Poll: Will some of AAA soon pander to China like Hollywood?

Japan already does with the Dynasty Warrior games.

There's gonna be a new DW that's gonna be more like AC in production value? Count me in.

Businesses will try to appeal to large wealthy markets, yes. Call it "pandering" if you want, it won't be any worst than the ten thousand "Ooo raaa America **** ya!" military games that have always been made, and not always by American devs...

Well they will be at odd with their own values as the Chinease prefer either white male or Asian heroes.

White males are not very popular among western devs anymore.

Yes and no. China is so incredibly restrictive that the potential profit boost may not be enough. We get a lot of wealthy Chinese students moving to my area in Canada and going to school, buying expensive homes and cars, and then the parents move in after. I've seen kids drive an Audi R8 to Brock University... $200,000 car. Let that sink in. Yes, that's plural... More than one.

So its pandering is its not white america? Last I check companies cater to the market by knowing their audience. This term pandering seem to always be used for inclusion of anything that isn't "just white". If China was the biggest market and the US was an upcoming market any sensible business person would try to get into the US market because its business.

lol conservative males cry over everything these days, now everything is pandering, everything there's an agenda, everything theres a conspiracy theory.

you guys are pathetic.

Makes sense. Is it even happening in AAA games though?

How about side asian characters?

Sounds smart if they're increasing their audience.

What's the root cause of such calling though? I assume Hollywood was mostly white until recently and the global force in international pop media. I'm guessing they weren't the first but was it the first biggest with the best global reach? I could be wrong ofc.

Is pandering usually used as a negative term? It sounds like it makes good business sense in this context.

Yep. Its the word that is typically used when gaming or movies include gay, female, black, asian more or less anything that has not been approved by a loud minority of white males that has no power but has the internet.

Wow. Basically it's "pandering" if it's targeting the growing minority? What's the more positive term? Inclusion or is there a more apt term?

I guess expanding. It all depends on the context. I wouldn't call China a growing minority though. :P

It should be inclusion.

White males are spoiled and they think they run the industry, they tend to forget that there are gamers all around the world from all country, races, ages, gender and sexual preference, but god forbid if those people get a character that represents them in a not stereotipycal ridiculous way, no, if these people are represented as normal, powerful or leading people, they are pandering.

Spoiled brats.

That's a huge jump in logic. I think the internet seriously narrows our viewpoints on these matters, as it represents such a minority of people. Personally, I welcome any gender or nationality into games, but it's when clearly shoehorned that it becomes a problem. It shouldn't be something we have to shove down people's throats.

Anyway, sorry, this is massively off-topic.

@lundy86_4: you know what I mean, obviously not all white males are like this, but those vocal hateful ones sure are.

Not exactly ot.

When's the a good entry time for the minority though? Are there considered good inclusion of the minority? I'm assuming the recent females in games are pretty good but I think they're primarily white? IDK is Lara white?

I don't think we have one for China yet though. Hoping for China God of War heavy fantasy with similar production values.

@recloud: Oh, I guessed at that. I knew you weren't using an absolute, as that would be stupid. Just pointing out that it's a large leap in logic. For example, as little as I care, I felt TLoU2's inclusion of the kiss was a little forced. Had it been inserted in the game without the huge E3 showing, and within context, it would have been great. Showing it up front first of all... Eh...

I don't think a good entry time even matters. I don't care if I control a woman/dude, or a white person/black person/asian person/ whatever... If it makes sense within the game and story, who cares? It's when we see a significant shift among all pubs/devs, that it just comes off as pandering. It's sad, because it undermines the actual point. We're shoehorning minorities for the sake of it, rather than because we are all actual people and should be represented as such.

So basically it has to be a drip than a surge regardless of execution? Don't most inclusions make sense? I am not being rhetoric.

I think the kissing animation was amazing but yeah I don't think it was needed. I guess it makes sense for some language barrier thing to really show they're both gay if the translated subs miss something in context.

Coming into a thread purely to attack someone's point of view must mean you feel really insecure of your own point of views.

More a natural flow than an artificial push. What we're seeing now seems forced, especially given the political climate in the US, and to a lesser extent the rest of the world. With TLoU2, it was clearly forced as it was the first part in their presentation. Being gay shouldn't be a thing to be lauded or demonized, nor should nationality. It's literally a part of human nature.

If it were for the sense of breaking a language barrier, yeah I could see it. With translations as they are now, even bad translations can get the point across. If we need a lesson in nuance, we should all look to the movie Lost in Translation. Absolutely stellar.

@lundy86_4: Yeah I only thought about it when you brought it up. It felt kinda awkward but if it was supposed to be do help with the language barrier/translation/sub thing it probably helps drive the point better.

In general, I guess people ride the waves, the now. I guess it's just growing pains or whatever the proper term is.

I do wonder when most would get desensitized to it though. Probably late the PS5's life cycle. Have to put it in gaming's context.

It seems Sony is the only one with the most powerful gay AAA game and maybe they'll be the ones to do China first unless I missed the new AAA Dynasty Warriors.

@j2zon2591: I think it's being heavily criticized now, but the internet is just a focal point, and not a great representation. I've had two good friends who were gay, and one was where we were young enough that he was never open.

When I went on my ex-gf's cousin's wedding to Jamaica, two gay guys came... The bride told us not to do anything stupid. First thing I did? Made a gay joke... They were the only two who laughed. Point is, people don't need to be pampered to... We're stronger than we are shown to be.

Definitely if the budgets of games continue to go up just like it is for movies in Hollywood they'll need a bigger audience to keep up with them. I already see some games putting in Chinese cosmetics and Chinese themed events. Ubisoft is definitely trying to get into the Chinese market, they've gotten Rainbow Six Siege published there officially. I think the real question is how long will it take for AAAs to do it because Chinese region games almost exclusively on PC and Mobile. It would mean PC would have to be a lead platform again and they can't half ass PC versions of games.

As far as I know DW9 is the only one officially in China and they screwed it up pretty bad with the game not only being broken but the PC version being really broken too.

Great question. I think you might be right.

I guess. I'm still thinking it's just growing pains and the general public would soon get "desensitized" then the media (games, movies, books) will go back to the "majority" since they're still the majority as someone said here, they'll have the most cash. Well, at least until we master human gene manipulation that can be implemented anytime and safely.

Devs always follow the money. And China has loads of them.

I've only seen For Honor with asian looking new characters. Not sure if that's meant for China as I am no expert when it comes to respective armors.

What other games, preferably AAA have you seen with more China things seeping into?

they will and they should

I watched a several videos of Spider Man and Last of Us 2. I'm not sure if they're Chinese though but half the new roster shown in Last of Us are Asian. Spiderman has about a 3rd of the enemies I've seen are speaking Asian but they're enemies?

Are these 2 the start for AAA games or has it been done somewhere else recently?

Tsushima, Sekiro and NioH 2 are Japanese though and from what I can remember China and Japan have tense history so those might not be catered to China.

If GoTsu does well, I hope China is next for SuckerPunch's AAA SP game!

By pandering to China do you mean just setting games in China, or adding Chinese propaganda to games?

Yes of course $$$$$ ..it depends.. though..if its anything like their China No.1 propaganda movies (yes there's quite a few now) it will be laughably bad. :P

Black Panther and Coco were huge hits over there. Never say never.

@BenjaminBanklin: Black panther did terrible in China.

Warcraft already did. They made an entire expansion out of panders.

Didn't it at least have a good opening weekend or something?

Oh. Pandarians? I've never thought of that. Is WoW big in China?

The craziest of the lore fans will tell you there is precedent for Pandarians, but they were always a joke race. It would be like if Ubisoft made a game out of those Rabbids things.... oh....

To be completely fair, Mists of Pandaria is actually one of the better expansions. Doesn't change that it's blatantly inspired by Chinese art and mythology, though. And WoW writing is basically shit, so it's hard to ever escape the idea that everything in the game is hugely contrived for a specific, out-of-game purpose.

And yes, don't know if it still is now but WoW was really big in China. Partially because they can slave out gold farming there, and partially because the Asian markets for MMO's offers flexible play and pay models.

Wow. I remember a Gold Farming China documentary. Was the Mist of Pand pre-Hollywood pandering or around that time. TBH I don't know when exactly Hollywood started to cater to China I'm guessing at least for the last 3 years?

Overwatch, Paladins, Fortnite and Warframe have Lunar New Year cosmetics. Khadgar and Tyrande in Hearthstone are practically China exclusive. Final Fantasy 14 has some Chinese themed clothing and a China exclusive Sun Wukong outfit and cloud mount. Paragon added Wukong as a hero. Hearts Of Iron 4 got a new expansion a couple of months ago that focuses on China during WW2. Cities Skylines added Chinese inspired architecture to the game last year for free. PayDay 2 added in a Chinese New Years mask last year. Coincidentally the next major historical Total War game will be Romance Of Three Kingdoms which is China's most beloved historical era and fantasy story. Another Beyond Good and Evil game is finally coming out after so many years and those games have some heavy Chinese culture influence. Other then that not much I can name that is AAA with some China in it that came out after the video game ban was lifted since games such as Sleeping Dogs, Battlefield 4 and Resident Evil 6 came out before the lift so the companies were most likely not trying to target the Chinese audience. I'm seeing it a lot more in the F2P/online games which makes sense since China dominates with that. Games such as Titanfall and Rocket League are being adapted into F2P titles for China.

nah the average chinese does not have the money to be hard core gamers. Also due to the extreme censorship the government does there it may be hard to sell your games there. They banned console gaming for many years and even after the ban you cant just play any games there. Piracy is huge there as well so why buy a game when theres 5 finger discount?

"pander"

Uhh...you mean Capitalism? Don't be so Unamerican.

A lot of companies do this.

Do you know how many flavors of Coca-Cola there are tailored for specific countries? How many drinks are available in certain countries and only in those countries?

Tailoring to your market/targeted demographic is smart. Provided the "original" is not altered to cater to foreign audiences (for example, American Coke is the original, it's tailored for foreign markets) I don't see a problem with it.

"Mexican" Coke is still the best Coke, even if it's not the original :P

They were always a joke race (literally created for April Fool's), but it doesn't change the fact they have been in Warcraft since Warcraft III, long before any MMO or pandaria'ing (see what I did there bwahahaha...:P ) came to the Chinese.

Also, there's a difference between inspiration (taking from) and pandering (catering to). The West has a large fascination with the East, be it samurai culture, Chinese food, kung fu, yakuza, sushi, and so forth. Unfortunately, the West often loses a lot in translation or generalizes, which is why we end up with fat pandas that talk about chi constantly in an asian-accented voice.

Don't get me wrong I love the Pandaria stuff it's just corny as hell.

TL;DR: the whole Pandaria thing was as much for the West as it was for the East.