There seems to be a relatively mainstream view in the domestic game industry. Yes, China is one of the largest digital gaming products, but most of them are subpar for various reasons. When it comes to game development and production, it is generally believed that China could be in line with international standards. 

The things that seem to be lacking, for the most part, is originality, policy, social development, market, player quality, and developer mentality. These elements are very important, so before the discussion, let’s look at this hypothesis: assuming that the country strongly supports the gaming industry, there is no threshold for creativity. Under this idealized assumption, there is also a conclusion that can be made. The current game development and production in China is still at a level of 10-15 years behind other countries. In other words, there is definitely a gap between China and foreign countries. 

However, China seems to be blindly optimistic. All industries have one thing in common and that is to keep abreast of technology, please their audience, and continue to come up with good products and services. Like China and the gaming industry, the same is true for agencies or companies that have to seek alternative options for standing out and for maintaining a high degree of customer satisfaction. You would see the same thing we are talking about if you were to ask someone in London how an escort improves their reviews and how it changes the dynamics of the industry. 

You would obviously find that this is important for any industry and any business. All industries have to stay true to their craft and deliver what people seek. Now, let’s take a look at the past.

The Past

Let’s take a look at what happened in the gaming industry in 2009 about ten years ago. 

* Game of the Year: 

* Uncharted 2

* Halo 3: ODST

* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

* Resident 

* Evil 5Ricky and Ding Dong: Time and Space Crack

* Demon Soul

* And many more

At present, there is no team in China other than Hong Kong and Taiwan, that can produce works of the same quality under the same resource conditions. 10 years sounds like a long time, but let’s make a simple calculation: an average of 3 years is the development period, and 10 years is the time period for creating a new IP trilogy. 

Assuming that China can produce 5 new game developments in the next 10 years, the ideal situation is only 5 of China’s IP, a total of 15 games, and considering the generational leap, China must discard old things and learn new stuff.

The Programs 

There is no shortage of good programs in China, but the requirements of the game industry for programs are completely different from those of the Internet industry. A heavy game player has a deep understanding of various games and of certain types of games. This is extremely important for the gameplay program. 

The gameplay program is equivalent to the designer of the game system. If you don’t think about what is fun, the purely mechanized realization of functions results in absolutely no fun for the player. 

The skillset requires a wide range of data structures, algorithms, computer hardware, spatial geometry, mathematics, physics, optics, and software development. Professional knowledge is often not required in the Internet industry, and there is a lack of efficient self-learning channels. 

Game Design

Design can be tested, verified, and improved, and not just pure brainstorming and whim. The China game design itself is repetition, but several creative processes commonly used in other countries have not been introduced into practice in China. The development status of stand-alone games is still a small workshop model, which is extremely confusing for large projects. 

The Inefficiency

Many designers have weak technical backgrounds and lack the ability to write scripts and use the necessary software. Even the basic concepts of game development, such as events, space transformation, collision volume, etc. are not familiar to them. 

There is a lack of team leaders who have experience in successful gaming technology creation, that is, game directors and creative directors that are commonly referred to as such in other countries. Large-scale games are where hundreds of developers work together to explore and move ahead with the creation. If there is no leader with a clear vision and firm goals, the possibility of project failure will be very high.

China Designers

In many cases, designers do not pay attention to emotions and narratives but excessively pursue artificial performance effects. For the current gamers in China, the core of the main design is to learn from foreign gamers and then make micro-innovations. In other words, China’s game developers have become copycats. 

In the initial stage of the industry, appropriate reference and improvement are very valuable, but it also exposes one of the shortcomings, and that is, the ability to refine the core gameplay from scratch, which is basically zero.

Outsourcing Technology

Most of the gaming technology in China is outsourced. The essence of outsourcing is the mechanized and efficient implementation of simple and clear goals by cheap labor. It is the crux of the production chain. 

However, outsourcing cannot be equated with technical content. What others tell you to do, how to do it, and your own control of the core design are two different things. The latter is the real difficulty and threshold. Designers don’t pay as much attention to creativity, composition, perspective, color theory, lighting, physical rendering (PBR), lens use, etc., and they also lack logical thinking. 

There is basically no research conducted and there seems to be no application of cinematography in the games created. There isn’t enough attention to user experience. You can gell by the cheap special effects used by Chinese designers, which is incompatible with those being used on the world stage.

Poor Testing

There is basically no experienced test team, and testers do not take the process or phase seriously. Most of the time, online game players find bugs and then the team waits for the user’s feedback to fix them. This model is completely unsuitable for large-scale stand-alone game development. The lack of testing procedures and tools makes it impossible to reasonably organize and arrange the test plan according to the project development schedule, and generate efficient test results and timely feedback to the development team.

Insufficient attention is paid to the long-term training of testers. In fact, many testers have the idea and goal of becoming designers, but are not technically ready and not fully trained. Yet, they pursue gaming development professions by looking at what other experienced designers are doing abroad and copy the trend and the model. 

Conclusion

It is not clear if the gaming developers in China will ever catch up to the rest of the world. They may be content with being copycats and looking at trends and different models to create games filled with bugs and fixes. We may have to just wait and see what the https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/China’s%20Digital%20Game%20Sector.pdf gaming industry in China does!

@TechmashUK #TechmashUK