Think of the word “China” and one of two ideas should come to mind: either the country, or the crockery sat in your kitchen cupboard. This synonym in the English language is testament to the reputation of China’s porcelain trade around Europe in the 16th century. China was top of the line. But when it comes to video games, China sits at the opposite end of the spectrum; Chinese games are often associated with cheap Mario clones and free-to-play RPGs that look like they’re designed by business executives. It’s not good.
Shanghai-based game developer Tommo Zhou dreams of changing that stigma. He hopes one day to release a video game on a console with a global reach. The PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U (or the upcoming NX) are the dream. Zhou’s friend and colleague, known as Feng, goes so far as to say it would be a “great honour” to have a game on one of these consoles. It’s not necessarily the potential sales numbers and the success that might come with such a move, it’s what the principle itself represents.
Being based in Shanghai has meant that Zhou’s years-long hobby of making video games has fell under the jurisdiction of China’s ministry of culture [MOC]. This government sector attempts to strictly uphold the constitution of the People’s Republic of China, meaning that any entertainment (including video games) that violates or smears it or China’s image in anyway is banned or at least censored in the country. This isn’t really a problem for Zhou and his small hobbyist games, but it has had a huge effect on China’s video game culture at large, and it’s this that he’s up against.
In 2000, the MOC banned foreign video game consoles and accessories entirely, all in an effort to stop video games having a negative effect on China’s youth. The ban lasted until January 2014 in Shanghai when a free-trade zone was opened up for foreign console manufacturers such as Sony and Microsoft to sell their consoles under certain restrictions. It wasn’t until July 2015 that the ban on consoles was lifted around the rest of China – 15 years after its introduction.
“The lift on the ban of consoles did give us Chinese developers some hope, a hope [that] could change the current market,” Zhou said. “However due to the publishing rules and policies here, the games on consoles are no more than translated big titles, such as Final Fantasy X-2, which Chinese gamers likely already finished. Gamers usually buy overseas versions of a game to bypass the slow publishing or censorship issue.”
China’s “grey market” is well-known for supplying the country’s population with luxury items from overseas. Soon after the ban on consoles in 2000, the grey market became the place to acquire foreign consoles and the games for them, often in their original language. But these illegal imports were expensive, and so China fostered its own native plug ‘n’ play console manufacturers. They sold knock-off versions of the Western and Japanese machines, such as the PlayStation 3 clone The Winner and the Nintendo Wii copy-cat Vii, which would play pirated and cloned versions of popular games like the Mario series.
It’s due to this rampant piracy culture and the banning and censoring of video games by the government that has kept many game publishers away from China (it was only three years ago that Battlefield 4 was banned in China). But even if they did try to make a move over there now, even after the console ban has been lifted, they likely wouldn’t have any success. Chinese gamers don’t tend to buy software; instead, they pay for a period of play, usually in a PC gaming café, or they play free games on their smartphones. Generally speaking, the population are used to and can afford in-app purchases and the hourly rates of cafés, but not to buy consoleshomes and games. Trying to launch a games console culture in China, to kick the habits of the biggest PC gaming market in the world, is almost futile.
And so, to release a Chinese game on a Western or Japanese console, as Zhou hopes to do, would mean convincing a publisher (probably a foreign one) to take it to the world. But Zhou is driven by the hope he experienced last year when the ban on consoles was abolished. It seems to have been enough to convince him to move beyond being someone who makes video games as a hobby, and become a full-time game developer at long last.
Zhou co-founded Pixpil studio last year with a friend called Hong who had worked as a professional game artist since his first ever job. Zhou acted as the coder while Hong was the artist; a complementary coupling. Soon after, they met Feng at an indie game meeting in China, who would join them as the third co-founder of the studio, bringing another 10 years experience as a designer and coder to the team.
The game they have been working on is called Eastward. It isn’t much like other video games made in China. For the most part, they are MMORPGs or MOBAs, made to make money, to attract huge audiences hungry for competition. It even differs greatly from the other Chinese indie games Pixpil come into contact with, many of which are short, aggressive titles such as Code:HARDCORE, MOW: 2-Player, and The Swords. The one exception they point out is Fish, a part tranquil, part perilous game about the life of a creature of the deep . In comparison, Eastward has humbler origins and a quieter story to tell, and a much larger ambition. “Before we started the current project, we decided to start from the best [idea] we had,” Zhou explained. “The artist Hong made a pixel-art RPG game mockup a couple of years ago. The art was so great that we always had the intention to make it into a real game. That was an easy decision.”
As to the name, that was all Zhou’s idea: “The codename ‘Eastward’ is from some naive idea of mine from a long time ago. The idea was about travelling along the railway, in some post-apocalyptic world, eastward. We thought the idea was very interesting and picked it as the start point.”
Those two grasps at a direction were enough to get the project going. Hong’s artistic style is all retro-pixel” and 3D lighting, achieving a game that is striking from first glance, as proven by the thousands of shares of the game’s gifs and images on Twitter and Tumblr. It’s not just the technique but the aim of the artwork that also sets it apart from all the other images vying for attention on social media.
“In the world of Eastward, human societies are isolated and shrinking, due to some severe environmental problem,” say Pixpil. To communicate this, Hong has drawn inspiration from both real and fictional locales. “For example, the famous Kowloon Walled City, the ruined sites in Fallout games, and so on,” Zhou said. “We also have some photography books on our bookshelf, such as Thomas Jorion’s Silencio and Jordy Meow’s Abandoned Japan.” During development, Hong has also apparently insisted on creating places that show details of urban decay, especially rust, encouraging the team to create spaces that look and feel as if people could have actually lived there.
Pixpil was a small outfit at first, just the three of them exchanging ideas in a cosy apartment, each contributing their own money to match their ambition. But that soon changed in February this year when they accepted an offer of investment from an outside party. Initially, they appealed to the Chinese government for funding, but that didn’t go so well. According to Feng, the government treats video game companies like any other, but it has preferences that Pixpil didn’t match. “As far as we know, it’s possible to get government funding in underdeveloped cities, where [the] government wants more investment in pollution-free industry,” Feng said. Fortunately, after that rejection, an outside party stepped up and Pixpil was able to get the money they needed to expand. The first port of call was hiring more staff. “We had decided to make the project and the team bigger,” Zhou said. “We spread the word through our SNS (social networking service) and a domestic gaming media [outlet] run by a friend. People showed big interest in our project, and we received quite a lot of résumés.”
As the applications came in, the three founders of Pixpil had to look for a new office, but everything was moving so fast that there wasn’t much time to make it homely. “Although we’ve [been] moved into [the] new office for more than two months, we don’t have much time for decoration,” Zhou said. “So there are minimal requirements for a game dev studio (desks, chairs, and computers!).” The office is bigger than the apartment, it being part of a tower block occupied mostly by other design studios, but it’s still very cosy—each employee has a small desk space, occupied by a monitor, lamp, keyboard, mug, and as many gadgets and toys as can fit into the remaining space. Once everything was settled, the rest of the partners joined.
Everyone who is employed at Pixpil is known as a “partner.” It’s a term that Zhou is adamant about upholding no matter the size of the studio, which is currently up to eight in total. “We were expecting new partners [to] actively give their own input to the project, that’s why I kept saying ‘looking for partners’ rather than ‘hiring’,” Zhou said. Chief among these new hires were animators, and the three founders of Pixpil were especially keen to bring on those who had experience in the traditional animation industry. “It’s because the traditional animators are better at expression, which is a very important feature we are targeting for our game,” Zhou said.
“Making it emotional and character-driven is an important target,” Zhou continued. “When we decided to add narration to the game, we were thinking about building some Japanese animation-like experience, just like the great RPG games back in [the] 16-bit era.” He name drops Mother 3 as an important inspiration for its storytelling and animation. “There are also some other inspirations, like Ghibli’s works, Tekkonkinkreet the film, and a lot of great games from Super Famicom (Super Nintendo in the West) and Game Boy Advance.” The key to living up to these inspirations is, apparently, all in the animation. “That’s why we need the animator’s skill on expression. It’s also the reason we chose the current character proportion, it’s balanced for us to reduce the workload while keeping the capability to show some detailed facial and body language.”
The characters of Eastward are taken from somewhere entirely different than the game’s other inspirations. It’s personal. “The main characters are not [a] real father and daughter, but their relationship is very close to that,” says Zhou. He adds that “of course” this is affected by himself recently becoming a father, as well as Feng, and it turns out Hong is planning to start his own family soon too. “The most important thing about being a parent is responsibility,” Zhou reasons. “Being a father gives me a better temper, and I’m thinking in more practical ways now. Also, I have much less time for playing games!”
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By: Chris Priestman
