Published : 27/09/2025
For young people, video games are an important part of daily life and, to some extent, a window to understanding the world.
Nowadays, Chinese-made video games have become a new field for China's cultural exports, with a succession of outstanding domestic productions gaining increasing popularity and recognition worldwide.
Overseas revenue of Chinese-developed games set to exceed 20 bln USD in 2025
According to an industry report, the overseas revenue of games independently developed in China reached 9.001 billion USD in the first half of 2025, a year-on-year increase of over 11%, with the incremental growth leading the world.
A white paper further predicts that for the full year of 2025, the overseas revenue of China's independently developed games will break the 20 billion USD mark.
Speaking of Chinese-made video games that are popular at home and abroad, Black Myth: Wukong, developed by Chinese video game company Game Science, is certainly on the list.
It is hailed as China's first "AAA game", selling 10 million copies in just three days after its release, and has since grossed over 11 billion RMB.
In fact, from game development to global distribution, Chinese-made video games are moving towards quality refinement, especially by deeply integrating elements of Chinese culture into the gameplay, narrative, and artistic style, thereby reshaping the gaming experience.
Black Myth and Genshin Impact: Creating masterworks with Chinese culture
Taking Black Myth: Wukong (黑神話：悟空) as an example, its main and side quests are designed based on the worldview and setting of Journey to the West (《西遊記》), one of China's Four Great Classical Novels.
While striving to faithfully represent the novel, it also incorporates numerous elements of traditional Chinese culture into the product's development and design process.
Black Myth: Wukong shifts the expression of Chinese culture from stereotypes to a more nuanced and authentic representation. Chinese game developers, through innovative cultural narratives, merge mythology, history, and modern technology to reshape the image of Chinese culture on the global gaming stage.
The mobile game Genshin Impact (原神), developed by miHoYo (米哈遊), is another example.
In 2020, the Chinese-made video game Genshin Impact burst onto the scene, breaking the monopolistic position of the United States and Japan in the games industry and taking the world by storm in just two years.
At the end of 2022, the mobile version of Genshin Impact ranked second on the global games revenue chart with an income of nearly 190 million USD.
Although it is just a mobile game, Genshin Impact possesses astonishingly rich Chinese cultural substance. It utilises technologies such as digital reconstruction to present to players the unique musical styles of Chinese classical music.
It also recreates the topography of certain regions in China, for example, "Huaguang Stone Forest" (華光林) which closely resembles Zhangjiajie (張家界), and "Luhua Pool" (綠華池) which is similar in form to Jiuzhaigou (九寨溝).
Furthermore, Genshin Impact also skilfully integrates intangible cultural heritage from various regions of China, reproducing ancient folk customs like shadow puppetry and Nuo opera (儺戲).
Chinese video games exporting culture through innovation
In the internet age, video games are undoubtedly a common language for young people all over the world. Facing the cultural "invasion" brought by foreign games, the overseas expansion of China's domestic video games has entered a new stage of intensive and meticulous cultivation.
This involves delving deep into the cultural core, evoking emotional resonance, and then using new technologies to empower immersive experiences and inspire the power of user co-creation.
Chinese video games are telling the unique China story to the whole world in a more confident and innovative way, which is both a new key to commercial success and a new portrayal of the export of China's soft power.
Read more: miHoYo's Liu Wei who creates Genshin Impact
Read more: Story of Yang Qi, art director of Black Myth: Wukong