Is this Chinese video game the new industry messiah?

Is the success of Black Myth: Wukong a sign of China‘s grip on modern media or another symbol of hope for gamers?

In all industries, there are companies that challenge the status quo. In gaming, this status quo seemingly revolves around DLCs, micro-transactions, season passes, and the general desire to make every game a live service. And that is what happens when the business of making an art form becomes a publicly traded company or is bought out by private equity – you’re here to make money for the shareholders, and very little else matters.

It happens in gaming, in music, in film, and even YouTubers go through the same. But sometimes, there are outliers. Some people still want to make the art they want to make, the art they feel needs to exist.

In 2022, it was Elden Ring. In 2023, Baldur’s Gate 3. Each of them made waves in the gaming community, signaling to players that they don’t have to be content with endless clones of hyper-successful live service games, reboots, or self-repeating franchise installments. And in 2024, that game might be Black Myth: Wukong.

Wukong was expected to be good, but no one thought it would be this good. In one day, it became the second-most-played Steam game of all time, receiving a 95% positive rating.

It didn’t launch without controversy, of course. IGN ran a hit piece on the game, slamming Chinese gaming culture and making several allegations regarding the studio’s developers. Although it was later found that many statements in that article were based on a mistranslation of the developer’s words, people on opposing sides were already at each other’s throats, which led IGN to publish a statement, and the author expressed their displeasure but restricted some of the tweets afterwards.

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As always, there are several sides to this story. There are always people who will blame gaming culture for everything that’s wrong with society. Meanwhile, misogyny, racism, or bullying ironically do not discriminate and can exist everywhere, and to imagine more of it out of thin air just to spread more of The Message is idiotic.

Another group dismisses most of the game’s popularity because of its Chinese origin. They argue that the ratings and player numbers are so high only thanks to the massive number of Chinese players buying and playing it. While that is technically true, why is it a problem? It is natural for Chinese people to support the game that was made by Chinese developers (Game Science), about Chinese mythology, and is actually an amazing game to play.

It was the same with the Witcher series, which was massively popular in Poland, as it was also made by Polish developers, and based on a Polish book that was heavily inspired by Polish folklore. If people of the same nationality as the game’s creators play and praise the game, that doesn’t make its success somehow “rigged” or ungenuine.

And lastly, there are people (mostly gaming executives) who are afraid of what Black Myth: Wukong represents. It once again proves that gamers crave carefully crafted worlds, polished gameplay, no-bells-and-whistles single player games. No insulting monetization, no broken and buggy launch days, no always-online requirements, no confusing “trendy” collabs. Just buy the game, and play the game.

As more of this type of game come out, the more people are turning away from the current meta with live services and lengthy waits for patches. Hopefully, this will make companies like EA or Ubisoft finally rediscover what made them so big in the first place. And if not, Game Science has proven that an indie company can become a AAA powerhouse to reach its goal. 

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To be fair, there are some intricacies that point to a specifically Chinese approach to games and marketing. Content creators who received a key to play the game early have also been instructed not to discuss Covid-19, Chinese affairs, or spread feminist propaganda. Of course, this sounds odd. All companies provide talking points that need to be respected, but never to this extent. Most likely, the developers had to do it to comply with Chinese laws, and this was not a full representation of their views.

Like it or hate it for any reason, Black Myth: Wukong is a sign that the gaming industry is not drowning in corporate-approved, shareholder-pleasing entertainment. There is still room for creativity, for passion, for new names to be discovered. And that, sometimes, even a Chinese developer can treat gamers better than a Western one.