What makes a Chinese game worth flying across the world for? Our reporter Liu Mohan walks through CPOPwave – the immersive exhibition bringing Chinese pop-culture franchises and icons into a water town's canals, old shops, and courtyards – with David Kim, a California-based creator who makes music and videos for the game Wuthering Wavesand flew to China just for the show.

Along the way, she asks him how a game becomes something people build a community around – and puts the same question to Li Zhenyu, producer of the game Zenless Zone Zero: what makes people care? Here’s a first-person look at how Chinese franchises are moving out of screens and into the real world.