YEAR OF THE DRAGON
When Genshin Impact launched last September, no one really expected it would be a billion-dollar hit. At least, not outside its home territory. Genshin’s developer, MiHoYo, is based in Shanghai – and while China is the world’s largest market for videogames, with an estimated 640 million players, games developed in the country rarely travel beyond its borders. Often they aren’t even intended to.
Take, for example, Honor Of Kings. Despite being one of the highest-grossing games of all time, it’s entirely likely you’ll have never heard of it, since the MOBA released exclusively for China. It also fits the usual Chinese game paradigm: mobile-only, free-to-play, bankrolled by gaming giant Tencent and, arguably, rather lacking on the originality front. When a localised version came to the west as Arena Of Valor, the heroes of Chinese myth replaced with generic fantasy characters, it only served to highlight the game’s roots as a League Of Legends knock-off (so much so that it reportedly led to conflict between Tencent-owned Riot Games and its parent company).
By comparison, two-thirds of Genshin Impact’s first-month revenues on mobile came from territories outside China, according to Sensor Tower figures. In the US alone it earned $45 million over that period, smashing the record for the biggest launch of a mobile RPG. It’s worth noting that Genshin Impact is a crossplatform title, its gorgeous open world and elementally charged realtime combat equally at home on PC or PlayStation.
Right now, Genshin Impact is the anomaly to Honor Of norm. But a new wave of Chinese developers is looking to further disrupt the status quo. Games in development range from one-man projects such as to an action RPG from ex-Tencent developers that’s being billed as China’s first premium triple-A game. Could these upstarts really break through the Great Wall and lead the Chinese game industry into a new frontier?
