Half a century after the advent of modern gaming, a Chinese studio has captivated the industry for the first time.

On Aug. 19, Shenzhen-based developer Game Science released Black Myth: Wukong, an action game loosely based on the 16th-century classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” In the game, players assume the role of a descendant of Sun Wukong, a simian-humanoid figure of Chinese mythology who, the story goes, accompanied a Buddhist monk on a continent-spanning journey to retrieve sacred scriptures from India and return them to his homeland.

In Black Myth, religious piety takes a back seat to combat. As players embark on a quest to revive their mythical ancestor, set against (and occasionally aiding) them is an impressive rogues’ gallery of yaoguai (semi-human creatures in Chinese folklore). As of the time of writing, I’m just over halfway through the game — I have bested a several-meter-tall, sword-wielding tiger in a pool of blood, a wolf with a flaming halberd whose spirit I now command and a gargantuan scarab beetle whose shell had subsumed the detached head of a Buddhist statue.

'Yaoguai' (semi-human creatures of Chinese folklore) make up the majority of Black Myth: Wukong's enemies.
'Yaoguai' (semi-human creatures of Chinese folklore) make up the majority of Black Myth: Wukong's enemies. | COURTESY OF GAME SCIENCE

In terms of gameplay, Black Myth doesn’t reinvent the wheel of the melee combat boss rush genre (a category where often prohibitively difficult fights against major enemies are broken up by short periods of overworld traversal and minor skirmishes). At times, it even commits some cardinal sins — unavoidable scripted damage, invisible walls blocking off open paths and generic background music that fails to impart the tension of a climactic battle, to name a few. But its average mechanics are buoyed by something the gaming world hasn’t seen on this scale and certainly not with this amount of polish: a faithful portrayal of Chinese mythology, its millennia-deep well of grotesque monsters and majestic deities on full and vivid display.

It’s that cultural authenticity that has struck a chord with gamers around the globe in general but especially so with gamers in China. In just three days after its release, Black Myth has sold more than 10 million copies (equal to 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom over the same time period), and Black Myth now sits No. 2 overall in terms of all-time concurrent player counts (2.4 million) in the history of PC-based Steam digital distribution platform.

Good games draw attention regardless of geography, but something different is happening with Black Myth. According to gaming industry analysis outfit GameDiscoverCo, 3% of Black Myth’s player count is coming from the United States and just 1% from Japan. However, a staggering 88.1% (89.7% if you add in Hong Kong) are playing from mainland China.

The main character of Black Myth: Wukong is a descendant of Sun Wukong (right), a main character in the classic 16th-century Chinese novel
The main character of Black Myth: Wukong is a descendant of Sun Wukong (right), a main character in the classic 16th-century Chinese novel "Journey to the West." | PUBLIC DOMAIN

It is a remarkable achievement for Game Science, a studio founded by former Tencent Games employees. While not quite a rookie studio, Game Science did not have extensive experience developing games like Black Myth, where fine-tuning minute details like the frame-perfect timing of attacks and dodges can mean the difference between a punishingly difficult yet satisfying challenge and a frustrating, tedious slog. In fact, the studio had only released two titles (both relatively incomplex mobile games) after its founding in 2014.

Black Myth does stumble, but the ways it does should mean that Game Science can refine and perfect its approach for the game’s inevitable follow-up. And because of that, the world of AAA games will have to brace itself for a reality in which China, its well-funded studios and its players cannot be ignored.

Unsurprisingly, Chinese state media did not tarry in its praise for Black Myth. In an article detailing how temples and natural sites in rural China are seeing a boost in visitors on the back of the game’s release, the Global Times wrote that Black Myth “marks a new chapter in China's efforts to promote its rich historical and cultural assets.” In a piece published just two days after Black Myth’s release, Xinhua News Agency wrote that “the default language of a triple-A game is no longer English, but Chinese.”

Black Myth: Wukong offers gaming's first portrayal of Chinese mythology at a premium level of polish.
Black Myth: Wukong offers gaming's first portrayal of Chinese mythology at a premium level of polish. | COURTESY OF GAME SCIENCE

This effusion of praise for Black Myth and Game Science comes after several years of relatively harsh treatment of the country’s domestic games industry. In 2021, China’s regulatory National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) issued guidelines restricting children under the age of 12 to just one hour of playtime per day for certain games — an announcement that caused Tencent’s stock price to tumble by 6%. In an article accompanying the news, Xinhua-run news outlet Economic Information Daily referred to games as “spiritual opium” and as an “electronic drug” (before reposting a version of the article with those terms missing). Again in late 2023, a new batch of impending rules on China’s gaming industry caused an $80 billion run in market value, which in turn led to the axing of the NPPA chief this January.

While China’s authorities prevaricated on whether games were the bane of society, development on Black Myth (begun around 2018) continued at Game Science. And now that the game has become a massive success, those same powers that be are all too eager to mobilize it for their own purposes. Somewhere down the line, will the winds shift again in Beijing? If they do, it doesn’t bode well for the development timelines for AAA games that often require consistent effort and progress spanning the better part of a decade.

If they don’t, however, then Black Myth will remain the standard-bearer for prestige games in China, though this can mean games stop being about player mechanics and start being about something else entirely. On Aug. 25, the Steam distribution platform experienced periods of outage for players in China, which caused some users on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter), to speculate whether it was a coordinated attack by foreign hackers to throw a wrench into the gears of Black Myth’s success and thereby kill a rising vanguard of Chinese culture in the crib.

China's domestic games industry has produced many mobile  and online multiplayer games, but those tend to pale in comparison to the complexity and production quality shown in Black Myth: Wukong.
China's domestic games industry has produced many mobile and online multiplayer games, but those tend to pale in comparison to the complexity and production quality shown in Black Myth: Wukong. | REUTERS

Nevermind that Black Myth is a single-player game that doesn’t require an internet connection during gameplay, and those who had already downloaded it could continue to play without issue. Here, the complaint was one of perception — that outages would keep Black Myth from its deserved spot atop the ranks of Steam’s active player count — instead of anything substantively related to the game itself.

With Black Myth, Game Science has done a service to authentic representations of Chinese culture in games, but that might have been the easy part. The hard part in the years to come will be following it up with a sequel that’s not only more technically polished but able to bear the weight of the cultural expectations of an entire country starved for games just like it.