As China’s property slump drags on into its fourth year and trade wars threaten its export markets, the country has a sharp appetite for an economic success story these days.
Last week brought a dramatic one with the record-breaking launch of Black Myth: Wukong, a video game that sold 10 million copies in its first three days and had 37 million people playing it concurrently on a single platform one day this week.
The game is the most successful ever produced in China, which has more than a third of the world’s gaming market. And it is China’s first AAA premium game, with expensive production values to match anything from Japan, France or the United States.
For policymakers in Beijing, however, the game’s success is much more than a milestone in China’s progress along the value chain of the global gaming industry. It is an unparalleled opportunity for the country to showcase elements of its culture beyond gaming and to exercise soft power.
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China’s gaming industry accounts for 37 per cent of the global market and for many people around the world, video games are their first contact with a Chinese cultural product. Much of the time, they will not know the game they are playing is Chinese but with Black Myth: Wukong, nobody can be in any doubt.
The game is based on the 16th century novel Journey to the West, one of the most celebrated and popular works of Chinese literature. Everyone in China knows the story and a 1986 televised adaptation remains a staple of broadcasting schedules.
It tells the story of a monk who travelled from China to India in the seventh century to find and collect some Buddhist scriptures. He is protected by three disciples, chief among them Sun Wukong, known as the Monkey King, who was born from a stone and has supernatural powers.
The game, which uses some of the music from the 1986 television show, features temples and locations in China, most of them in the northern province of Shanxi. Some of the locations have already seen a surge in tourism and Shanxi’s department of culture and tourism is planning themed travel routes, cultural products and events.
Most of China’s official efforts to cultivate soft power internationally have been flops, despite heavy investment in outward-facing, state-controlled media. Confucius institutes, viewed with more alarm than they deserve by Beijing’s most McCarthyite critics, have generally failed to popularise Chinese culture abroad.
China cannot match the global impact of Korea in pop music, film or television and it is a struggle to come up with a list of Chinese stars from the world of entertainment who are known worldwide. But in two areas of popular culture, gaming and science fiction, China has begun to make a major international impact in recent years.
Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem had a huge international following before Netflix adapted it for the screen, using the same showrunners as Game of Thrones. And the Sichuan city of Chengdu last year hosted Worldcon, science fiction’s biggest annual convention.
China is the world leader in e-sports, with an organisation similar to other sports, including regional clubs each with their own stadium and talent leagues . Shanghai will open a 500,000 sq m international e-sports centre next year at a cost of 5.8 billion renminbi (€740 million).
What makes China’s success in these genres more surprising is that there are few communities more independent-minded and resistant to conformity than sci-fi enthusiasts and gamers. And the official culture of control has created difficulties for Chinese practitioners in both fields.
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There was a scandal after last year’s Worldcon over fraudulent voting for the Hugo awards and reports that some authors were excluded from shortlists because they might be politically sensitive in China. And last week’s launch of Black Myth: Wukong was partially overshadowed by a row over guidelines sent out by one of its publishers to influencers who received advance access to the game.
An email sent by a marketing team included a Google document outlining do’s and don’ts for reporting on the game. There was only one do: “enjoy the game” and five don’ts: “Don’t insult other players or peers. Do not use any offensive language/humour. Do not include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishism, or other incitement to negative expression. Do not use trigger words. Please do not discuss the game industry policy, views, news and other related content in China.”
The document was seized on by some western commentators as evidence of the heavy hand of China’s censors but Chinese observers viewed it differently. They saw a familiar kind of semi-official directive sent without any expectation that it will be followed and with no mechanism to enforce it and with the sole purpose of covering someone’s back.