Why Successful Games in China Rarely Obtain the Equivalent Success in the West
Easy answer: because they suck.<p>Players in China are used to outright horrible software (QQ, Qihoo 360, and in fact the majority of Chinese-produced software installed on a Windows computer of a typical user), bland repetitive art, bugs, grinding and paying to win.<p>A strong nationalistic sentiment makes Chinese players favour games based on their culture and history, which is mostly unknown outside of China because of how closed the country has been for centuries and the &quot;foreign barbarians can&#x27;t possibly understand our culture&quot; attitude. In addition, the content is usually limited to the Four Great Classical Novels because that&#x27;s the only thing a Chinese layman is familiar with. But also, due to censorship, it is impossible to use more interesting settings without getting unwanted attention from the government. A recent development in censorship is [1], which bans the use of Traditional Chinese characters (as opposed to the simplified ones in use after the Communist Party takeover and which are in use in all Chinese-speaking countries outside the PRC) and English words.<p>Combined with a large potential player base and lack of foreign competition, even the most atrocious abomination of a game can make some money in the internal market.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techinasia.com&#x2F;mobile-game-devs-pissed-chinas-censorship-rules" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techinasia.com&#x2F;mobile-game-devs-pissed-chinas-ce...</a>