Since MiHoYo launched Genshin Impact in 2020, there has been an irreversible shift in perception across the gaming industry and among many gamers: can free-to-play mobile games really be any good?
I’m being a bit cynical here, as there’s undeniably been quality free-to-play mobile games produced before, but Genshin Impact went a step further. It set a new benchmark for what you could, and should, expect from a free-to-play mobile game: AAA-level production and presentation, an expansive open world to explore, rich narrative and lore, an art style of near-universal appeal, gameplay and progression that doesn’t necessarily rely on endless grinding and cheap looping mechanics, and yes, gacha elements.
You could say that Genshin Impact had all the ingredients of a full-fledged AAA game for consoles and PC. Even more ambitious, MiHoYo released the game on different platforms: mobile (iOS/Android), PC, PS4, and PS5. While not unprecedented, this distribution approach, coupled with all the aforementioned elements, propelled the game to immense success worldwide (almost 60 million people enjoy it today). It was a disruptive launch and caused a stir throughout the industry.
Since Genshin Impact, MiHoYo followed its own formula by releasing other ambitious titles that shared some of the same elements (2023's Honkai: Star Rail and this year's Zenless Zone Zero) and more Chinese studios followed suit.
Wuthering Waves, an open-world RPG developed by Chinese company Kuro Games, launched in May and had over 30 million registered players at launch. This title more or less follows this trend, but it is further enhanced by the recently revealed Neverness to Everness (yes, that's a real title).
Neverness to Everness (NTE) is developed by Suzhou-based Hotta Studio, the creators of Tower of Fantasy, a title that also shares some similarities with Genshin Impact and other games of this “new wave.” A lengthy gameplay trailer has been released, showcasing what some people online are describing as a “GTA 6 anime before GTA 6.” The 13-minute video shows us a sprawling open world that mixes fantasy elements with Japanese futuristic aesthetics, cyberpunk, and gameplay ranging from GTA to Persona, a multitude of JRPGs, action-adventure, and more.
It's a lot, a lot of it, a lot of it, maybe even overwhelming, but it's also very engaging, extremely ambitious, and yes, it's free. And it's coming to mobile, PC, and consoles.
So if you're a developer of $70 AAA console games, are you already feeling the pressure? You should be. I'd say games like these are literally putting more traditional publishers and developers to the test, as more and more gamers are asking why they should pay more for games, when titles like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, and the soon-to-be-released NTE are all free-to-play.
As discussed in Gaming Industry.biz On multiple occasions over the past few weeks, these games have certainly been a more tempting alternative to the $20 iOS ports of console blockbusters, which (perhaps unsurprisingly) have struggled to sell.
I want to highlight once again that most of these free-to-play Chinese games follow similar distribution strategies to release their titles on different platforms. This allows for an expansion of the traditional audience for these types of games, which would normally be associated with mobile devices, but also drives more regular PC and console gamers to switch to mobile. The results and rewards of this strategy are yet to be seen in their full potential, as future iterations of these IPs will benefit from massive audiences that we have not yet fully reached in our current state of the industry, I believe.
China's development speed
“Chinese speed” is a common saying used to explain how quickly everything happens in China, particularly since the beginning of this century. Idea generation, R&D, production and distribution seem to happen almost overnight in China, with different Chinese brands quickly outpacing their international counterparts in different industries. The same is happening to some extent in the gaming industry.
As I mentioned, Genshin Impact came out in 2020, late 2020. That was less than four years ago, and the impact and influence of this new wave of Chinese games has already been very profound in the industry. These are some of the most popular games on the planet right now. How can the output be so immense in such a short time from a handful or less of studios? China Speed.
I don’t want to fall into stereotypes or generalizations about China, its society, and its people, but it’s well known how aggressively competitive life and work can be in hectic modern China. While many developers in other markets sometimes get caught up and entangled in discourses, local politics, regulations, and other social and cultural issues, in China things get done. For better or worse, there’s this general mentality of just doing it. Today. Now. There’s no reason to wait.
So if you're a developer of $70 AAA console games, are you feeling the pressure yet? You should be.
This also applies to Chinese developers, as we see full AAA-type productions being developed and released sometimes within a year of development. A stark contrast to equivalent projects elsewhere, which often take at least two or three years to complete. It’s not just about “hard work,” sacrifice, or abusive working conditions; I would say it’s mostly about working smart. Chinese developers are early adopters of new tools and technologies, often optimizing existing ones and creating their own in-house. If there is something that can speed up the process and make things more efficient, you can be sure that Chinese developers will adopt it wherever possible. I could go on about this and how AI tools are being used in China to a wider degree than anywhere else, but that’s a whole other (and very big) topic in itself.
However, I do want to mention that from a management perspective, Chinese corporations generally tend to be extremely efficient at ensuring productivity: from top to bottom, and from hiring to the bottom line, there is one common element in the management methods of most medium and large companies in China that virtually all local staff are familiar with and that facilitates the workflow. And I say this as someone who has been working in Chinese corporations in China for the past 13 years.
Identity crisis?
Not everything is rosy and positive when it comes to this “new wave of Chinese games,” as I call them. Most of these open-world, gacha-focused, anime-like RPGs are visually very similar to each other. The use of the anime art style is itself derivative, as it is entirely influenced by Japanese video games, anime, and manga. Still, between the different anime properties throughout the decades, Japanese artists have cultivated and developed different styles.
The impact and influence of this new wave of Chinese games has already been very profound in the industry.
However, Chinese developers seem to insist on maintaining a very particular style and, so far, they have remained faithful to it. This is generating an identity crisis between these games, as it would not be surprising if the public found it difficult to distinguish them from each other.
While these titles have managed to find an audience and, in some cases, immense success (for now), it is predictable that this “stagnant” inspiration can become a problem and lead to rapid saturation.
I see two outcomes as a result: either Chinese games that adopt this aesthetic will increasingly take over the Japanese games market share and audiences around the world (some of these Chinese games are already very popular in Japan), or developers in China will eventually adapt and diversify their offerings. We'll most likely see a combination of both.
Whatever happens, the creations of Chinese developers in recent years have been irreversibly disruptive, proving that more can be done, faster and with quality. Many international developers and publishers are still somewhat indifferent to this phenomenon, but they are not.
Daniel Camilo is a business and game development consultant based in Shenzhen, China.