It has taken a trickster monkey on a quest for enlightenment to get China’s government and its gaming companies onto the same page. 

The great unifier is Black Myth: Wukong, a hotly anticipated new video game now available on platforms including Sony’s Playstation that puts players in the shoes of Sun Wukong, the fabled Monkey King best known as the main character in the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. 

Wukong has already proved a commercial smash hit, selling more than 10 million copies in the first three days after its debut two weeks ago, bringing in over $450 million for Shenzhen-based developer Game Science, according to data from consultancy Niko Partners. Wukong is China’s first homemade ‘triple-A’ game — an informal classification referring to games with large development budgets that fetch premium prices. The game sells for $38 in China and $60 internationally.

For the Chinese authorities, Wukong not only represents a rare soft power victory for the country’s entertainment sector: It is also a model of what China’s gaming regulators want from the industry. A role-playing game replete with mysticism and combat, Wukong has none of the commercial features typical of most popular Chinese games, which often lure users into paying extra for in-game advantages or entice them to gamble.

That type of game has for years proved highly lucrative for industry giants such as Tencent and NetEase, and helped propel China to become the world’s largest video games market by revenue. But last December, China’s video game regulator rocked the industry when it proposed new rules curtailing in-game spending and gambling features that it feared were both costing consumers and encouraging video games addiction. The proposals wiped $100 million off the value of listed Chinese gaming companies, while the poor handling of the announcement led the official in charge to resign. 

Wukong’s success not only offers regulators a belated potential vindication: it could in turn lead to renewed investor interest in the sector, particularly in premium games, analysts say. 

“Wukong’s commercial and critical success will bring a burst of confidence from investors in developers and publishers looking to create triple-A games,” says Daniel Camilo, a Shenzhen-based independent gaming consultant. “I think we’ll see a rush of hiring and developers pivoting, definitely some big investments and maybe even a bubble happening [in the short term].”

While Wukong is far from China’s first hit video game — titles such as miHoYo’s Genshin Impact and Tencent’s Honor of Kings have large global fan bases — it is the first to achieve commercial success while breaking from the Chinese gaming industry’s conventional ‘free-to-play’ business model. Under free-to-play, games are available to download at no cost, but players are soon inundated with prompts to fork over cash for advantages; while mechanics such as ‘loot boxes’, which resemble slot machines, often appear, dangling the possibility of winning coveted prizes.

This model prevails in large part due to the dominance of mobile gaming in China. A ban on the sale of consoles like the Playstation, lifted only in 2015, meant that many gamers’ first exposure to games was through their smartphones, where users expect free app downloads. Rampant online piracy in the early 2000s meanwhile persuaded many Chinese PC game developers to switch from charging upfront to in-app purchases and microtransactions.

Wukong’s commercial and critical success will bring a burst of confidence from investors in developers and publishers looking to create triple-A games. I think we’ll see a rush of hiring and developers pivoting, definitely some big investments…

Daniel Camilo, a Shenzhen-based independent gaming consultant

But for the Chinese authorities, the extras that enable developers to turn a profit on free-to-play games became a source of ire. The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA)’s proposed new rules in late-December would have set in-game spending limits, banned daily login rewards, and prohibited offering ‘loot boxes’ to minors. 

A Black Myth:Wukong demo event was held in Hangzhou, where Game Science invited over 1000 players to try out the game, August 2023. Credit: Game Science via Bilibili

Game Science, Wukong’s developer, worked on the game for six years prior to its release, meaning plans for how to sell the game preceded December’s proposed restrictions. Its founding developers formerly worked at Tencent, where they launched a similar game to Wukong as a free-to-play title over a decade ago, to a middling reception. They spun out on their own in 2014, taking on investment from Hero Games in 2017 and Tencent in 2021, and opting to develop a premium title. 

Wukong is not immune from the regulator’s core concern about gaming: namely, user addiction. In 2021, the NPPA imposed strict caps on gaming time for under-18s. For now, though, Camilo sees Wukong as mostly standing separate from such worries. 

“A huge barrier for minors to console and PC games is that many of these games are paid,” he says. “They need to have access to payment methods, which immediately locks out a lot of children. I think that changes the perception among authorities, who see these games as for people who are more mature.”

Wukong’s largely positive global reception may also have buoyed the Chinese authorities. About 25 percent of the game’s sales are outside of China, according to Daniel Ahmad, director of research and insights at Niko Partners. Moreover, the game’s design encourages players to immerse themselves in its story in order to solve puzzles and make it through levels, introducing players to a classic Chinese fable. 

“China has long recognized the significance of the gaming industry for cultural influence,” says Yu Haiqing, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University who studies the overseas impact of Chinese digital media. “[Wukong’s] gaming experience boosts domestic consumption, and it tells the China story well.”

That slogan — “tell China’s story well” — has become famous since Chinese leader Xi Jinping invoked it while taking the news anchor’s seat at China Central Television in 2016. State media outlets have duly published a wave of articles lauding Wukong’s cultural influence. The tourism department for Shanxi province, where many of the landscapes in Journey to the West are located, has put out a video showcasing the sites, and has reported a surge in visitors. 

For Game Science, aligning too closely to the government’s line also has risks, as one controversy in the run-up to Wukong’s release shows. The company has been criticized on international social media after it sent reviewers and livestreamers a list of topics to avoid that included “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse.” 

Chinese government censors have grown increasingly sensitive to discourse on feminist activism online in recent years, but RMIT’s Yu says it’s unlikely that the list of topics to avoid came straight from the government. More likely, it is a case of a developer taking excessive caution — a report by gaming outlet IGN had earlier scrutinized claims of sexism at Game Science. 

“[Developers] in the Chinese market often issue directives to try and warn Chinese players of possible issues that people could pick on,” she says. “They know that they have no control over what international players say. This is probably their way to cover themselves, if the Chinese government questions why people are talking about this.”

Analysts agree that Wukong’s success is unlikely to be a one-off: more triple-A games are already in China’s pipeline, such as Last Sentinel, a hotly anticipated big-budget production by Tencent set in a dystopian future Tokyo. 

“Is [Wukong] the future direction for the whole industry? Not necessarily,” says Niko Partners’ Ahmad. “93 percent of players in China in 2023 were on free-to-play. But the success of premium games more recently is pushing that number down. We definitely think this is something the major companies are looking to explore more.”

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