Black Myth: Wukong may have fallen short of the top prize at last year’s The Game Awards in Los Angeles, but China’s often-overlooked gaming industry still ended the night with plenty to celebrate. In addition to taking home the award for Best Action Game, Black Myth also won the Player’s Voice award — beating out three other Chinese-developed titles in the process.

Although big developers and publishers like Sony and Sega dominated the major categories, The Game Awards were reflective of an industry at a crossroads. Gamers, disenchanted by the increasingly meager graphical and gameplay returns, ignored heralded AAA titles like Concord, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Meanwhile, developers are laying off staff as they search for the next big breakthrough.

When asked about the future of gaming at a conference last fall, Marc-Alexis Côté, executive producer and vice president of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, said: “I think we’re in an era of peak change. I don’t know what the industry’s going to be like in five years… We need to find where players are, which has been a question I’ve had for the last two years: Where are the players? What are they playing? Where do we reach them?”

Companies might start their search by looking East. In addition to Black Myth: Wukong, most of the high-profile console games released last year came from Asia, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Stellar Blade, and Metaphor: ReFantazio.

With the exception of Black Myth, all those games originated in Japan or South Korea, but there are reasons for China’s game industry to believe its turn has finally come. Chinese titles like Genshin Impact have long dominated the mobile gaming industry, but Black Myth: Wukong was the missing piece: a “AAA” game worthy of the name.

The most pressing question now is whether another studio can build on that success.

At least two titles are seen by Chinese players as possible contenders. The first is Phantom Blade Zero, a third-person action RPG developed by Beijing’s S-Game. A popular early contender to be the next Black Myth, it’s a wuxia-themed actioner set in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) that’s garnered plenty of buzz at major gaming expos. Ironically, however, the success of Black Myth may work against Phantom Blade Zero, as early reports on its gameplay and art direction now sound overly familiar and derivative.

The good news is that European and American players are probably less exhausted by Ming-set action games than their Chinese counterparts. If the core gameplay is well designed, Phantom Blade Zero may still surprise.

The other hotly anticipated Chinese game of 2025 doesn’t seem very Chinese at all, at least at first glance. Showa American Story, an RPG developed by Nekcom Games in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, is the product of a group of Chinese game designers born in the 1980s who grew up deeply influenced by contemporary Japanese gaming and anime culture. Set in the ’90s and featuring a retro-futuristic fantasy theme, it tells the story of an alternate timeline in which Japan colonizes North America. It’s a provocative setup, and the early trailers have been a hit on Chinese social media.

Black Myth: Wukong was a proof of concept, showing that Chinese console games can win over European and American players — provided the gameplay is good enough. If the core mechanics are done well, it’s still possible that Phantom Blade Zero can recreate the success of Black Myth. Meanwhile, although Showa American Story is the current clubhouse leader, there are also valid concerns over whether the team behind it is focused more on ideas than gameplay, and whether it will be too difficult to follow for European and American players, who are unfamiliar with the context of China’s modern history and its relations in the Asia Pacific.

Which brings us back, once again, to Black Myth: Wukong. The secret to the game’s success overseas did not lie in an active and deliberate attempt to “export Chinese culture.” Instead, it sought to impress players who were unfamiliar with the story, world, and characters of “Journey to the West” with fun, imaginative gameplay. As arguably the best Euro-American-style AAA game of the year, released at a time when Euro-American studios are struggling to connect with players — it was a sign that the Chinese game industry is catching up with, replicating, and even surpassing its European and American counterparts, rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel.

Look at how Genshin Impact revolutionized mobile gaming while borrowing heavily from Japanese-style anime. The “year of Chinese games” that Chinese players have been waiting for is unlikely to be a paradigm shift in which every game is suddenly about China. Rather, it will be a continuation: more, better, and carefully designed AAA games that just happen to come from Chinese studios.

Translator: David Ball; editor: Cai Yineng.

(Header image: A statue of Wukong on display during an exhibition in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Sept. 28, 2024. VCG)