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Easy answer: because they suck. Players in China are used to outright horrible software (QQ, Qihoo 360, and in fact the majority of Chinese-produced software i

• phoebus 10y ago
  Not sure about other things you said, but is it true that QQ sucks? QQ supports over hundreds millions online users every day, and numerous group chat rooms at the same time. QQ is far more advanced than any IM softwares outside of China.
  • idra 10y ago
    > QQ is far more advanced than any IM softwares outside of China. Really? Full of ads, automatic censorship, scummy monetization strategies, a ton of bundled bloatware. And it is an ICQ ripoff anyway.
  • michaelmrose 10y ago
    How so?
  • kkarakk 10y ago
    why is this thread full of people saying "this thing in china is not bad, it supports a lot of people" ofc their stuff has to scale, if it's successful there are a guaranteed hundred of millions of people ready to crash their service and render it un-useable. also please name things that this software is more advanced than? the only reviews [1] i can find name it as a middling piece of software [1] http://qq-international.software.informer.com/ http://qq-international.software.informer.com/
• justicezyx 10y ago
  > outright horrible software (QQ, Qihoo 360, and in fact the majority of Chinese-produced software installed on a Windows computer of a typical user) In general homegrown software from China is not comparable in quality to US ones. But they are not horrible. Actually, Chinese companies' software might be inferior only to US produced ones. AFAIK, there is no prominent software that are produced outside of US and are compared favorable to Chinese produced ones. Your examples of QQ and Qihoo 360 are quite bad examples of "horrible software". They are indeed bloat ware, horrendous privacy invader, outright money seeking in their features, etc. Those cannot be taken granted as evidence of their overall horribleness. In fact, they are prominent software that address Chinese people's everyday needs (IM and security); and their overwhelming popularity is a strong evidence that they achieved their goals successfully. To say they are horrible without specific qualifications and evidences are a sign of biased views. > bland repetitive art, bugs, grinding and paying to win. Copy cats are prevalent, bugs are often ignored, paying to win is quite a popular options for players. B.U.T., these qualifications cannot be used to describe the players. Actually, Chinese game players are such a huge population that a large number of them quite closely follow western trends. They play ps4 and xbox1, they know all the memes about trending western games. But there are many of them do enjoy the low-quality stuff you mentioned. Many of them lack education and healthy attitude towards gaming and life. But this statement clearly blended diverse reality into a stereotype. >A strong nationalistic sentiment makes Chinese players favour games based on their culture and history, which is mostly unknown outside of China because of how closed the country has been for centuries and the "foreign barbarians can't possibly understand our culture" attitude. Frankly speaking, I have no idea where did you draw such conclusion... This statement is outright a demonization of general Chinese public... There is no strong culture of "foreign barbarians can't possibly understand our culture". Foreigners are routinely treated with better-than-normal-Chinese standards. Foreign cultures are always described as superior to status-quo of Chinese society. etc. "A strong nationalistic sentiment" This might be true. But link it with "Chinese players favor games based on their culture and history" seems overly general. I mean, A.N.Y.O.N.E. would naturally favor games based on their culture and history. Given the fundamental difference between eastern and western culture, I see no possibility for Chinese players favor non-eastern games. Actually, Japanese players favor their own games, I doubt anyone would link that to Japanese "nationalistic sentiment". In reality, Japanese games are generally very well-received in China. Considering the bitter history between the 2 nations, the claimed "nationalistic sentiment" hardly play any role in players' preference to games. > In addition, the content is usually limited to the Four Great Classical Novels because that's the only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with. First that's not true, there are diverse genres of games, most of them are not based on the classic novels. In reality, only 1 of the four, i.e., "Legends of the Three Kingdoms" is predominantly a material for popular games. In reality, there are a huge number of copy cat games of games are popular outside of China. This statement is plainly false. Second, only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with. I have to counter this. Typical Chinese high schoolers learn history and classical Chinese literature. They learn hundreds of poets and novels from ancient china to modern ones. China has a high-school graduate rate of 98% [1]. They even include modern wuxia novel from JinYong and SciFi classics from Cixin Liu. If you think such a population who are exposed to a huge collection of historical and modern arts are only familiar with 4 classical novels, I have to say that you must be irrational. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_China > But also, due to censorship, it is impossible to use more interesting settings without getting unwanted attention from the government. I do not think censorship has much to do with the game genres. As I said, there are a huge collection of diverse games. If you ever play those games, you know that as long as you do not touch politics (for which most countries exercise similar policies) you can do whatever you want. > A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC) and English words. > A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC) and English words. I am not familiar with this. But I dont think banning traditional Chinese and english words have much impact on producing popular games for mass Chinese players. They are not educated to read in traditional Chiense. On the other hand, if missing English words cause trouble for players to play the game, then the game wont be successful anyway... > Combined with a large potential player base and lack of foreign competition, even the most atrocious abomination of a game can make some money in the internal market. Well, lack of foreign competition is a thing, lack of competition is another. Trust me, if there is one thing that China does not lack, it is domestic competition... The brutality and amount of hard work you need to put in to survive in Chinese market is beyond imagination. For example, most companies have policy like 996, working 6 days, 9am to 9pm. The claim that "even the most atrocious abomination of a game can make some money in the internal market" is just a huge exaggeration of the reality. Sure, the most popular games are not comparable in quality to non-Chinese produces ones, but they are not rubbish... At least, LoL, the most popular Moba in China, is not rubbish...
• contingencies 10y ago
  As a foreigner in China I find this answer verging on offensive. I am not much of a gamer but have played great Chinese games with impressive graphics, deep historically-informed game worlds and references to poetry, literature, art, philosophy. I think you are confusing low-ball RTS/mobile games/MMORPGs with Chinese games. I also think you are confusing nationalism with cultural touchstones. English or American people play games like US Army and WWII flightsims, RTSs and FPSs, Colonization/Civilization, Europa Universalis, Risk, etc. Is that nationalist? Perhaps, but it's pretty equivalent, and a whole lot more current nerve. If Chinese people released a game about bombing Americans in the South China Sea I'd give you a point... reality is, the US did the same for almost every modern conflict to date, and their army actually have an outreach unit for propaganda/recruiting through games/other media. China, AFAIK, doesn't. From a money perspective, it's all MMORPGs and mobile equivalents. There is an argument that those types of games tend toward a formulaic approach and weak content by default. I never heard about banning traditional characters, and I strongly doubt this to be a blanket ban as suggested, because they are critical for historical settings.
  • idra 10y ago
    > have played great Chinese games with impressive graphics, deep historically-informed game worlds and references to poetry, literature, art, philosophy Can you please name some examples? I'd love to check them out. > I also think you are confusing nationalism with cultural touchstones You have a point here. After re-reading the post, I wanted to add "and a lack of awareness of the outside world and culture", but it was already too late to edit it. > the US did the same for almost every modern conflict to date This is whataboutism, we're not talking about the US. > I never heard about banning traditional characters Well, see the link in my original post.
    • contingencies 10y ago
      Can you please name some examples? As I said I'm not much of a gamer, so I don't often play Chinese games. However, as early as 10 years ago I played an amazing Three Kingdoms style game where the feel was like being inside a moving version of a traditional Chinese watercolor painting ... clouds floating around, inkbrush style architecture and characters, etc. Unfortunately, I don't know what the name was. However, if that was 10 years ago I'm sure there's better out there now. I do remember that it was in traditional characters! lack of awareness of the outside world and culture This is pretty rude and baseless. There are interesting statistics about Americans placing major countries on maps, and I'd wager China has more foreign media consumption than the US. This is whataboutism No, I was pointing out the senselessness of your line of argument and mode of reasoning. If you can think of an -ism for that, go ahead. Perhaps logic-ism? the link in my original post The only thing the link says is that rules for approval of games to be published in the mainland include that they have to be in simplified characters (traditional character games, such as those from Taiwan or Hong Kong, have to be translated first). That's not very strange, it's like saying "games in Turkey have to be written in Turkish (not Arabic)" or "games in Croatia have to be written in Romanized form (not Cyrillic)". It's just the dominant method of writing, where others exist. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's censorship in any form, just a basic enforcement of the country's existing standardization, which brought 1 billion+ people to literacy in the last 100 years. That's a pretty good achievement in my book, which is good reasoning for a whole lot more than the government asking games publishers to spend $0-100 flipping strings local market. Pro-tip: You can do this automatically, almost always well enough to perfect, using a lovely part of the Wikipedia codebase - https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/master/languages/data/ZhConversion.php https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/master... - instantly, automatically, for free.
• barry-cotter 10y ago
  A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC Singapore uses simplified characters too.
• jmh1 10y ago
  u realize most of that army was halluc right
• WilliamDhalgren 10y ago
  > In addition, the content is usually limited to the Four Great Classical Novels because that's the only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with. really? If true, that sounds bloody brilliant; how I wish to play some game based on "dream of the red chamber"! What would it be; a huge, sprawling point&click intrigue adventure game with hundereds of deeply characterized NPCs maybe? Can you recommend a title? Any fangroup made english titles for it?
• runeblaze 10y ago
  I feel like lack of foreign competition and its relationship to the quality of Chinese games is over-simplified. Competition is definitely there, and probably fierce: pirated copies of popular western games everywhere on the internet. If I search Minecraft on Baidu I will instantly get tons of usable pirated links. It is probably because Chinese companies cannot compete against high-quality pirated foreign games that they have to move their focus to those "Four Great Classical Novel" games where the companies naturally excel. Thus when competition is fierce enough within the traditional Chinese game genre, a lot of the games start to degrade into cheap flashy horribly-designed ones. But in general, I agree that 99% of current Chinese-made games, when compared to their equivalent western counterparts, are inferior in quality by a strong margin. I however feel it is much more sophisticated than the reasons people associate with QQ, 360, etc. . I remember reading that the most successfully designed Chinese games were made around 2003 until piracy drove quite a lot of the companies behind the games out of profit, so now for the sake of profit a substantial portion of Chinese game companies forgo better game experiences for quick cash instead. edit: last sentence found irrelevant