A glimpse into the rising indie game scene in China

Let me take you through the most interesting games I discovered at WePlay!

I had the honour of presenting an Excellent in Innovation Award at the Indieplay 2018 awards to developers Moyuwan Games.

Melt Into is one of the most unique and most beautiful games I’ve played this year.

Created for a game jam and only a few minutes long, the player must protect a group of white circles. If the circles stray outside the safety of the ‘nest’, (which could be interpreted as the body of a parent) the child perishes. I’ve never seen this game mechanic before, but it instantly reminded me of the 400 eggs in the opening of Finding Nemo. It’s incredibly effective at getting the audience (or at least me) to project a lot of emotion onto abstract shapes.

Developer ‘Terry’ Yu Tian told me the game idea came from a certain sea creature whose offspring when born, must survive a journey from the sea surface to the seabed. “It is also a metaphor of human reproduction”, he told me. “It is a story about sacrifice, hardships of life”.

Boku Boku is a sandbox mobile game for kids, with an emphasis on creativity and delightful interactions over combat (although there’s playful combat if you want it). It supports realtime multiplayer across connected mobile devices. The Hong Kong based developer had brought along his eight year old son, who is also the game’s primary tester.

Content warning: Suicide

So, to find such creative works and such passionate developers at WePlay was a real surprise and delight. To better understand how this scene had emerged so rapidly and what was driving it I interviewed Simon Zhu, founder of China Indie Game Alliance (CiGA), who organises WePlay Expo.

“I used to set up indie game and serious games forums in 2010 but with very very few attendees,” Zhu remembers. “The more important thing is the market change from 2012–2014. Tons of mobile games appeared in China, capital was crazy, games rushed for gold, companies copied each other. There were very low quality games. Domestic platforms and stores rated games by user acquisition and efficiency of collecting money. The market was twisted.”

Zhu points to late 2014 as a turning point. “There were some indie-like games that appeared on App Store which received good feedback. The traditional channels and platforms were losing credit from consumers while a new young generation become more careful on picking games instead of [playing whatever was pushed onto them]. In 2015, some successful indie games [attracted attention] from big companies and publishing channel/platforms, they began to look for some games with good gameplay.”

This may be one reason why game jams seem so popular with Chinese indies. Trying new ideas and ways of working in the scope of a jam is a lot less risky than trying to bootstrap a studio. Game jams also help local developers get used to smaller scopes and more freeform ideas, which they are unlikely to get experience at while working at China’s enormous mega-studios.

The emergence of smaller, more expressive works is directly connected with shifts in the major distribution platforms.

Android publishing is hugely complicated in China due to the proliferation of storefronts and the emphasis on free-to-play and user acquisition. But iOS is relatively simple and has stronger support for paid games, for both domestic and international markets.

Chinese culture traditionally places a high value on ‘harmony’ and ‘saving face’. To maintain this sense of order, the government tightly controls what can be said in the media, popular entertainment and the internet.

Wesley Bao is the co-founder of Coconut Island, publisher of Chinese Parents. “In China, there is almost no such game before… a game related to the real Chinese life, modern life,” he told me.

“Parenting and education are big topics, and Chinese people have a different parenting culture with westerners. Players have an opportunity to re-experience their growth, and make decisions about their growth from the perspective of their parents. After all [of this], they will understand what and why their parents did as they grew up, that makes this game have a certain humanistic spirit inside. Chinese Parents is not a perfect game, but it did a very good (and simple) execution in this topic”.

Where most westerners were introduced to games in arcades or on home PCs or consoles, Chinese players encountered games much later. Many had their first game experiences playing on low-spec PCs in smoke-filled internet cafes, or on their mobile phones, in the early 2000s. Zhu describes this as a “lack of synchronized game history [with] other countries”.

For Chinese players, free-to-play, pay-to-win and social integration are the norm, as that’s what they’ve always known. But Chinese gaming habits are evolving and diversifying rapidly. Massive online games still rule, but many players are interested in alternative experiences, with original ideas. It means that Chinese developers can now make games for their own country, in their native language. “Back then, 2010–2012, most of the audience of my games are not in China, but now China is the biggest market for us. More and more players are looking for something new,” comments Bao.

China’s late introduction to gaming may be a great benefit to the indie scene. In the West, many indie blockbusters look to the past, remixing and paying tribute to the games that the developers grew up with. Without the pull of nostalgia, Chinese indies seem more eager to take up new, progressive ideas.

Overseas developers are starting to pay attention to this huge potential pool of players. Paradox developer Robin Ras of Rusty Lake found that his booth at Indie Megabooth was constantly crowded, due to the game’s enthusiastic coverage in the press.

Industries of Titan developer Brace Yourself Games brought five team members to get a taste for the local scene. I asked Producer/Community Manager Cindy Chow about her experience. “It was really interesting to see the different aspects of the games shown at WePlay versus at a western convention. Specifically, it helped us better understand what criteria appealed most to the local audience”, she told me.

The emerging Chinese indie game scene still faces many challenges. Chinese developers lag behind their Western counterparts in knowledge and experience. The language barrier will continue to be a challenge for publishing and for learning from international counterparts. Many indie distribution channels fly under the radar of government regulation and censorship, but it’s likely just a matter of time before the government exerts complete control.

We expect that China will continue to be a large and important audience on our future projects. I’m looking forward to returning to China regularly so that I can continue building relationships there, and to keep up with this vibrant, creative scene.

Thanks to Frankie Huang for attempted editing.

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