China represents a huge market for video game companies, at least in theory. The truth is more dangerous, with a free-to-play model being the dominant concept in Chinese gaming, as well as rampant piracy and copycatting. Activision has set the wheels in motion to port its popular Call of Duty series across the bamboo curtain, but it remains to be seen if Chinese gamers will warm to the idea of actually buying a game. CNBC has the story.
The one thing in Activision’s favor is quality. I’ve played some Chinese games, and they seem to run by checklist. Someone made a list of everything the popular games have in, then put those things in their own game. Too bad for them, how you use what you got is just as important as what you got, and creativity has never exactly been a high virtue in Chinese culture. Maybe competing against a good, fun game will spark a new way of doing things, or it’ll result in the government banning the game outright when major local companies complain. One of the two.