Wow! Maybe this was naive, but I wasn’t expecting this to get so much controversy and downvotes. I’ll post a few thoughts here FWIW.
I see a lot of comments in here that remind me a lot of this New Yorker cover. As with any other country, there’s lots of different types of people in China with lots of differing opinions, but some comments in here feel like they’re casting all of China as a monolith. I should probably know better than to expect nuance on the internet, but the amount of opinions in here that were expressed as if they were total undeniable truth was still kind of annoying.
Following up on that, the main point of the article was requesting that people not conflate the CCP w/ companies and players. No one who was born in China chose to be born there. But they still have to live their lives, find creative expression, etc. I also hate the CCP, but I was surprised to see so an article that was trying to distinguish between the CCP and ordinary Chinese people receive so many comments that just brought up the CCP.
All that said, while I definitely disagree with many comments in here, I personally didn’t feel like I saw comments in here that were racist, despite what some people suggested.
For me, this article made me interested in finding out what cool games might be getting made in China that aren’t being released to the West. I also found it disappointing that the article explicitly called out that lots of the cool stuff isn’t making it to the West, and yet so many comments here talked about how China hasn’t made any good games, with no acknowledgement of whether the commenter has tried anything other than a small handful of the ones that actually got translations and came over here.
Anyway, that’s it. Thanks for reading and hope you have a good day.
If they want my time and patronage, they can learn how my community’s melanin distributes across our bodies. They can learn how to render coarse hair. They can broaden their character demographics beyond ‘what kyles are comfortable with’. Otherwise, they can fuck right off. And I haven’t seen many Eastern in general devs willing to even so much as try. Mihoyo and Square-Enix are both kinda on my shitlist right now.
I’m reopening this topic for the time being, after cleaning up de xenophobic/bigot comment. Please stay civil, remember to criticise ideas, and not people.
Genshin Impact is good, and Honkai Star Rail, is sadly empty of things to go even though I like the gameplay better. There are some really good Chinese games out there, but they’re mostly on mobile and PC because the Chinese government wouldn’t allow consoles for so long, so gaming in China developed in a way that’s incompatible with how a lot of western gamers play.
Also, I’m never gonna forgive China for how dirty they did Red Candle Game’s Devotion. Or GOG for backtracking on carrying it because CDP didn’t want to risk Cyberpunk not being sold in China, and giving a complete bs excuse for why.
I am not a fan of the CCP or Winnie the pooh. They are committing genocide… call me what you want, I have no issue with the Chinese people only the ones on charge of the government. Bit keep simping for the authoritarian murders to virtue signal.
“authoritarian murders” because of maintaining their independence and stop American billionaires from looting their country, lol. You are brainwashed by your shitty fascist american goverment.
You are delusional zombie, lol. Tibet already free unlike Europe, which is under NATO occupation or Native Americans/People of colour in the United States. #Death_to_NATO#Free_Native_Americans
I mean, Genshin Impact is an outlier in games out of China. A lot of the games, even the big budget ones, from developers there are freemium or gacha trash (and Genshin only minorly avoids that by having a decent story and gameplay).
The first step would be to produce proper single player games that aren't reliant on a paid store model. There are some examples of that, but they're incredibly rare.
It’s the first gacha game I tried and it is good, but the presentation of rolls for items and characters made me understand how people can get addicted to it. People can choose to ignore spending money on it, but the free rolls is an effective lure for the types that can fall into the deep end.
Still would not want to see any regulation of it though, since it being regulated would be a move towards handing over real identities to companies to manage which is terrible. I do wish it was just a regular game with DLC expansions than at its core a gacha game.
Shoutouts for my favorite Chinese developed game Gunfire Reborn. Borderlands-style Roguelike that you could almost SWEAR was going to have microtransactions. But no, it's one full price + character DLCs that is just start run, shoot dudes, complete runs. It got 99% good translations and a 100% mobile port! It's completely bewildering why this game didn't get treatment on par with Hades and Dead Cells.
I like Gunfire a lot but it doesn’t have story and av comparable to Hades and doesn’t have the replayability and difficulty of Dead Cells. A better comparison would probably be Risk of Rain 2, another game with a lack of story and budget art, that isn’t as replayable as its betters, but still an enjoyable experience.
You do realise the CCP data monitoring systems are known to be completely indiscriminate, right? They try to monitor everyone they can, as much as they can
What do you expect me to be able to do about PRISM, exactly? American made software and services aren't exactly avoidable like their Chinese equivalents are.
So where’s your xenophobic indignance at that? “That and I don’t live in China, so I don’t have a social credit file that I care about being affected.” You got a FICO score here, don’t you? That FICO score can lock you out of cars, apartments, and necessities to fuckin live, right? Where’s your indignance about that? Or is it just ‘you can’t trust those damn dirty thieving asiatics’ when American oligarchs bear you so much more potential harm, just like every other Kyle in this thread?
Are you fucking serious? Do you know how the FICO system actually works? I mean clearly you don't because you compared it to the Chinese social credit system.
To get a good FICO score simply requires 1) paying for things with a credit card and 2) paying off that credit card asap. That's it. The consequence of a bad FICO score means you cannot get decent loans because you've already proven yourself to be a risk.
The Chines social credit system is a WHOLE different scenario. Basically EVERYTHING you do can affect it. If what you do conforms to the CCPs dictates, it goes up. If you go against the CCP, it goes down. Buying too many video games can decrease your score, for instance. And the penalties are much harsher too. Low social credit scores means you get barred from high end jobs and your kids can't go to good schools. Your ability to travel is limited, no-fly-list style. They can even straight up take your pets away over a low score.
So how the fuck does that sound anything close to FICO?
That's why I'm fine with it on consoles. That and I don't live in China, so I don't have a social credit file that I care about being affected.
PC games though? Whole 'nother story. People often use their gaming PCs for more serious stuff too, plus it isn't nearly as big an opportunity cost to later ship a PC update granting remote code execution.
I hope you're asking in good faith. I'll try and give you a response as tl;dr as possible here.
Racism: hating people due to their ethnicity
Not racism: criticizing people (even of a single nationality or ethnicity) because of their politics
In the context of this article, most people in the comments are expressing privacy concerns over China controlling a larger percentage of the gaming market, and thus increasing the risk for demanding more data from the users installing that software on their machines. If anyone here were expressing racist concerns about this, people would be making disparaging remarks about yellow skin color or narrow eye shape, or something like that.
Furthermore, incorrectly identifying racism where there is none actually detracts from the actual anti-racist sentiment - in fact, the one I believe you hold - by muddying the definition of what is and isn't actually racism.
Hating a regime that commits ACTUAL RACIAL-BASED GENOCIDE is racist, I guess that means hating Nazis was racism against Germans? You are a fucking idiot.
If they want respect it’s going to have to be through quality Sony or Nintendo type single player titles that don’t have a gacha model that gets critical acclaim. Their own Breath of the Wild or Last of Us type game that holds up critically as opposed to being a game where “gacha mechanics can be ignored” in a best case scanerio.
But, most of the games that are well known games embody the perfect spirit of capitalism meant to try and squeeze as much money out of its users over years. Mobile gamers may give it a pass with how they don’t bat an eye to how predatory mobile games are, but the gamers that the writer is asking respect from are less likely to give those practices a pass.
There are a few great Chinese single player games out there like amazing cultivation simulator, but they are all indie games. The Chinese government restricted how Steam works in China so I have no idea how indie Chinese games are getting out there, if at all. https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-china-launch/
I played a little Genshin after it first released but was put off by the underage characters being portrayed sexually. The sad fact of the matter is that its a great game made with passion, and many Chinese games have a """lolicon""" issue. I tried the game Mahjong soul after getting into Mahjong from Final Fantasy, and it has the same issue.
And when I say """lolicon"", I mean kids as young as 11-13, maybe even younger. it's disgusting. Otakus seems to run the industry there as far as I can tell, or at least what makes it to the west because to know real stuff about Chinese culture you have to be at least kinda a weeb for Chinese stuff. I got into Xianxia from my love of manga which lead to Manhua. The Xianxia scene has a lot of problems but """lolicon""" hasn't been one of them.
TL;DR The chinese video game industry is run by otakus, at least for whats made it into the west. The worst part is that HoYoVerse WAS an indie developer whose motto was "by otakus, for otakus" they aren't hiding what they are about, but unfortunately have become #1 for pandering to the lowest possible denominator
Add comment