Chinese gamers debate what makes a great video game

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The Game Awards (TGA), considered by many as the Oscars of gaming, has stirred a new round of debate about what qualities actually make a good video game among Chinese gamers.

When TGA named Nintendo's comeback title on the new Switch console, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," as the Game of the Year yesterday, it triggered gamers to start the meme "Nintendo ruled the freaking world" which spread among Chinese gaming news sites.

Screenshot from AVGN

Neither the game nor console has been released on the Chinese mainland, but many players have experienced the fun by purchasing it from overseas resellers.

The mainland Zelda fanbase is so large that Nintendo has decided to add Simplified Chinese as a language option to the game.

But compared to the millions of Chinese gamers playing "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG), it's still a small group of people.

PUBG, an unfinished Battle Royale-style shooter, was also nominated for Game of the Year by TGA, but eventually lost to the Japanese open-world fantasy.

TGA game of the year 2017 /Screenshot from TGA

A similar thing happened last year, when the storytelling masterpiece "Uncharted 4" lost to a multiplayer shooter "Overwatch." Angry Uncharted players accused TGA of being an "award mill."

Art, design or popularity?

This disagreement is shared among the gaming community, as Chinese gamers themselves can't agree on what defines a good video game.

Some cite artistic value as being the most important quality. They see video games as an art form in line with film, music and novels. Thus, a good game should create unique characters for players to act as and tell a great story.

Film series 'Resident Evil' is based on a game series of the same title. /Screenshot from Sony

But the trend of artistic games is fading at TGA, as the last two year's Game of the Year winners were not story-heavy. "Overwatch" is a 100 percent multiplayer game and does not provide a story mode. And the new Zelda has a relatively short storyline to suit its open-world ambition.

Another segment of players respect the thinking behind the game mechanics: The thing that make chess and checkers different.

"Everything's good, just not fun" is a widespread comment in the Chinese gaming community, targeting the games that focus too much on storytelling and provide poor gameplay.

PUBG is one of the best examples of the new Battle Royale genre, which has a highly-intensive mechanism that makes players ignore some basic flaws like jumping out of a window without opening it.

Zelda also provides a carefully-designed world for players to venture. One has to combine different in-game mechanisms to solve puzzles.

Zelda series is well known in the game industry for its mechanics. /Screenshot from zelda.com

But Overwatch failed to create a new playing style. It's not even the first successful game that mixed the arena and shooter genre. Yet it was the Game of 2016 by TGA.

Popularity is also considered important by some. This assertion is based on the premise that a good product will attract a large fanbase. Overwatch's record-breaking sale numbers could be an important reason for the award.

However, the most widely-played PUBG lost to the Switch-only Zelda. The console has only sold 7.63 million units worldwide, while PUBG's sales number is an astonishing 24 million.

Many Chinese gamers mainly play in Internet cafes, where PUBG and "League of Legends" dominate. No wonder they can't understand how the new Zelda was received by the console community.

After all, if mobile games were involved, "Candy Crush" creator King should be the ultimate winner when it comes to popular games. It had 314 million monthly active users in the second quarter of 2017.

The best Chinese game?

Chinese gamers really captured the Internet's attention when they voted for Kingsoft's "JX3 HD" in the TGA category of Best Game in China.

Official poster of JX3 /Screenshot from Kingsoft‍

But in fact, "JX3 HD" has not even been released to the general public. Voters chose the game not because it's popular in China, but because they were excited for the game to be released.

"I vote to show my anticipation," player "Blademaster's sword" said on Tieba, China's Reddit equivalent.

"But when I actually joined the closed beta test, the game was not like advertised," the person added.