I thought Sinica listeners might be interested in listening to an audio narration of my latest essay. I hope you enjoy and that it gives you some food for thought! If you prefer to read, you can find the essay — free for everyone this week — right here.

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The Chinese game studio Game Science has a hit on its hands! The game Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game (ARPG) based on the Monkey King from Journey to the West, has sold extraordinarily well in China and is breaking new ground in the U.S. market as well. This week, I speak with Rui Ma, who runs Tech Buzz China and is one of the most highly-regarded China tech commentators in the U.S., and with Robert Wynne, an industry veteran with many years in China currently serving as COO of a new game start-up that's still under wraps. They share their insights into the strengths and weaknesses of Black Myth: Wukong and the future of Chinese games.

6:44 – The scale of the phenomenon of Black Myth: Wukong

12:01 – Rui and Rob’s thoughts about the game (so far)

17:23 – What Chinese players think of the game, and the difficulty in understanding its esoteric characters for Western players

24:23 – The appeal of mobile games versus console games in China

27:30 – The difficulty of attracting investment [or “How Game Science attracted investment”]

31:06 – Rob’s criticism of the game’s go-to-market strategy and its lost opportunities

35:46 – The party-state's response so far, and the politics surrounding the game

40:57 – Feng Ji, the founding of Game Science, and his criticisms of the gaming industry

46:01 – AAA Chinese games to look forward to

49:29 – The impressive success stats of Black Myth: Wukong

Recommendations:

Rui: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Rob: The Chinese TV series Escape from Trilateral Slopes (Biān shuǐ wǎngshì 边水往事) (2024)

Kaiser: Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve

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This week on Sinica, I chat with Olivia Fu, who this spring completed her year at Schwarzman College and wrote her Capstone project — a research paper that is required of all Schwarzman Scholars — on the rise and fall of the Beijing hip-hop scene. We explore some of the parallels to Beijing's rock scene, and how many of the same factors that stifled rock in Beijing ultimately led to Beijing's relative decline as a hip-hop city.

3:16 – Olivia’s background and connection to China, and what drew her to the Schwarzman Program and studying hip-hop

6:13 – Olivia’s Schwarzman mentor, Paul Pickowicz

7:47 – How Olivia dealt with censorship in her Capstone project

10:24 – The parallels and differences between the hip-hop and rock scenes in China

12:27 – The dakou CDs and the origins of the hip-hop scene in China

17:03 – The influences of Japanese and Korean rap and hip-hop and Black American culture

18:30 – The importance of studying Beijing hip-hop

23:05 – The spirit of Beijing and societal commentary in Beijing hip-hop

27:38 – The phenomenon of Rap of China

29:50 – The divergence of PG One and GAI, and the regulatory influence of the State Administration on Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television

35:13 – Sinifying hip-hop

37:21 – What the burgeoning hip-hop scene in China was like in the early 2000s

40:10 – Critiques of the Beijing dialect in rap and the Beijing rap style

45:16 – Iron Mic rap battles and Shanghai, and Chinese hip-hop’s critique of the educational system

48:34 – Why Beijing rap declined

59:09 – What’s next for Olivia

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