Chinese Video/Computer Games

Does anyone have thoughts on the break-down in relations between Blizzard and NetEase that is resulting in World of Warcraft, Overwatch, etc. being switched off in China?

it has been a while since I last played a Ubisoft game, how in earth did things come apart like this

solarz said:

I got hooked on Civ 6 recently. There are some things that are a definite improvement over earlier entries. The Chinese unique unit is now the Crouching Tiger, an actual historical Ming Dynasty weapon, instead of the old fictional chu-ko-nu. Qin Shihuang also speaks in classical Chinese, which was a very nice touch.

Unfortunately the series is still heavily Western centric. The description of the eras are based on European culture. Fully half of the playable civilizations are European, or of European culture. The civics are the worst offenders: there's a civic called colonialism!

Policies like serfdom and colonial offices are fine, because you can choose not to use them. A civic, however, is part of the tech tree and you have to get them. This is a real slap in the face to those cultures who have suffered from the depredations of European colonialism.

Colonialism also allows you to declare colonial warfare, which results in lesser warmonger penalties. This is an amusing though perhaps unintended reflection of Western culture's lack of concern over their own warmongering.

Finally, it looks like Mao Zedong is not going to be in Civ 6 at all. The new Rulers of China pack features Yongle, another version of Qin Shihuang, and Wu Zetian.

Personally, I miss leading China to world domination as Chairman Mao.

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I don't like Civilization series very much. There is too much randomness, I think the geographical environment is an important factor determining the characteristics of civilization.
Once players are assigned to a bad map in the game, they often choose to restart the game. Because the characteristics of many civilizations are closely related to the geographical environment, although the game makers guarantee that there will not be too much deviation through preset values, once the terrain is slightly unsatisfactory, it will mean that the game will be very difficult.

The most important thing is that this game has nothing to do with history. All its design elements are for the game.
Unfortunately, this kind of game is doomed to be monopolized by a few manufacturers. Although "Humankind" is ambitious, it is still not able to compete with Civilization series. However, this game has some advantages in the design of the evolution of civilization.

Paradox Interactive obviously has a completely different idea，they prefer to focus on specific historical periods. Of course, they also repeatedly violated CPC's political correctness and were strictly restricted.
Although I very much hope that China can produce the same works, the serious crime of "historical nihilism" is enough to keep any game producer away from the historical theme - after all, history is a fact that has happened, and no other possibility of assuming history is allowed.

zhangjim said:

I don't like Civilization series very much. There is too much randomness, I think the geographical environment is an important factor determining the characteristics of civilization.
Once players are assigned to a bad map in the game, they often choose to restart the game. Because the characteristics of many civilizations are closely related to the geographical environment, although the game makers guarantee that there will not be too much deviation through preset values, once the terrain is slightly unsatisfactory, it will mean that the game will be very difficult.

The most important thing is that this game has nothing to do with history. All its design elements are for the game.
Unfortunately, this kind of game is doomed to be monopolized by a few manufacturers. Although "Humankind" is ambitious, it is still not able to compete with Civilization series. However, this game has some advantages in the design of the evolution of civilization.

Paradox Interactive obviously has a completely different idea，they prefer to focus on specific historical periods. Of course, they also repeatedly violated CPC's political correctness and were strictly restricted.
Although I very much hope that China can produce the same works, the serious crime of "historical nihilism" is enough to keep any game producer away from the historical theme - after all, history is a fact that has happened, and no other possibility of assuming history is allowed.

Click to expand...

I had actually been thinking about a civ-like 4X game with a Chinese history background, and I think the best option would be a game based on the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era. You can choose one of the famous States, or maybe a famous leader. You can research tech, and hire the myriad of famous people in this period. Maybe you could be King Wuling of Zhao, and hire Wu Zixu as your general, or you could follow one of the philosophies from the Hundred Schools of Thought.

I always wanted more Chinese focussed The Settlers/city builder games. Think Rise of the Middle Kingdom with modern graphics and animation. There's something really relaxing creating, maintaining and expanding supply chains.

zhangjim said:

I don't like Civilization series very much. There is too much randomness, I think the geographical environment is an important factor determining the characteristics of civilization.
Once players are assigned to a bad map in the game, they often choose to restart the game. Because the characteristics of many civilizations are closely related to the geographical environment, although the game makers guarantee that there will not be too much deviation through preset values, once the terrain is slightly unsatisfactory, it will mean that the game will be very difficult.

The most important thing is that this game has nothing to do with history. All its design elements are for the game.
Unfortunately, this kind of game is doomed to be monopolized by a few manufacturers. Although "Humankind" is ambitious, it is still not able to compete with Civilization series. However, this game has some advantages in the design of the evolution of civilization.

Paradox Interactive obviously has a completely different idea，they prefer to focus on specific historical periods. Of course, they also repeatedly violated CPC's political correctness and were strictly restricted.
Although I very much hope that China can produce the same works, the serious crime of "historical nihilism" is enough to keep any game producer away from the historical theme - after all, history is a fact that has happened, and no other possibility of assuming history is allowed.

Click to expand...

One complaint I have with the Paradox series is the historical determinism that is present in all their games. Because the fundamental systems the games are built on are biased towards this view, even their more sandboxy games result in nonsensical scenarios.

Why do institutions (Renaissance, Colonialism, Printing Press, etc) in Europa Univeralis 4 always show up in Europe? Why are non-West European units always inferior in pips (base values for unit effectiveness) in the series?
Why does the US in the Victoria series always have higher immigration draw?
Why do nations in the Heart of Iron series always follow the same historical paths? Why are resources limited based on historical time of discovery regardless of how undeveloped a nation was in that period and not how industrialized it has become in the game?

In reality there is a complex interplay of institutions and social-economic factors that leads to this sort of determinism. But these "historical" games often have the player occupy an almost omnipresent, omniscient deity-level of control over their nation which by definition breaks down and through the conditions that created the determinism. For example, you can potentially industrialize China in the Victoria series quite early but then why does the Taiping Rebellion still happen?


So there is a conflict between how the games function, which is as an immortal Great Man theory, and how the games are thematically set, which is as historical determinism. The conflict causes Paradox games to be absurd and results in historical nihilism. The nations in the West are always inexplicably and fundamentally better than the non-Western nations in their games regardless of the material conditions developed through gameplay.

For China to produce the same work, they would need to resolve that conflict in order to move past the historical nihilism generated. Dropping the Great Man aspects would push the game closer to the Koei Romance of the Three Kingdoms series (forcing RPG-style character stories rather than any big picture). Dropping historical determinism would push the game closer to the likes of Civilization. For the "historical" player, neither of the two options are appealing. It's not a particularly easy conflict to resolve without devolving the game into either category. I don't think it'll happen any time soon and if it does it will not resemble the Paradox games at all.

solarz said:

I had actually been thinking about a civ-like 4X game with a Chinese history background, and I think the best option would be a game based on the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era. You can choose one of the famous States, or maybe a famous leader. You can research tech, and hire the myriad of famous people in this period. Maybe you could be King Wuling of Zhao, and hire Wu Zixu as your general, or you could follow one of the philosophies from the Hundred Schools of Thought.

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Oriental Empires, this should be the closest game to your requirements, but there are only two or three people in the production team, so this game is not perfect.

Staedler said:

One complaint I have with the Paradox series is the historical determinism that is present in all their games. Because the fundamental systems the games are built on are biased towards this view, even their more sandboxy games result in nonsensical scenarios.

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This is a very difficult task for the game production team: players always seem to complain that other regions without their own intervention have not developed normally according to the historical trend.

But the historical development in reality is a butterfly effect. Who can imagine that the decline of Spain and the closure of Japan's borders will lead the Ming Dynasty into a serious precious metal crisis?
The production team adopted a relatively simple method to ensure that the "script" can work properly.

For China to produce the same work, they would need to resolve that conflict in order to move past the historical nihilism generated. Dropping the Great Man aspects would push the game closer to the Koei Romance of the Three Kingdoms series (forcing RPG-style character stories rather than any big picture). Dropping historical determinism would push the game closer to the likes of Civilization. For the "historical" player, neither of the two options are appealing. It's not a particularly easy conflict to resolve without devolving the game into either category. I don't think it'll happen any time soon and if it does it will not resemble the Paradox games at all.

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In general, this is very difficult, because it needs to be tried and improved constantly, and the pressure of political censorship makes the attempt a high-risk behavior.
In CIV6, attacking barbarians will be regarded as "colonialism", and it is a criminal act to be able to play a fascist country in the game. Considering that many film and television works in the past could not be released because they violated the political correctness of "national unity", there was also a risk in making the theme of ancient China.

BlackWindMnt said:

I always wanted more Chinese focussed The Settlers/city builder games. Think Rise of the Middle Kingdom with modern graphics and animation. There's something really relaxing creating, maintaining and expanding supply chains.

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I think there's a game like that in Steam. I forget the name, but I remember it was pretty hot.

solarz said:

I think there's a game like that in Steam. I forget the name, but I remember it was pretty hot.

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Last year there was a beta for a game called Celestial Empire, which is what i was looking for i should check out if its already released.

A Type 055 Renhai lays the pain on a Type 003 and a Ford class carrier in the mobile game Modern Warships. Recently Gaijin Entertainment, the makers of War Thunder, has worked out an agreement with Artstorm, the developers of Modern Warships, to bring the mobile game to PC.