[freddie_mercury]

> Don’t know about India, but a lot of Chinese development is gacha-based with limited western appeal.

Is this really true?

My understanding is that the best selling mobile games in the US and EU are largely from Chinese developers and Chinese studios and Chinese publishers.

[seanmcdirmid]

I believe any mobile game on the App Store that is MMPG and does their ads up in a cartoonish illustrative way (rather than just going with unadorned or loosely adorned screenshots) is Chinese. Tencent has some really popular ones in the west, though it might be an age thing since I don’t know anyone who actually plays them except my wife (who is Chinese).

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I don't think we should merge the market of gamers with the market of mobile gamers. The two things can overlap, but the target audience is wildly different.

Microtransactions are frowned upon on Steam, yet we try to consider the two markets as the same group, even though "console/pc" gamers constantly avoid this mechanism.

Didn't blizzard taught us something with Diablo Immortal?

[johnnyanmac]

>Didn't blizzard taught us something with Diablo Immortal?

yeah, that it's insanely profitable to make a mobile game with a popular IP. I heard it made on the order of $500m in its first year despite the bad PR. But that doesn't really apply to most games; if you have a valuable IP you can get away with a lot of monetization schemes or simply lack of quality (Pokemon) that would crater most other studios.

I agree with your point but more for the fact of formats rather than monetization. Making a continually updating mobile game is basically untenable for a single developer, but the norm in mobile. So making a game that can target the mobile market properly is an impossible goal from the outset for a small indie team. At least in America (I'm sure some small chinese teams can pull this off given their CoL). Your best bet is keeping a mobile build of a premium game working on the side to make a future port easier to do. Won't make as much money but it is relatively easy side income if you have a successful PC/console game.

[spondylosaurus]

Genshin Impact is extremely popular in the west.

[bobthepanda]

Right but that’s not the “missing middle”, that’s the most popular game on the app stores making billions in revenue.

Mid-range stuff has not really come ouy of China. The only game that comes to mind by Chinese indies is My Time at Portia, which had alright gameplay but was noted for janky localization.

[spondylosaurus]

Ah, I was just trying to rebut the claim that Chinese developers can't capture western markets in general.

Mihoyo is a juggernaut at this point, which speaks to the worldwide appeal of Chinese game dev but absolutely precludes them from the "mid-range" category, lol.

[bobthepanda]

It’s also a sample size of one. So to me at least it’s still the exception that proves the rule.