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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29424 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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As a few others have mentioned, the success of Black Myth Wukong is something of a mirage: like 90% of its playerbase are just native Chinese players. I think this fact actually speaks to the wider problem Chinese media faces. TV, movies, books, music: putting aside the obvious issues of CCP interference, Chinese creators still have a big problem with overwhelmingly focusing on the domestic Chinese market.

If you look at the Japanese game examples, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy, these are very much products made with international markets in mind. From Software's Armoured Core series or Dragon Quest of Square Enix are both moderate hits, much more tailored to the local market, and those aren't even close to the weirdest titles that come out of Japan. Stuff that only appeals to the weebiest of weebs and otherwise is entirely limited to Japan.

The problem with Chinese media is that they are still stuck making that latter type of media. My wife watches a lot of Chinese TV - every series is Ming-era drama, Ming-era xianxia, WW2 dramas, with the occasional modern series. The most recent Chinese films I watched were a 3D animated story about Tang-era poets for a family audience and a comedy drama about the pressures of primary school acceptance for Chinese children. The former was probably the best possible family film about Tang-era poetry you could possibly make, but it was still a film about Tang-era poetry.

MiHoYo's popular titles - Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zero - caught on in many ways because they just aped Japanese anime styling to the extent that initial players would have no idea they are Chinese made. I played a lot of Chinese gacha and other phone games in the past, and they were nowhere near as accessible as those titles.

When you can have a hit on the scale of Wukong without doing anything to appeal to international audiences, why would you even bother? Perhaps the future is that China has a breakout film like Parasite or Shoplifting, or a game series like Yakuza or Persona, which are still heavily Chinese but can cross borders, and that kickstarts wider interest.

MiHoYo's popular titles - Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zero - caught on in many ways because they just aped Japanese anime styling to the extent that initial players would have no idea they are Chinese made. I played a lot of Chinese gacha and other phone games in the past, and they were nowhere near as accessible as those titles.

Did those other titles include games like Girls' Frontline or Arknights? Those games also lean heavily on the anime style (even to the point of relying on Japanese VA), and also deemphasize Chinese-ness considerably.

Nah this was years ago, since then several developers have become more international friendly without necessarily having a breakout hit like MiHoYo. But there was a lengthy period in the mid10s where there were dozens of huge F2P Chinese titles that could never have a hope of crossing over to other markets

GFL's origin is that a small Chinese doujin circle consisted of people who really liked Kantai Collection but 1) were more interested in guns than warships and 2) were having trouble with Kancolle's zealous attempts to IP ban every single player who was not physically in Japan. The game caught on largely because it turned out there was a decent amount of people in China/Korea/the west for whom those same two conditions applied.

I honestly thought a big chunk of the popularity was because it did the gun girl thing like the anime Upotte!, but also paired it with an interesting sci-fi story. Like, Arknights was made by some of the same devs, and that also caught on real good even though it mostly lacked gun girls. Interesting.

every series is Ming-era drama, Ming-era xianxia, WW2 dramas, with the occasional modern series. The most recent Chinese films I watched were a 3D animated story about Tang-era poets for a family audience

This is greater praise of China than DeepSeek. May we regain our own high culture.

Perhaps https://youtube.com/watch?v=ecDlMymLt6E is the cartoon in question. It's great. I'll start cramming Mandarin vocabulary immediately. Thankfully I already have Pollard's book.

That is indeed the film I saw. Honestly no idea why it is called Chang'an since the city has little to do with the plot

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