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Chinese entertainment — and to a lesser degree, East Asian entertainment generally — is dominating Western markets. Their products appear to be organically favored by Westerners. The Chinese-made video game Black Myth Wukong was released this week and is now sitting on Steam’s top 10 list for concurrent playercount and user favorability. It sits next to Elden Ring, a Japanese-made video game. The Chinese-designed 2020 Call of Duty Mobile game has made ~4bn lifetime revenue and has 60,000,000 monthly players; a Western-designed Warzone attempted to dethrone it this year and is unanimously considered a failure, losing most of its playerbase in the first month. Genshin Impact and PUBG mobile are other highly popular mobile games led by Chinese studios. Tik Tok is the most used social media company and is a Chinese product. League of Legends (130 million monthly active) is Chinese. Final Fantasy and Lost Ark are the most popular MMORPGs this year, Japanese and Korean respectively. Korean shows are increasingly popular in the West (and have actually slanted Korean tourism in favor of female tourists), and I don’t need to note anime and manga.
What explains this? Wukong in particular appears to be a genuinely loved game, and it makes no overtures to Western culture — it is firmly Chinese in story, music, and art design. IMO there’s likely American propaganda floating around against Chinese entertainment (billions in revenue on the line which compounds), but despite this the products are favored. So I feel safe saying that their products are better. So what has led China, and East Asia generally, to make better entertainment than America and Europe for Western audiences?
It's more so East Asia than China. Japan through behemoths like Nintendo & Sony have dominated gaming since day 1. Korea has always had a strong E-sports and Mmorpg offering as far back as the mid-2000s.
For its size, China hasn't produced any recent creative works of note. 3 body problem is the only one I can think of. That's 1 international & critical success in my lifetime. Chinese manhua sucks. Their music sucks. Their games are serviceable at best. They haven't produced novels and art of note. And their movies, most of all, suck major balls. Freemium games, gambling simulators and perfect recreations of Mozart don't count. We all know the Chinese can copy better than any known people on earth.
Clearly it isn't a racial problem, because HongKong has shown itself to be capable of amazing art, especially movies. Chinese-Americans also seem to be doing decently in the contemporary art scene. But mainland china is a creative desert. I won't bury the lede, Communism kills creativity. USSR faced the same issue, which led to the surprising popularity of Bollywood in nations that were behind the iron curtain.
That beings us to Wukong, the one exception. It's right there in the name. Sun Wukong draws entirely from 'Journey to the West', a Buddhist epic. It is book with religious significance. It almost feels on the nose, but Wukong is one of India's only enduring cultural influences on China, and it shows.
Part of me is offended by this question. America makes amazing entertainment, year over year. They are in a little slump with gaming, but that's about it. What you're noticing, is a slow return to a balance. Not everything is American anymore. America shares the top with England, Korea, India & Japan for top tier entertainment. East Asia is 1.5 billion people. Many of whom are in 1st world nations that are past the lowest tier of Maslow's pyramid. They have rich original cultures and aren't derivative of western myth or philosophy. Why won't they produce great art with global reach ? Ofc they do. China's historic underperformance here is the more confusing statistic. The rest of East Asia doing well is honestly, pretty expected.
Well, not day one. The first big hit was Pong, from Atari, which despite its name was an American company.
Huh, I never knew. Always thought it was Japanese.
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