Text/Great Entertainer

In anticipation, the first work of game science from the little-known game developer, "Black Myth: Wukong", finally officially landed on major game platforms around the world on August 20.

The birth of this high-profile domestic triple-A masterpiece marks an important milestone in the development of China's game industry.

From the stunning debut of the first concept film in 2020 to the official release now, the development process of "Black Myth: Wukong" has lasted more than 5 years, which not only embodies the hard work of the development team, but also carries the hope and ambition of the entire Chinese game industry.

The interface of Black Myth: Wukong

The reason why "Black Myth: Wukong" has received so much attention is undoubtedly multifaceted.

First of all, this is the first Chinese game to truly challenge the world's top triple-A titles, and its graphics quality, technical level and game design have shown the potential to compete with the works of international manufacturers. Secondly, the game is based on the traditional Chinese cultural masterpiece "Journey to the West", which perfectly integrates Chinese elements with modern game technology, showing the unique charm of Chinese culture in the game narrative. Finally, as a game studio without the foundation of the previous game, the strength and ambition shown by the game science team have sparked great interest from players and the industry at home and abroad.

As soon as the game was launched, it quickly detonated the global player community, and the number of simultaneous online users on the Steam platform exceeded 2 million, directly rushing into the top three in history, setting a new record for Chinese stand-alone games. This achievement not only proves the appeal of Black Myth: Wukong, but also highlights the potential of Chinese games in the global market.

The number of concurrent players counted by SteamDB

However, in this euphoric atmosphere, it is also necessary to remain a little calm and examine the challenges that Black Myth: Wukong may face from the perspective of cultural content distribution, especially the initial response in overseas markets when it was first launched.

In the overseas player community and mainstream game media, the evaluation of "Black Myth: Wukong" also showed a clear polarization after a day. Some players and critics praised the game's unique oriental aesthetic and excellent technical performance, while others praised the game's narrative pacing, cultural context, difficulty in understanding the game's background, and high similarity to many mature action games. This initial word-of-mouth differentiation can't help but make people worry: Will this highly anticipated domestic masterpiece be able to gain a firm foothold in the global market?

Some "not recommended" comments from overseas players on "Black Myth: Wukong".

Although Black Myth: Wukong has shown a very mature industrial level in terms of technical implementation, art design, and combat performance, it may still face some challenges in the face of the global market, especially foreign ordinary players rather than professional game media:

01

Gaps in cultural understanding can affect the gaming experience, and differences in cultural backgrounds lead to differences in the depth of understanding of games.

Journey to the West and its derived mythology system have a wide influence in China, but for most overseas players, it is a relatively unfamiliar cultural background. Although the character of "Monkey King" has a certain degree of popularity around the world, the understanding of the rich cultural connotation and story line behind it may be limited. This difference in cultural perception has a direct impact on the expectations and understanding of overseas players.

The interface of Black Myth: Wukong

At the same time, the game uses a lot of traditional Chinese cultural elements, including myths and legends, ancient architecture, costumes and props, etc., which are familiar and familiar to Chinese players, but may seem obscure to overseas players. If the game does not explain these cultural backgrounds and origins well to overseas players, it may affect their understanding and engagement with the story and worldview.

02

Different game environments and highly different levels of market competition will also directly cause different feedback thresholds for players.

The Chinese game market has long lacked local titles that can compete with international triple-A titles, and the emergence of Black Myth: Wukong has filled this gap, so it has attracted special attention from domestic players, and even non-gamers have found it difficult not to receive relevant content information during this time.

In contrast, the core 3A market players dominated by Europe, America, Japan and South Korea have become accustomed to the existence of all kinds of excellent 3A works around the world, and their expectations for "Black Myth: Wukong" are bound to be as strong as those of domestic players, not to mention that there is neither traditional cultural blessing nor national pride, even if they pay attention to it, it is more from the perspective of a new game.

The interface of Black Myth: Wukong

At the same time, Black Myth: Wukong, as an ARPG action game that combines elements of the "Souls Game" and the classic ARPG "God of War" series, will inevitably be compared to well-known works such as the "Dark Souls" series, "Wolf", "Nioh" and "God of War". These games have a huge fan base and deep word-of-mouth accumulation in the Western market, and how "Black Myth: Wukong" can meet or surpass the level of these games while maintaining its own characteristics will also become an important criterion for ordinary foreign players to give evaluations.

03

The difference in publicity strategies and the quality of localization have also led to different perceptions and word-of-mouth among ordinary players.

The game science team's publicity efforts in China before the game was launched were obviously greater than those in overseas markets, whether it was a joint brand with Luckin or media exposure out of the circle, it gained a voice far beyond ordinary games.

Although the game has also been unveiled at major international game exhibitions and some overseas markets, compared with the overwhelming publicity in China, the overseas publicity volume is still not too enthusiastic on the whole. One of the most typical examples is that even though "Black Myth" has occupied the top of Weibo's hot search list since the morning of the 20th, it has not entered the top 10 of Twitter's global or entertainment trend list at all.

The level of optimization and localization of the game will directly affect the game experience of overseas players.

For non-Chinese versions of games, the level of localization work such as translation quality, dubbing performance, and interpretation of cultural elements is highly tied to the game experience of overseas players, and any negligence in this regard may cause negative evaluation.

For example, the translation of a large number of elite monsters or bosses in the game is a bit too literal, such as the black bear spirit is Black Bear guai, the demon king is yao guai Kings and so on.

In fact, due to the large number of vernacular lines and text design in the game, even Chinese players cannot fully accept it, and the narrative technique chosen by the game naturally needs to rely on the character's oral narration combined with the content text, which will greatly increase the difficulty of understanding non-Chinese native speakers, resulting in negative feedback.

At least when observing the live broadcast of European and American game bloggers on Twitch when the game was first launched, it is not difficult to find that they quickly skim a large number of texts in a state of seeming understanding, and from the translation level, English texts have actually omitted a lot of literal translation compared with Chinese lines, but they still spend more time on the combat link, and the plot broadcast has become more of a rest.

Black Myth: Wukong Translation Comparison Table

Source: Bilibili Games

In addition, the optimization of "Black Myth: Wukong" is also facing a test. At present, many bad reviews given by foreign players on Steam are related to AMD's graphics card optimization, and the problem of level design being too monotonous and not having a strong narrative has also been mentioned to some extent; The current PS5 version also seems to have a lot of problems with the performance and image quality optimization, and it is likely to become a hidden concern for a large number of console players in overseas markets, which also requires Game Science to launch optimization patches in time to solve related problems as soon as possible.

Conclusion

CONCLUSION

It is necessary to look at the next performance of "Black Myth: Wukong" in the international market from a more rational and long-term perspective.

It is important to realize that the initial evaluation of a game is not the final achievement, which is the biggest difference from narrative art such as movies and dramas, and many classic games have also faced various doubts and criticisms in the early days of release, and the true value of a game needs time to precipitate and prove.

"Black Myth: Wukong", as an important attempt at domestic 3A games, has probably exceeded its initial sales and ratings from the current point of view. At the same time, the game science team has the opportunity to continuously improve the quality of the game and win the recognition of more players through continuous updates and optimizations.

"Black Myth: Wukong" Metecritic score

The launch of "Black Myth: Wukong" is undoubtedly an important node in the history of the development of the domestic game industry, and the challenges and opportunities it faces will become the driving force for the industry to move forward. As a player and an observer of the industry, you need to have both enthusiasm and expectation, as well as appropriate rationality and patience.

I believe that with the passage of time, Black Myth: Wukong will surely find its true place in the global game market.

After a long journey of 3A, it can be said that the journey of the game's official launch of "Black Myth: Wukong" can be regarded as the real beginning, so we might as well wait and see how this experience continues to unfold.

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