Well, this probably won’t come as a surprise to most industry observers: Chinese PC gamers prefer foreign games to Chinese-developed ones. In a poll conducted by popular gaming site 17173 with more than 8,000 respondents, 84% said they preferred imported PC games while just 16% said they liked domestic games better.
That’s tough news (although likely not much of a surprise) for Chinese game companies, which have been ramping up their efforts over the past few years to produce top-quality PC games in an effort to compete with foreign, and especially Korean, imports.
So what’s the problem with these new, better-looking domestically-produced games? Money. Many Chinese gamers feel that domestically developed games are too focused on nickel-and-diming them to death; foreign games may cost more up front but at least they’re not begging you for money every few minutes.
In the comments on the 17173 article, for example, commenters raged about the monetization schemes in Chinese games. “Among domestic developers and publishers, I haven’t found one that’s balanced making a profitable game and making a fun game well,” wrote one commenter. Quality is another problem, of course. “[Chinese games right now] are just mediocre,” wrote another commenter, “there’s no basic creativity, and the publishers are evil.”
Chinese developers have some pretty interesting-looking games in the pipeline, but unfortunately if they want to catch up with the foreign games that dominate China’s top 10 PC games list, they’re going to need to address not only game quality issues but also the massive lack of trust Chinese gamers apparently have in their brands, and the made-in-China brand as a whole, right now.
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