It's very much like Rocky 3 where at the start Clubber Lang is sitting in the background watching him become comfy and lazy and then beats the shit out of him.

Actually, it's exactly like this. This is a good analogy I made.

Good job.

I've been saying for years now that China is leading the AI field. But so many Westerners refused to acknowledge such an obvious fact... only to end up losing money because they couldn't see it coming.

@texasgoldrush:

And?

How exactly is China supposed to be impacted by the challenges lead by the AAA space when they’re just starting in said space with such little domestic competition?

Ex. The rest of the world has been making AAA Black Myth Wukong-esque games for decades. And truthfully, Black Myth Wukong is overwhelmingly a domestic hit and 1 out of 1 in that market.

Heck, Marvel Rivals is probably their largest global hit and it’s a Western IP and Western culture.

@texasgoldrush: china is a completely different world when it comes to crunch.

Other companies pay overtime or give extra holidays as a reward. And crunch is temporary in other countries. In china, other than lunar new year, it's just permanent.

If you work for a high tech Chinese company, forget about having a life of any kind. Forget about doing things during the weekend, forget about after work activities.

And if you want to date, have your parents arrange a girl to meet a couple of times, barely spend any time together, and give her a ton of money so that you can marry and have kids that neither of you will see grow up.

That's why foreign talent is almost inexistent in china.

Also, over-time laws in china are not badly enforced. That's a huge misconception. They are deliberately not enforced. Everyone knows that.

You know, for such a pro china shill, you either don't know much about china or are deliberately disingenuous.

Why are they not in a "recession"? Because their AAA gaming industry is in its infancy.

There could only really be a "failure to launch" at this point.

@elderlord99: yes, it's the 996 culture. Developers in china if they are good earn about 30000 yuan a month, which is about 4000 usd, but those are the really top guys. And that includes constant unpaid overtime.

Usually 5 days total yearly holidays, working most weekends, start at 9am finish at 9pm and pulling quite a few all nighters.

It's very hard to compete with someone willing to ruin his own life and health.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

That's the only reason I can think for anyone GOATing this game, because the set pieces are badly paced, the plot is barely there, and the check lists get really long-winded after the first few chapters. The few major plot points that do happen are pretty poorly explained, too, even the ones central to the whole trilogy.

I mean the combat is fun and the production values are great, but those don't override the flaws.

Good? Sure. Great? Nah.

*edit* I will say, I did like some of the smaller character stories that came out of it all. That's what made it frustrating to me - this could have been a really good remake of FF7 if they hadn't overextended it or massively convoluted the plot.

It's good to see them finally having some relevance in Western markets, but I think you might be overblowing it.

They had a couple of hits. Very popular, derivative games that aren't likely to steer the industry one way or another. People won't be flocking to make Wukong-likes, and hero shooters and gatcha games are a dime a dozen.

2024 was also an unusually slow year. If they'd tried going head to head with any major developer this year (like a mainline Zelda or Souls game), i don't think they'd have done quite as well.

But yeah, give is a few years. You'll know they've made it once it stops being a novelty that Chinese games are great - similar to how Poland was in the late 00s.