Chinese legends journey to the west, this time in a video game format

On the video games circuit, an arena dominated by Western legends, one can say the Chinese legends have arrived. On Tuesday, the day of its official release, 1.6 million global players were together playing Black Myth: Wukong on the Steam platform. It had more takers than Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Elden Ring, all of which are popular worldwide.

Black Myth: Wukong has showcased to the world not only the creativity of Chinese developers, but also the lure of Chinese culture.

Earlier, there was Dota 2 and its predecessor Dota, which are, like Black Myth: Wukong, based on a fictional magical world and list the Monkey King among the heroes, but most of the other heroes, such as Alchemist, Paladin Omniknight and Naga Siren can be traced to ancient European tales. Elden Ring's characters are mostly Western in style.

Even old favorites such as Red Alert 2 or Warcraft III or Super Mario have a Western cultural background. It is not for nothing that someone joked that all legendary heroes have one thing in common — they speak fluent English.

The monopoly ended some years ago with the advent of Honor of Kings, in which most heroes are drawn from Chinese history or legend.

Now Black Myth: Wukong, developed by Shenzhen-based Game Science, has gone a step further by telling the story of a traditional Chinese legend in the form of a video game, the popularity of which will open the eyes of global audiences to the rich storehouse of Chinese legends.

The success of the game owes a lot to the selection of Wukong — the Monkey King hero from classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, one of the four great classics of Chinese literature — as the game's hero. The appeal of traditional culture and the application of modern video techniques is working wonders.

It will not be so easy to create such a sensational cultural work again, partly due to the amount of time, funds and human resources required. But the investment in the game has received good returns as by Tuesday evening over 3 million copies had already been sold on video game digital distribution service Steam. Another 1.5 million copies were sold on WeGame, Epic! and Play-Station services, with the total sales having exceeded 1.5 billion yuan ($210.30 million).

At a time when developers are in a haste to make quick bucks, it's noteworthy that some are tapping the Chinese classics for inspiration, as there is no dearth of Chinese legends.