China Gaming News Round-up: Black Myth: Wukong, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ring Fit Adventure and Tencent's investment in Voodoo
This is the pilot issue of the China Gaming News Round-up.
Hi y’all,
Josh here. This is the pilot issue of the China Gaming News Round-up. This week my colleagues and I wrote Black Myth: Wukong, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ring Fit Adventure and Tencent's investment in Voodoo. I have a lot of thoughts about them. Let’s get cracking.
🐒 Black Myth: Wukong
Mama, here goes that man! I love Wukong and Game Science did a bang up job showcasing the demo of their upcoming game Black Myth: Wukong. It, uh, looks 🔥. Pure and simple. And it would be an understatement to say that it has set the gaming community ablaze.
In this story I listed a few other great-looking game demos coming out of China in recent years: Lost Soul Aside, Bright Memory: Infinite and SYN. Here are a few other I didn’t mention: Gujian 3 (already out) and The Wind Road (already out). Also I’d be remiss not to include all the other China Hero Project games such as Boundary and F.I.S.T.
But Black Myth: Wukong(BMW) may have just outdone them all. My heart was throbbing with excitement when I saw the demo.
BMW likely has taken a lot of inspiration from Sekiro, be it the environment, the traversal system and the character design. (Most notably, the final white wolf boss of the demo resembles the Guardian Ape.) I’ll do a deep dive in a future post into the current state of the development game. But here I want to point out two things to help us anchor our expectation.
First, this game is at least two years out. This demo is more intended as a recruitment ad for Game Science than anything else. The studio now has about 30 people and is looking to bring in 19 more. In an interview it had with a Chinese gaming KOL, Game Science said that they have nailed down almost all the fundamentals of the game but a huge chunk of it is still very much a work-in-progress.
Second, while it’s still unclear if BMW is a Sekirolike/Soulslike game for hardcore fans or if it’s an action adventure for all and sundry, it’s important to point out that Sekirolike/Soulslike games are not something any old john-come-lately can just replicate. We’ve seen no shortage of Chinese game devs trying to make their Soulslike games including Bloody Spell and Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption, both of which were fun but not certainly not blazing success. Well, the long and short of it is: the combat is the be-all and end-all for games of this genre.
BMW is the spiritual successor of a Tencent 2.5D action game called Asura as Game Science is founded by a few former core members of Asura (Game Science founders hinted that BMW was created to make up for what they didn’t accomplish in Asura). As such, an action game is definitely not outside of Game Science’ wheelhouse. But provided that Game Science’ last two games were an card game and RTS game, I’ll have to see it to believe it.
But all things considered, BMW may have provided the best (and accurate) depiction of Wukong in pop culture EVER and some more.
Be it his gait, his get-up or his facial expression, this portrayal of Wukong is on 🔥. It is everything I wish for. It reminds me of how Marvel’s Spider-Man in which the portrayal of Peter Parker simply outdoes all other versions of Parker in pop culture outside of comics. This attests to the power of video games these days. With all the tools at developers’ disposal, games can do a more masterly job of imagining a fantasy character than could almost all other forms of entertainment.
I’m also thoroughly impressed by the music and sounds of the demo. How Game Science manages to license and modernize the song from the original TV show adds more pizzazz to the experience than could any other new piece of music. Again, it reminds of Marvel’s Spider-Man which features the symphonic version of the original Spider-Man theme.
🛩 Microsoft Flight Simulator
I think I got too excited and wound up getting it on Steam. In retrospect, subscribing to Xbox Game Pass would be a wiser move. (Xbox Game Pass really may be the best game subscription service out there.)
Anyway, Flight Simulator is not available in China, what a big surprise 😏. Really great spot from Xinmei.
Although hardcore Chinese gamers today are mostly plugged in with the rest of the gaming world, scenarios like this remind us of just how they really only get to enjoy Western games at the sufferance of authority. It doesn’t take a genius to put together how a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator can be construed by regulators or Microsoft as being replete with trigger points for undesirable debates apropos of geopolitics and other thorny issues.
As such, I’m willing to wager that this game will be banned from live-streaming platforms and even screenshots of the game may be banned from major social media platforms. All things considered though, this game will likely become a underground hit in China. Hardcore Chinese gamers are too tech-savvy and will stop at nothing to get their fix of travelling across the globe — well, we’ve already known that.
Flight Simulator is lit. But some of the 3D models in certain cities are lacking. At moments, I feel snubbed as a resident in Hong Kong. Other times, I have unbounded admiration for whoever put together this game.
🏃♂️ Ring Fit Adventure
It's all happened so fast. Just last week, Ring Fit Adventure received its approval from the government. This week you could place pre-orders for Ring Fit Adventure on Chinese ecommerce platforms.
Then the ineluctable happened. Online retail platforms suspended pre-orders.
I’m intensely curious about the inventory situation with Ring Fit Adventure. It wasn’t that long ago Ring Fit Adventure was sold out everywhere. Now the Yangtze floodgate is open and we’ll see how that goes. When all is said and done, I’d love to see the stat sheet of Ring Fit Adventure’s sales in China.
This is a fascinating development because this marks the first Nintendo sports/exercising game hitting the shelves in China. Before the Tencent-Nintendo tie-up, Nintendo devices were distributed by a joint venture called iQue (which is now a fully-owned subsidiary) in China. While systems like the iQue Player, the NDS and the 3DS were eventually introduced to China — albeit years after their respective global releases, Wii (iQue) was cancelled altogether because it simply could not receive government approval. In other words, what Ring Fit Adventure may bring is a whole new understanding of what Nintendo does among Chinese gamers, which may lead to a whole new level of success for the Japanese giant in the Middle Kingdom.
Additionally, what I didn’t mention in this article was the number of people who somehow plan on reselling the game as they already own the game and only want the Ring-Con controller and leg strap. It escapes me as to how that may work because there will likely be far too many games and far too few controllers on the market.
For the uninitiated, placing pre-orders for goods in China through ecommerce platforms have become ridiculously easy these days. You put down a deposit online and if all goes well, you will be able to secure a unit comes shipping day. And because deposits are so common these days with highly advanced payment platforms like Alipay and WeChat Pay, it really feels like minimal efforts.
But well the downside is… you are racing against a billion people just to even pre-order things.
🧙♂️ Tencent invests in Voodoo
I’ve been hearing that Voodoo is going to open an office in China (which is likely to be Shanghai) since this spring. And rumors were already flying that Tencent was in talks with Voodoo as regards a potential investment. So this week’s news about Tencent’s buying a minority stake in the company is not surprising. But what is surprising is that Tencent’s investment gives Voodoo an enterprise value of US$1.4 billion, making it the first unicorn in the hyper-casual gaming segment.
But perhaps what is even more interesting here is the WeChat mini games integration and the ByteDance angle. Voodoo’s hyper-casual games are perfect fits for WeChat mini games center. Masha has written about how casual games have taken China by storm in recent years.
When I heard of this news, the first thing came to mind was actually ByteDance which has been meeting quite a bit of success with casual games. ByteDance went hard after casual games back in 2019 with titles like Music Jumping Ball. The Chinese version of TikTok — Douyin — also has its own mini game center, which is how ByteDance managed to make Music Jumping Ball and others hits.
Raking in tons of profit with games like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile, Tencent arguably did not go after casual games as hard as did ByteDance. But now a close partnership with Voodoo will likely measurably bolster Tencent’s status in the hyper-casual game space.