Genshin makes history; Roblox's IPO and China plans; 50m pre-reg for COD Mobile in China; LoL Worlds in Shanghai -- China Gaming News Roundup #7
A look into my new but pathetic live-streaming setup.
Hi team,
Finally, I have almost everything set up.
Yes, my desk is pathetically small. Anyway, in the past 10 months, I’ve been purchasing a truckload of live-streaming/home video gears. But honestly the biggest hindrance in Hong Kong is just space. I used to live with a roommate and I had my desk set up in the living room so I couldn’t go live without inconveniencing my roommate. As such, I had barely streamed except for that time two years ago when I celebrated my birthday by doing a 24+-hour marathon stream of RE2 Remake.
But now that I’ve moved to a one-bedroom. The game has changed, though my desk is still tiny.
It is embarrassing how much I had spent on stuff like a new mic (in addition to my two existing ones), a ton of photography lights, a new capture card, the list goes on. But one important tip for those who want to stream: almost most famous streaming gears, be it an Aputure light or an Elgato capture card, there are some made-in-China alternatives you can get which is 80% as good. You can get them from AliExpress or Taobao.
Anyway, hope to see you guys soon on Twitch.
📜 Genshin makes history
Genshin Impact is having too good a run. Its success has turned me from a sympathizer to a hater. The game is great but part of me is now dredging up forgotten grudges given how it initially, unabashedly, set itself up to look like Breath of the Wild. And when I play it, I can feel the resemblance.
Anyway, people who I’ve spoken to all said that Genshin is the biggest launch of a Chinese game internationally. Numbers don’t lie.
As mentioned in the article, miHoYo had done a heck of a job in advertising and promoting Genshin. And expectedly, it is also being prominently promoted by platforms. A friend working for Google told me that their marketing budget is astronomical.
Now with almost two weeks in, Genshin is still averaging about 70k concurrent viewers on Twitch. I played it and streamed it. My biggest takeaway? This game is very live-streaming-friendly, a characteristic that games these days need to seriously prioritize. How so? For one thing, the visual is easy and pretty to look at. The voice acting is also on point. So as an anime-style open-world game, people can just hop in and out of a stream anytime they want. So as long as there’s enough content to back it up, it has legs to go on a rather long Twitch run.
After speaking to a few people, I figure there are two major complaints: strict level restriction and the still subpar gameplay feel. On the first point, Zog on Twitter said that the level restriction feels a bit too stringent, meaning that you can’t access certain areas or missions if you are not on a certain level, even though you know that you can totally nail those missions.
The second point is broader. Another Twitter friend who will remain anonymous told me that the 3Cs (character, camera and control) are still not as polished as what we would expect from the best PC/console AAAs. He said that “a tiny example (that often happens in Mondstadt)- when you fall from medium height and land with a roll, the camera doesn’t fully recover (too downward-facing).” Those details matter and when the game is being played on mobile, those deficiencies are accentuated.
“I feel the amount of camera manipulation needed is pretty stressful even for very experienced mobile players,” he said.
But overall, I think this piece on Kotaku does a great job explaining where Genshin Impact really shines: its combat system. It may take a while for gamers to get into it but battling monsters with an array of elemental attacks sets the game apart from Breath of the Wild. shakes up the monotony which plagues many such open-world games.
And so far no major backlash or blunder had occurred except… people discovered that it is filtering chat.
Obviously the intuitive solution here would be to build two versions of the game: one for China and the other one for anything but China. But the truth is: if some gamers with a political agenda abused the crap out of the chat and made the chat box extremely politically charged when they were given the choice, cleaning up after the fact may actually incur even a higher risk, or even kill the game for that matter. So yeah, not easy.
Last but not least, this crossover campaign that Genshin is doing with the famed Zhangjiajie National Forest Park has also caught my attention. Long story short, there is one area inside the game that was inspired by Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is like the Yosemite of China. miHoYo can really get on the good side of the government with more of such crossover campaigns and be constantly generating headlines with these projects. In any event, it’s a really cool design/marketing strategy.
🧱 Roblox’s IPO and China plans
Roblox is reportedly seeking an IPO at a potential US$8 billion valuation. So I think now this is as good a time as any to examine Roblox’ business in China. After all, Roblox’ strategy to go after other international markets is what gives the platform such a high valuation.
Called 罗布乐思 in China, Roblox have teamed up with Tencent since 2019 in order to bring Roblox to China. As things stand, Roblox doesn’t really have a strong presence nor a community in the country. But from what Tencent and Roblox put out there, the focus of Roblox in China will primarily lie in education, meaning the way in which the game can be applied in school and such.
So talks about Roblox in China have been incessant in recent months, and Tencent is looking to hire a lot of people to deploy Roblox in the country.
The upside for Roblox can be tremendous considering the success of Minecraft in China. Last November, Minecraft in China boasted having 300 million registered users. But in some ways the numbers fall short in conveying just how vibrant the Minecraft community is in the Middle Kingdom. Previously, I had created videos about how Chinese Minecraft creators had created a Cyberpunk city as well as the two massive quarantine hospitals China built when Covid-19 first erupted.
Speaking of Minecraft, Tencent also has its own equivalent of Minecraft called Mini World which has also been gaining major traction in recent months as Covid-19 keeps millions at home. Not surprisingly, Mini World is particularly popular among children and teens. So Tencent has actually more than one horse in the race.
That said, as China-US tension continues to run high, Roblox developers in the West are also very wary of Roblox’s plan to enter China, lest developers will have to play by China’s rules. This guy’s video “roblox developers are REFUSING to work with CHINA...(good!)” has 341k views on YouTube.
Ironically, in his latest video about Roblox’s IPO plan, he said that he would buy Roblox’ stocks on Day 1, all while citing Roblox’s plan to enter China as a reason for believing in the growth of the platform.
🔫 Call of Duty Mobile
Call of Duty Mobile will be released in China on Oct 20. So far the game has more than 49 million pre-registered users on the official website already. The number will likely exceed 50m in a few days. On TapTap, the game is also scoring an impressive 8.8.
Everybody expects CODM to perform well in China. After all, the game has already proven itself internationally. Now the remaining question is really just can CODM be even more popular than PUBG Mobile. I had previously written an analysis explaining how CODM is on pace to surpass PUBG Mobile, based on the existing numbers.
What stands out to me, though, is how we haven’t heard about any major modifications Tencent has to make for the game’s China release. Remember how much trouble PUBG Mobile had to go through before being able to release in China? Literally the entire game has to be rebranded into Peacekeeper Elites because the battle royale concept and all the violence associated with it were too much for regulators’ taste. At the end, a bloody battle royale game had to be reshaped into one singing the hymns of socialist core values before it received the blessings of those in office. PUBG Mobile went without monetization for a year because those issues couldn’t be ironed out.
So by comparison, CODM seems to be having it easy. In little more than two months after the game obtained its government approval, it is looking ready for a release. I mean there are likely two possibilities: a. changes have been made and we won’t know them until launch day or b. the government now has a good sense of how this game may perform given the blueprint of Peacekeeper Elite.
In any event, Tencent wins. What’s new?
🏆 League of Legends Worlds
Worlds is here.
For the non-esports fans out there, Worlds is the biggest esports event of the year alongside The International for Dota. This year’s Worlds, or even that of next year for that matter, is being forced to be held in China because of Covid.
Although I’m likely extremely biased, I think these major esports tournaments have become the biggest and most anticipated sporting events in China. Think about it. Even if the finals of Chinese Super League (soccer) can have effectively the same level of pull among its fans, it doesn’t get lit like this.
I had previously written about how esports is the new ping pong for China. It is no exaggeration to say that LoL esports is the closest thing to the NBA in China. It has everything going for it: it captures the attention of the youth, it has its own mega-stars and as a 5v5 competitive activity, an endless stream of narratives about teamwork and rivalry can keep the press talking about it for years to come.
Nike is no dummy. And you know it’s the real deal when Nike is in it.
📖 My reading list
Will have to skip the reading list this time as I’ve been trying to catch up with readings myself. Will come back stronger in the next issue!