. And obviously that changed a lot. It changed, changed strategies for developers in China for what they think they can make and what kind of target audience they have for their games.
- [13:49]
A
Let's stay on the developers for a second. So one of the big themes of game development over the past five years is costs lowering, where kind of like Unity and other tools have been making it less difficult to pull off kind of the most ambitious style of these AAA games. I'm curious kind of to what, to what extent you think that those trends are also impacting the calculus of Chinese game makers?
- [14:20]
B
Yeah, I mean, well, I mean Unity and, and even the most obvious, of course, Unreal engine like Black Mi, Thrukong and Wuchang were made with Unreal. So none of. As far as I know, there's not a single major developer in China who is building their own game engine as was traditional in the 90s from developers from around the world and before that in the 2000s. So really it's very much streamlined. We have, we have, I mean, we have a very recent example, Escape from Dukov, the game from. Published by Bilibili, which I, if I'm not mistaken. It's made in Unity. I, I'm pretty sure, But I'm like 90% sure of that. And it sold already like 4 million copies. I mean, the last update I think they gave publicly was like 3 million, but that was already in November, so I, I suppose now it's maybe even more than 4 million, I'm not sure. And this was a game made. My point is this was a game made allegedly by three or five people or something like that, like a very tiny team, even though they're published by Bilibili, which obviously it's a huge corporate entity, but still, the point is they developed the game pretty fast and with not that many resources. And we could also talk about game science. I mean, the developers from Black Myth, Wukong, again, they developed arguably one of the most technologically impressive games ever. Really? And they did it very fast. Like the active development time from the game is from my understanding, anywhere between two and a half to three and a half years. So it was not a long development cycle like we see from many other developers around the world, especially for a game of that scale, which is a huge game, by the way. Anyone who actually finished the game will know that it's a very big game. And they did that with Unreal. So and again, relatively speaking, it's a small team. I mean we had all this conversation now, all this discourse online this year about Clair Obscure from the French developers Sandfall, the whole industry celebrating how they developed this huge, I mean, this very celebrated game. Game, acclaimed game with a small budget and again using a real and everything. But that's exactly what the team from Black Mythical Kong did like three years before. And even though that was acknowledged, but obviously it was not celebrated as much as, as Claire Obscure was and Black.
- [16:53]
A
Myth was real time, not this like weird turn.
- [16:57]
B
Yeah, I mean, I would say yeah, Black Myth looks infinitely better just from a technical perspective perspective. I don't mean artistically, but just from a technical perspective. It's, it's much more ambitious than, than Clar Obscure. Yeah, for, for sure. And, and, but again, it was made kind of, it's kind of the same template. It was made by 2030 core people, at least in the beginning, just like Sandfall from, from cl. So I think there's a lot of parallels there and I, I, I do think it should have been more celebrated and, and, and more recognized, let's say more acknowledged because it does show, I think, what we can expect from developers going forward in the future from China. And again, like Wuxong as Well, it's a huge game again, it's a game I finished. It's actually my game of the year personally and I love that game. It surprised me a lot. It's a very big game and again it was developed in like two maybe really active development time around two years, which to me it's incredible. It's mind blowing considering what's in the game. Even though it launched with a lot of optimization issues and whatever got tons of negative reviews on Steam because of that and all that. But they recovered. But still, we're still talking very early on in the history of AAA development in China. So this really shows what we can, if we extrapolate this kind of competency for from developers in China, what we can expect in the very near future and presently even already.
- [18:31]
A
Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about Wu Chang Fallen Feathers. I put five hours into it as a very diligent prep for this are this interview. I mean, I guess the one on one is, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a Souls like set in like we've got like Chu Dynasty influence. We got some Ming Dynasty stuff going on. I would say it's like more playful than something out of Fromsoft. How else, how else would you characterize the game? What, what, what was so impressive to you about it?
- [19:07]
B
I. To me it's, yeah, it's definitely a Souls game and that's, that's really the. Fundamentally I'm not, I'm not a Souls fan to be honest. Besides Elden Ring, I don't really like many other Souls like games. But this one to me, if people keep playing the game, I mean Wushang, they will discover that it's a very, very expensive game. Kind of like, kind of like Black Myth in a way where you have this incredibly huge levels, multi layered levels. The level design in that game is really some of the best I've ever seen ever as a gamer. And I've been playing since the NES, since I was two years old and, and I'm almost 40 by the way. But anyway, but really that game blew me away the more I played it. And it gave me that sense of adventure and exploration like I had in Elden Ring or like in games like Zelda Breath of the Wild, even though it has absolutely nothing to do in terms of gameplay, but it gave me that sense of discovery and exploration. It's one of those games where when I was not playing it, I was thinking about playing it, which is for me personally it's Extremely rare nowadays for that to happen. I wish it had more recognition because I unfortunately had a lot of issues. There was a lot of scandals and we can talk about that or not, but there was a lot of controversy surrounding the game post launch. And that kind of. I think it kind of really hurts how people view the game. And even the studio, I think they kind of went very silent after that and. Yeah.
- [20:50]
A
What, what were the scandals?
- [20:53]
B
Well, there was, there was, I mean it was kind of big. There was like they, they patched the game soon after launch. I mean I think maybe about a month or so after launch where they changed a lot of the outcome. So before the patch we. Some of the bosses were like this famous semi historical figures from, from Chinese ancient history. Some of the characters, some of the bosses that we could kill were famous and popular characters in Chinese popular culture. And apparently a lot of Chinese gamers, the more, let's say the more hardcore nationalist kind. I don't want to generalize too much, but apparently they complained a lot. There was a huge review bombing on the game on Steam. I mean from the Chinese side, the developers reacted to that very quickly. They patched the game, they changed so that some of those characters could not be killed anymore. Which actually actively changed the story of the game, the actual narrative. It made the story kind of nonsensical. So that was something that they did that just kind of like they preemptively self censored the game through a patch. Which was kind of weird because there were no, as far as we know, I mean we as in people observing the situation. There was no real explicit demands from the government or from authorities to regulate the game in any way. And there was a lot of articles this spilled over to gaming media internationally. I mean English speaking gaming media as well. There's a lot of articles about that on IGN and whatever. All the, all the major, all the major outlets. And that really I think it tainted a lot it take because you know, people already have a certain view of China, I mean people outside of China, that everything in China is censored and whatever and there's no freedom and this and that. So this, this situation I think tainted a lot the perception that people have about Chinese games, at least for those who were attentive to that, which is a minority. But you know, what people could expect from Chinese games. So now maybe in the future when there's a AAA game coming out and something else comes up, some hot topic or whatever, people perhaps will more easily expect the game to be censored or Something like that. And they will be more apprehensive about it. So I think it was an unfortunate thing to happen because the game is phenomenal.
- [23:23]
A
Well, I mean, I think it's sort of illustrative of a few themes like black myth. Wukong, it was entirely mythological, like you know, you were fighting and dragons and whatnot. Wuchang, fallen feathers. It does have this like fall of the Ming dynasty arc. And there are historical figures. Zhao Yun, one of the Shu generals in the Three Kingdoms you could no longer kill. I mean it's. You'd think this sort of stuff, it's like the game developers aren't stupid, right? Like they are not making thrillers about contemporary politics. They understand that a large, you know, they understand the pressures that are on them, just like pressures on kind of anyone making movies or TV shows. They also understand that their core audience does have this like very subset of like super nationalist dudes who are very tuned into this sort of thing. But it is, and you know, who knows if it was if they got a call from the government or if they were just kind of worried about like chatter online starting. But I think it is illustrative and important that something even as seemingly anodyne as like a like quasi fantastical story about, you know, people who are like infected with like a bird disease can spin out into something where you like have to radically change the plot of your game. And then you get all this international coverage and even domestic blowback of people being like, what are we even doing here? So, you know, I do think this is the sort of thing that will kind of continue to constrain storytelling in China for a long time to come. If even this is something that can get you in trouble. But you know what's, what's interesting about video games, right, is this is sort of like something that you alluded to at the very beginning, Daniel, where like a lot of players aren't there for the stories, they're there for the button pressing and the game mechanics and you know, how the different pieces put together, itemization, what have you. So like, you know, one of the other kind of long standing themes of ChinaTalk is like the challenges of Chinese television and movies to make a global impact. But even regardless of the sort of storytelling and censorship challenges, they're almost less relevant, I would argue, in a video game context than they would be when you're making TVs and movies where like the story is kind of really like the entire point of the cultural product.
- [26:12]
B
Yeah, no, of course. And that goes, that goes into I mean a lot of people talk about it now and it's, it's a popular topic but not to brag or whatever, but it's something I've been saying for years that that's why gaming is more likely to become the spearhead of, of this kind of like soft power, cultural soft power from China Much more than we could ever hope to see from, from movies or from music from China. Because just creatively speaking hands are much more tight in, in, in, in to create movies that are of interest international and, and not to mention even music. I mean we, if we, you know, like even more so. Now I don't, I don't want to get too political, although I have no issues with it. But we, up until recently we still had a good output of like Hong Kong movies which touched into you know, political hardcore dense topics and themes. And now of course since the snl, the National Security Law went into action in Hong Kong now arguably Hong Kong cinema is dead. I mean as far as, as far as making edgy movies like they used to now everything has to be very tamed. Everything has to be very, you know, like Beijing needs to approve basically. Yeah, so, so yeah, we, I don't think there's any chance for, for movies to, to compete with gaming gaming in that regard. Like you say, because of the gameplay and the interactive aspect of it. It can, it can, well it can do a lot more let's say it can appeal to and, and, and be creatively, even creatively be, be much more expensive than, than any other art form right now coming out of China in particular to, to the rest of the world. Although, although there are some interesting games still. I, I forget the name but there's. For example there's, there was a popular. I really forget the name. There was a popular survival horror game on PC. Chinese one that was kind of had a moment this year where the main.
- [28:07]
A
Character Asma Goria or something.
- [28:09]
B
No, no, that's not it. It's a third person kind of like Resident Evil. But the point is like it's very gory game. The main character is a girl, a woman, very sexualized, her design and you can play with her in bikini and stuff like that. So, so it's a very kind of lewd kind of low brown kind of game. Not judging by the way, whatever, but I'm just saying. And, and you have other games like Showa Story. I think that's the game. It's also a Chinese game show, a story which is about, about a post apocalyptic alternative future or Something where America has been taken over by Japan and it's a very, very gory, ultra violent game. And it's Chinese. I think it's Showa shoa something if you search that. Again, I'm terrible with names, I apologize, but that's a Chinese game that's being developed and it's not launched yet. And again, it kind of challenges, I think, what we would expect to see from a Chinese developer just in terms of themes, because I do think it's something that if it was to be made into a movie or just released in China, not internationally, it would most, almost, most definitely be heavily censored and probably not even released in China.
- [29:23]
A
Let's talk about this. The sort of like weird liminal space that Steam exists in in China that allows things that like, would not pass censorship end up reaching, reaching a China, a Chinese audience. So where is Steam today?
- [29:42]
B
Yeah, I mean we have. Yeah, this is what I talk the most about with people and what I write the most. We have an official Chinese Steam in China which basically very few people use. It's kind of irrelevant. It's of no consequence. As far as I understand. There is like most Chinese gamers use the international Steam and that's how they acquire. They get access to pretty much any game and that's how most developers and publishers from around the world release their games and they find Chinese audience for their games. And Steam has become kind of, I mean, China has kind of become, if not the most important, arguably at least one of the most important markets for PC gaming in the world, in particular in the last year, year and a half. And we have a lot of, a lot of examples, specific examples for that. But this goes into, this is related also to the culture of imports and the gray markets of games in China. This is related to the console market in China where even though there are right now there are officially licensed consoles, PlayStation 5, it's licensed for distribution in China. There is a Chinese model, and there was until recently, or there still is the Switch, the Switch one from Tencente and even the Xbox as well had before. I'm not sure of their current status in China. But still, even though there are all those legal models still most consumers, they will buy their games either digitally or physically, if digitally, through stores from other regions, in particular from Hong Kong or physically. It's very easy to acquire imported games, games on Taobao and other E commerce platforms in China, where basically any kind of game is available, even games that are not licensed for distribution in China. And this is so this is kind of like for. If you're an informed gamer and there are a lot in China, of course you will know this and you will buy those games. So it doesn't matter if a game is available or not in China officially, people can still find them. And this goes back to Steam and that's why we have games like, I don't know, like Cyberpunk 2077, which sold millions of copies in China through Steam, even though the game is not officially launched in China. And we can really talk about any game released on PC that sold a lot, like Stellar Blade, which has had a huge launch in China on PC. China became the biggest market for, in the world for Stellar Blade when it launched on PC this year, I believe in July, if I'm not mistaken. And it keeps growing. And finally, and I say finally because up until not too long ago, most developers around the world really did not understand this and they did not realize that they could find an audience in China even without formally launching the games in China. And now they do realize this because it has just become undeniable. We have the data and we have many success cases. So now you see many developers internationally actively marketing their games in China, even though not officially, but through social media platforms in China. They are doing that either directly or through agencies, local agencies or international agencies that then through proxies market their games in China. So, yeah, so that's, that's happening. Yeah.
- [33:27]
A
I would just want to come back to something earlier. Maybe I'll put this up. Is like the sort of like games as a universal language thing. I mean, maybe folks who haven't followed this industry as closely aren't aware. But like most developers at this point are not US based. I mean, we're a long time from that. Like you have, you know, French, Canada, Eastern Europe. Most of the time people are making games for a global audience, not just, not just really their home country. So even though China does have an enormous protected market, like all of those gamers grew up on these international titles and the sort of like, you know, gaming language, gaming tropes, the kind of skills that the players have developed and the expectations that they have developed is really a global and a universal one, which is not necessarily the same if you're talking about, you know, music or movies, where by and large most people kind of like either grew up on their home country stuff or on like American tv, TV or movies. So like the sort of diet, the gaming diet that most people have consumed basically from when they started gaming, is a global one, not A national one, which is the reason why you can have these kind of like enormous mega global hits. And that's the thing that you know, developers all around the world have been chasing for the past few decades. Really?
- [35:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I talk to them about China, people don't really realize how familiar Chinese gamers are, generally speaking with IPs from, from abroad for from from all around the world and with genres, game genres that people would assume that are would not be popular in China, but also are. For example, when I talk to developers sometimes they, they are very concerned about having, you know, the go to market strategy to launch their games in Asia. As they say, in Asia. And what they mean by that, they mean Japan, South Korea and China mostly, sometimes Southeast Asia, but the three key countries, South Korea, Japan and China. And I always, it's kind of exhausting, but I always try to explain that China really lives in its own planet. It's very different from Japan and Korea for many, many reasons. But for example, very specifically FPS games, first person shooters are very popular in China. Games like pubg, Counter Strike before were immensely popular in China. Crossfire, which was an IP that was primarily popular in China as well. So there's this big culture of FPS games in China that for example doesn't really exist in Japan where Japan is very much anti shooters. I mean traditionally speaking of course. But like you didn't have like games like Call of Duty or Halo or Doom or whatever being very popular in Japan or Counter Strike being very popular in Japan traditionally, but in China, yes. So, so this is important to, to, to understand. So and this explains why some games like again like PUBG still remains and, and it's still one of the most popular games in China, which technically it's a third person shooter, but it's, it's, it's a, you know, the roots are in that culture of FPS games, online shooters. I could talk a lot about sports games as well. I mean basketball games are very popular in China and sports games in general. Beat em ups like fighting games like King of Fighters. That's an IP that's gigantic. I mean everybody knows King of Fighters in China. Even if people didn't play it, they recognize just the name. I mean the Chinese game of the, the, of the game and some of the characters, which again is something, for example in the US King of Fighters is not that popular. If you talk about beat them ups, it's more, I don't know, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, a few, a few other games like that. But King of Fighters is very much. It's very, very popular in China just as it is in some markets in Europe. In particular, in Southern Europe, where I'm from. King of Fighters is also huge in the 90s. And just as it is very popular in, in Latin America as well, it's huge there in general. Again, so, so you do, so you do have these, these particularities about, about, about the Chinese market and about Chinese gamers. Gonna go back to the example I gave from, from before about the Japanese games and developers, because Japanese developers even, even nowadays, which I find very surprising sometimes you read interviews from Japanese developers and they're very concerned if audiences in the west will understand their games or not. And I always find that very strange because they already have decades of data and knowing that, yes, people will buy your Final Fantasy, people will play your Dragon Quest or whatever weird game you may have. I mean, that's why people love Japanese games because they are the, their own thing. And, and in China in particular, especially in the last few years and this whole, this whole new focus on AAA games and PC and console games from, from Chinese developers, there's a lot of reasons for that. Obviously we can talk about sort of the stagnation of the mobile market in China, which is just hyper, hyper competitive. We can talk about the regulations as well, which kind of stifled, I would say, development in a way, especially like four, five, five before COVID like five, six years ago and really pushed a lot of developers and publishers in China to look elsewhere and to start developing. And this explains why we have Tencente and it is acquiring more and more studios internationally and investing in more studios internationally and all that stuff.
- [39:33]
A
Maybe let's close on like looking forward to 2026. Are there trends you're excited to follow, titles you're particularly interested in seeing how they end up playing out.
- [39:45]
B
I think right now that the big, the one big game that I think will be the next big hit from China in terms of AAA gaming, it's Phantom Blade 0 for, for the PS5. And I believe it's also planned for PC. And the developers already said that it might come to other platforms after there's like an exclusivity, temporary exclusivity period. Say Phantom Blade. I think there's a lot of parallels with Black Myth Wukong in terms of hype. Just in terms of hype from gamers in general, from core gamers. So that will be, I predict, and I'm fairly confident in predicting that. I think that will be the dex big hit in terms of premium games now of course, in terms of another trend, I think, and it's something I've been also alerting now for a while. We have this big wave of free to play games, cross platform, cross play games again in the vein of Genshin Impact games like Neverness to Everness, the Zen0, Zenless, whatever. I always forget that name. Games that are still announced, like Ananta and a few others. And all these games, they all have something in common which I wrote about recently, which is they all shared kind of the same aesthetic, kind of the same. I'm not saying they're exactly the same, but very similar art direction, this anime style art direction. And I do think, and we're already seeing that there's a very big risk of stagnation and the audience for these games kind of be spread thin. So I think we will see a lot of those games, not a lot, but some of them in the next year, probably flopping, not being able to really retain a sustainable audience enough. And we have some of these games coming from the Same companies from NetEase, again from Hoyoverse, and they're already seeing that with games like Hogstar Rail and a few others which kind of are cannibalizing and eating away from the same audience from Genshin Impact. And it's just not sustainable. And we have many, many dozens of games in this same vein being developed. And that will come out presumably during 2026. And I do think that little bubble in that genre will kind of implode very, very soon. And then in the end some major ones will remain very successful. But it will force developers to diversify in terms of genres. I mean specifically in these free to play, free to play context. It will force developers to diversify their genres and how they see games and how they plan even the monetization and everything for their games. So I think it will be a good opportunity really. We'll see new things coming out and hopefully more creative outputs. And it will for gamers I think it will be cool. It will not be good for some of the companies financially, but I think for gamers ultimately it will be a very good thing.
- [42:53]
A
Let's talk maybe let's close on perhaps the most curious or unique hit to come out of China over the past year, Karma. The Dark World. The Logline is a first person cinematic psychological thriller set in a dystopian world where the Leviathan Corporation is omnipresent. The year is 1984. The place east Germany and things are not what they seem. This was something Remarkable, wasn't it, Daniel?
- [43:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I almost forgot about it. Yeah, that's exactly. That's one of those games. Nobody would guess that's a Chinese game. But then, but then when you play it, and full disclosure, I didn't finish it yet, unfortunately, I still need to finish it. But I played a lot like, I guess like 80% or something. When you actually play it and be. Having worked in Chinese companies here in China for more than 10 years, I do recognize a lot of the office workplace anxiety and quote unquote oppression that you feel as an office worker here in China. It's very well translated into the game and I'm not going to spoil exactly how, but you can almost feel like the people who made that game, they most definitely were annoyed that they want to say something, that they want to complain, let's say about this whole office culture work in China. And I think it's a remarkable piece of work, really. It's very artistic in many ways. And again, I wish more people would play that game because obviously, even if you're someone not from China, from somewhere else, you will obviously find the same parallels in many ways. And, and it's, it's a very interesting game. Yeah. And again, nobody would expect that from, I think from China. Yeah.
- [44:47]
A
The Leviathan Corporation rules with an iron fist, controlling its citizens through mass surveillance, social class rules, mind altering drugs, and the promise that the gates to Utopia will, will open to those who serve. I mean it's remarkable. It's also fully voiced in Chinese as well, which is pretty cool if you guys are looking for an excuse to practice your, you know, your reading and listening. Yeah, this is, this is wild. This is again coming to, coming back to Steam. One of the beauties of Steam, I don't think this game would be getting a license, going through some sort of government body by any means. But games exist in this like magical limited space because like the Chinese government is like too scared to shut down Steam to piss off all the gamers. So we still have this like very cool thing which you don't need a VPN to get access to, that allows you access to, you know, that allows a domestic Chinese market accessed at scale to kind of weird and wonderful culture.
- [45:53]
B
Yeah. And can I add just one little thing? This game, karma, it's also, it's hilarious. That's one of the things I didn't expect. I mean the game has a sense of humor that I never seen before in the Chinese game. And I think most people again would not expect from China in general, but it is. I was actually laughing out loud at some of the, the portions of the game and the writing in the game. I would love to know the people who made this game because it's, it's, it's really. It's hilarious. It's, it's, it's magnificently written game and. Yeah, that's all I wanted to say.
- [46:27]
A
All right, well, we'll try to get them on the podcast. Maybe we'll have you co host Daniel.
- [46:33]
B
That'll be great.
- [46:33]
A
This was a pleasure. Thank you so much for being a part of ChinaTalk. Check out Daniel on Substack. He writes a newsletter called Gaming in China. And we'll do this again soon.
- [46:48]
B
Yeah, please. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I love this. Yeah, I could talk for hours about all this stuff. Thank you.
- [46:56]
C
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