Practitioners spoke highly of the Chinese video game "Black Myth: Wukong", inspired by the ancient Chinese fairy tale "Journey to the West", as a trendy integration of Chinese traditional culture into a video game product with high quality production and audiovisual experience, and expect more inspiration from Chinese culture in cultural creative industries.
Developed by Hangzhou-based Game Science, "Black Myth: Wukong" is believed to be the first Chinese AAA video game, which refers to a game produced and distributed by a mid-sized or large publisher, typically with higher development and marketing budgets.
As of noon on Wednesday, the second day after its official launch, the game has sold a total of more than 4.5 million copies and generated more than 1.5 billion yuan (about 210 million U.S. dollars) in revenue on various game platforms around the world. On Steam, it topped the "most played games" list in many countries and regions and received 95 percent positive user reviews.
Many players were impressed by the style and mechanics of the game when they first played it.
"As soon as the game was released, we downloaded it and installed it on our booth equipment for people to try. Many people did not want to quit after playing it. This game is popular in the whole market," said Liu Guipiao, manager of an Internet cafe in Shenzhen.
The main character of the game is inspired by the literary figure of Sun Wukong or Monkey King. Wei Ming, CEO of MOREVFX, the game's visual designer, said they made great efforts to renovate the classic character.
"We reconstructed the head and hair of the main character, Wukong. It took us about three or four months to put it into the game using a movie-level digital character production process," he said.
Much of the game's environment was derived from traditional Chinese buildings and landscapes. The game also introduced many mythological characters and stories to enrich its narrative.
"It has a good start. The art style of the whole screen is Chinese painting style, which gives a strong visual impact," said Tong, a player in Hangzhou.
Cultural researchers said that the combination of traditional culture and modern cultural products has great potential.
"The game's narrative not only the integrates the original story of Journey to the West, but it also adds many of its own creative parts, such as the opening sequence where the Monkey King fights Erlang Shen," said Li Xuanxin, a digital media technology lecturer at Zhejiang Communication University.
"Mainly based on the innovative transformation and development of traditional culture, we can bring our Chinese mythology and cultural traditions in different regions into video games and build a huge industry," said Wang Yinshen, a researcher with the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences.
"This type of game has a common cultural context and story background with its players, which gives a sense of immersion. There are still a lot of opportunities in the creative industry," said Zhao Xuan, secretary general of the Zhejiang Provincial Game Industry Association.
"Black Myth: Wukong" integrates Chinese culture into video game, creates buzz: practitioners
