When it comes to Asia’s video game industry, we’ve seen the big, critically lauded hits mostly coming out of Japan for generations – at least, until this decade rolled around. While countries like Korea and China have had their own money-raking live-service hits, especially in the mobile market, it’s not until recently that we’ve seen them taking on the global landscape, and trying to elbow in on the single-player, narrative-focused genre.
Smaller studios in Southeast Asia have been putting out critically acclaimed indie hits likeCoffee Talk,A Space For The Unbound, andUntil Then, but when it comes to the games jostling for space amongst the big established IPs, we have to look at the big guns in Korea and China.
There Are Loads Of Games Coming Out Of South Korea And China
Last year’sStellar Blade, which was developed by Korean studio Shift Up, sold a million units within a month, and those figures have only been buoyed byits wildly successful PC release.Black Myth: Wukong, from Chinese developer Game Science, had a legendarily huge launch, clinchingthe record for the most concurrent players on a single-player game on Steam.
There are also multiple premium-priced games coming out of China in the short-term, made all the more newsworthy by Black Myth’s success.Wuchang: Fallen Feathersis a Soulslike action RPG, taking place in an alternate Chinese history.Lost Soul Aside, an action-adventure RPG, is a sci-fi title inspired byFinal Fantasy, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, and Devil May Cry.Phantom Blade Zero, an wuxia action RPG, also has a setting based on China, with elements of dark fantasy, horror, and cyberpunk.
NetEase, one of China’s biggest publishers, has been involved in a huge push of Chinese games to the global market. You know the company because ofMarvel Rivals, one of the biggest hits of the year, but it has also publishedOnce Human,FragPunk,Naraka: Bladepoint, and have two single-player games coming up:Where Winds Meet, andBlood Message.
NetEase’s Games Are Strangely Derivative
I can’t say that any of these games particularly appeal to me, but I’ve found NetEase’s offerings to be especially annoying. As I watched the trailer for its newly announced Blood Message, I thought, oh, I’m looking at Chinese God of War. Sure, it’s more based on historical fiction than outright mythology (many Chinese games draw from its long history and the wuxia genre, which has been prominent in its media for eons), but there are clear similarities. There’s a father and son duo, brutal combat, what appears to be mild platforming and puzzle-solving, and zipline traversal. There’s also a touch of Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted in there, and some scenes are reminiscent of Ghost of Tsushima.
I was similarly annoyed by Where Winds Meet, which looks eerily similar to Phantom Blade Zero, which in turn draws from the same aesthetics as FromSoft’s games. Sans martial art influence, there really isn’t all that much unique about it that we’ve seen so far.
Perhaps I’m biased, but after NetEase all but ripped off Overwatch with Marvel Rivals, I can’t help but see these games – and many of the others coming out of China – as obviously being made to cater to audiences’ tastes, instead of giving them something they didn’t know they wanted. By and large, they feel deeply derivative of Western styles, a tacit acknowledgement that if China doesn’t have the maturity to create something that feels wholly its own, it’ll just jack the best of what’s already been done.
For what it’s worth, Stellar Blade is also basically a rip-off of Nier Automata.
That feels all the more painful when I look at the games coming out elsewhere in Asia. As I mentioned earlier, Southeast Asia has been forging ahead in the indie space, making games with hyperlocal influences that still appeal to players worldwide. It’s proof that thereisa way to make culturally Asian games that do more than draw from Western influences and Asian history or mythology, while sprinkling in some wuxia to differentiate the combat a little.
Is the problem that triple-As, by and large, retread the same ground in order to capture the same audiences? Perhaps. Obviously, there are plenty of derivative games in the West, so this isn’t a NetEase-specific problem, or even a China- or Asia-specific problem. But if NetEase is going to shamelessly copy from iconic hits, why not at least try to make them interesting or better?
