4 ms·

Tecent has been actually allowing independency for most of previously acquired studios. Seems a good deal for the team. Also it's well known that the Chinese c

Tecent has been actually allowing independency for most of previously acquired studios. Seems a good deal for the team. Also it's well known that the Chinese creative market is a bit brain-fucked, in the sense the cut-throat competition drives a lot of studios focusing on trial-and-true designs, results into significant duplication of ideas and implementations. They kind of require talents from a different environment to produce something that is novel to Chinese market.

eunos 6y ago
I think it's just Tencent that are too money oriented, instead of Chinese gamedev environment as a whole that fucked up. To be fair, a lot of famous Chinese game are gacha/microtransaction since China is mobile first environment. Console gaming only gained traction recently.
- justicezyx 6y ago
  Happy to see your sources. I was born and raised in mainland until leaving for US at 24 in 2008. Never saw much original games from Chinese studios. A lot of games are purely sexuality saturated cheap games, on both web and mobile. Pay to win is very popular.
  - alisonatwork 6y ago
    Chinese indie games got more interesting around 蜡烛人 Candleman in 2017. Personally I didn't enjoy that game, a bit too much trial and error, but it is a "real" platform game. I have been trying various other ones to try find something really creative and unique, and the best one I have found is called Another Adventure from ThankCreate Studio. This one is neat, a bit of a commentary on high tech/programmer/996 lifestyle. Another game I liked was 雨纪 Flood of Light. It is a fairly simple puzzle game, very low stress and easy, with a bit of sad anime style story. There was a very relaxing fish sim too called 鲤 Koi. I am a bit out of the loop, I think it's hard to keep up with all the latest indie games if you are not following local media, but it definitely feels like last 3-4 years there is a small and growing scene. Some games even translated in English and got some press in western media too, like Tales of the Neon Sea. Of course, the vast majority of games are still pay to win, anime style clickers, not really my thing at all.
    - eunos 6y ago
      Check Dyson Sphere. Looks interesting
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  This is anecdotal but the gacha in Genshin Impact is quite reasonable and you can get really excellent characters and builds without paying a penny if you do it smart. You get enough free premium currency to get a 100% chance of getting at least one top-tier character (on average you'll get two or three) (and obviously many excellent but not top-tier ones besides) as long as you spend it carefully, and every month or two there's a free really good character too. It's definitely much more PC-oriented than mobile oriented, though. For a mainly single player game the monetization is not bad. That said it still isn't optimal, and the issue of power-creep is not even taken into account yet
  - eunos 6y ago
    Gacha in Genshin is nasty unless you are not greedy and contend playing F2P or limited 5* characters. Anyway the correct thing mihoyo done with Genshin is that in addition to make a very good game (AAA tier for free), their community is also excellent and releasing MMD models for free allows fans keep making meme out it.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      > unless you are not greedy and contend playing F2P or limited 5* characters That honestly sounds reasonable to me. I don't see that deal as nasty. There's so much content, I didn't miss the extra characters at all. I actually almost completely missed the idea that there are more characters, so when I got the free extra one, I just though "oh, that's cool". It doesn't limit your gameplay unless you really want to grind and complete 100% of Genshin. (and at that point you're sinking many hours a day - maybe it's worth paying for?) It's emphatically not "pay to win".
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I am fully F2P and have Keqing, Mona, Jean, Albedo, Fischl, Barbara, Xiangling, Razor, Xingqui, Beidou, Xinyan, and Noelle. I honestly don't think I'm missing much. I could use a Cryo or Pyro 5*, but it's perfectly fine. I did get somewhat lucky, but I was able to do ~130 free gacha rolls and have enough gems left for around 20 more, so it's not outside of expectations. I think it is fine. You can always lust after more characters but really, if you spend your primogems wisely, there is no real need beyond what you can get for free. I also appreciate the resin system that removes the incentive to spend too much time on the game. It limits me to 45 minutes a day which undoubtedly costs MiHoYo a lot but is appreciated. If you run the numbers, every day you can as a F2P player get enough for a 1.6-2.2% probability at a 5* character, so around 40-60% at a 5* every month. For this you have to be patient and game the pity system, though.
- em500 6y ago
  Console sales were banned in China from 2000-2015, which is why the industry grew into a PC-first environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China
Barrin92 6y ago
I think this take is correct. Path of Exile players also made a lot of noise in 2018 but the game developers seem to be able t do their thing. Fortnite and League are still obviously hugely successful as well.
- fermentation 6y ago
  An interesting development since the Path of Exile acquisition is a Chinese client that has a bunch of features players everywhere else in the world have been asking for since the game's inception (notably macro support to prevent RSI).
wyldfire 6y ago
> Also it's well known that the Chinese creative market is a bit brain-fucked ... lot of studios focusing on trial-and-true designs IMO Don't Starve is a really enjoyable, very original game. Not sure about Klei's other titles, but maybe having an acquisition that's outside of the routine Chinese game studio is what they're after? Especially if the native teams are as homogeneous as you say.
- scruple 6y ago
  My wife and I play DST together every other weekend on both Friday and Saturday nights. We've been playing it for years now. Oxygen Not Included is also really good. As is Mark of the Ninja. Highly recommended. I haven't gotten to Invisible, Inc. yet but I've heard great things.
dijit 6y ago
This is true, I work for Sharkmob. There’s significantly less interference here (a wholly owned company) than there was at Ubisoft (a 5% owned company - whom I also used to work for)

eunos 6y ago

I think it's just Tencent that are too money oriented, instead of Chinese gamedev environment as a whole that fucked up. To be fair, a lot of famous Chinese game are gacha/microtransaction since China is mobile first environment. Console gaming only gained traction recently.

justicezyx 6y ago
Happy to see your sources. I was born and raised in mainland until leaving for US at 24 in 2008. Never saw much original games from Chinese studios. A lot of games are purely sexuality saturated cheap games, on both web and mobile. Pay to win is very popular.
- alisonatwork 6y ago
  Chinese indie games got more interesting around 蜡烛人 Candleman in 2017. Personally I didn't enjoy that game, a bit too much trial and error, but it is a "real" platform game. I have been trying various other ones to try find something really creative and unique, and the best one I have found is called Another Adventure from ThankCreate Studio. This one is neat, a bit of a commentary on high tech/programmer/996 lifestyle. Another game I liked was 雨纪 Flood of Light. It is a fairly simple puzzle game, very low stress and easy, with a bit of sad anime style story. There was a very relaxing fish sim too called 鲤 Koi. I am a bit out of the loop, I think it's hard to keep up with all the latest indie games if you are not following local media, but it definitely feels like last 3-4 years there is a small and growing scene. Some games even translated in English and got some press in western media too, like Tales of the Neon Sea. Of course, the vast majority of games are still pay to win, anime style clickers, not really my thing at all.
  - eunos 6y ago
    Check Dyson Sphere. Looks interesting
sudosysgen 6y ago
This is anecdotal but the gacha in Genshin Impact is quite reasonable and you can get really excellent characters and builds without paying a penny if you do it smart. You get enough free premium currency to get a 100% chance of getting at least one top-tier character (on average you'll get two or three) (and obviously many excellent but not top-tier ones besides) as long as you spend it carefully, and every month or two there's a free really good character too. It's definitely much more PC-oriented than mobile oriented, though. For a mainly single player game the monetization is not bad. That said it still isn't optimal, and the issue of power-creep is not even taken into account yet
- eunos 6y ago
  Gacha in Genshin is nasty unless you are not greedy and contend playing F2P or limited 5* characters. Anyway the correct thing mihoyo done with Genshin is that in addition to make a very good game (AAA tier for free), their community is also excellent and releasing MMD models for free allows fans keep making meme out it.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    > unless you are not greedy and contend playing F2P or limited 5* characters That honestly sounds reasonable to me. I don't see that deal as nasty. There's so much content, I didn't miss the extra characters at all. I actually almost completely missed the idea that there are more characters, so when I got the free extra one, I just though "oh, that's cool". It doesn't limit your gameplay unless you really want to grind and complete 100% of Genshin. (and at that point you're sinking many hours a day - maybe it's worth paying for?) It's emphatically not "pay to win".
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I am fully F2P and have Keqing, Mona, Jean, Albedo, Fischl, Barbara, Xiangling, Razor, Xingqui, Beidou, Xinyan, and Noelle. I honestly don't think I'm missing much. I could use a Cryo or Pyro 5*, but it's perfectly fine. I did get somewhat lucky, but I was able to do ~130 free gacha rolls and have enough gems left for around 20 more, so it's not outside of expectations. I think it is fine. You can always lust after more characters but really, if you spend your primogems wisely, there is no real need beyond what you can get for free. I also appreciate the resin system that removes the incentive to spend too much time on the game. It limits me to 45 minutes a day which undoubtedly costs MiHoYo a lot but is appreciated. If you run the numbers, every day you can as a F2P player get enough for a 1.6-2.2% probability at a 5* character, so around 40-60% at a 5* every month. For this you have to be patient and game the pity system, though.
em500 6y ago
Console sales were banned in China from 2000-2015, which is why the industry grew into a PC-first environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_China

Barrin92 6y ago

I think this take is correct. Path of Exile players also made a lot of noise in 2018 but the game developers seem to be able t do their thing. Fortnite and League are still obviously hugely successful as well.

fermentation 6y ago
An interesting development since the Path of Exile acquisition is a Chinese client that has a bunch of features players everywhere else in the world have been asking for since the game's inception (notably macro support to prevent RSI).

wyldfire 6y ago

> Also it's well known that the Chinese creative market is a bit brain-fucked ... lot of studios focusing on trial-and-true designs IMO Don't Starve is a really enjoyable, very original game. Not sure about Klei's other titles, but maybe having an acquisition that's outside of the routine Chinese game studio is what they're after? Especially if the native teams are as homogeneous as you say.

scruple 6y ago
My wife and I play DST together every other weekend on both Friday and Saturday nights. We've been playing it for years now. Oxygen Not Included is also really good. As is Mark of the Ninja. Highly recommended. I haven't gotten to Invisible, Inc. yet but I've heard great things.

dijit 6y ago

This is true, I work for Sharkmob. There’s significantly less interference here (a wholly owned company) than there was at Ubisoft (a 5% owned company - whom I also used to work for)