The game, in Chinese, explains that the resin-rich wood burns quickly and has fueled Jingdezhen's kilns for centuries. By encouraging players to grow forests first, it underscores a simple lesson: sustainable woodlands are the foundation of a thriving porcelain industry.
Only after collecting essential materials, such as timber, porcelain stone and glaze, can players begin firing ceramics. They can use AI to transform uploaded images into porcelain designs, shape clay on virtual wheels, paint decorations, and create personalized pieces while managing orders at their virtual kilns.
Turning the project into a management simulation was, Tu says, the team's earliest and perhaps most consequential decision.
They wanted players to understand not just how porcelain was made, but how an entire industrial civilization functioned: the technologies behind production, Jingdezhen's evolution over centuries, and the city's pivotal role in global trade.
The game's story stretches from the 11th through the 19th century. In one chapter, players learn how Sumali blue, an imported cobalt pigment that made blue-and-white porcelain famous, traveled from Persia to China. Later, they are tasked with producing a revolving vase, or zhuanxinping, intended as a diplomatic gift from the imperial court to Western envoys.
Even that storyline sparked debate within the development team.
"Could a revolving vase really have served as a State gift? Did that actually happen? Would it have been historically appropriate?" Tu recalls asking.
The team pursued the answer through historical archives, academic debates and library collections. A report from Macao suggested that the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) had presented such a vase to the King of Portugal, but some researchers questioned the evidence. Eventually, the developers located an original Qing-era gift register in Tsinghua University's library.
"Only then," Tu says, "did we settle the argument."
That commitment to accuracy shaped the entire project. The team consulted more than 30 archaeological reports and historical studies, along with classical works including Tiangong Kaiwu (The Exploitation of the Works of Nature) and the Illustrated Treatise on Ceramic Manufacturing. Developers repeatedly traveled to Jingdezhen, mapping the city's digital geography according to the actual spatial relationships among archaeological sites.
Nearly every object in the game, from ceramic vessels and kiln tools to place names, includes historical explanations. Whenever players have questions, they can ask the AI master, a craftsman deliberately designed to look like an ordinary artisan rather than a larger-than-life hero.
"He needs to feel believable," says Zeng Zijiao, who leads Tencent Games' AI-powered digital human technology.
The virtual master remembers previous conversations, tracks players' progress, and adjusts his teaching style accordingly, responding differently to beginners than to experienced players.
Behind him sits an enormous knowledge base built specifically for the project. Tencent trained the AI on more than 30,000 academic papers, archaeological reports and scholarly books, along with over 5,000 ceramic specimens and information on nearly 1,000 representative porcelain objects from collections around the world.
The same database also powers several digital heritage projects developed during Jingdezhen's World Heritage campaign, including an AI conservation assistant, a ceramic "gene bank", and an interactive world map tracing the global journey of Chinese porcelain.
