As expats fled China’s zero-COVID, this developer built a sci-fi game for NetEase businessroundups.org

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, foreigners have left China en masse to escape the country’s strict “zero-COVID” restrictions, which had restricted people’s travel at home and abroad to the rules for nearly three years recently started to relax. So when NetEase, the second largest gaming company in China, said it had an expat-run studio working on a game out of Shanghai for the past three years, I was a little surprised.

Led by lead producer Oscar Lopez and creative director Eve Jobse, Miaozi launched its first title worldwide on Steam last Friday. called Cygnus Enterprisethe game, in the studio’s own words, is a “cross-genre single-player sci-fi game for PC that puts the player in charge of an outpost on an alien planet” and “alternates between small-scale city management and action RPG gameplay .”

Both NetEase and its rival Tencent have focused more on overseas expansion as regulatory constraints hinder their domestic success. In addition to acquiring small western studios, the two Chinese titans have recruited international talent. Tencent’s most lucrative studio, TiMi, started operations in North America in early 2020, and its internal rival (the company is known for encouraging internal competition) Lightspeed similarly set up shop in LA this year. NetEase also opened its first US studio in Austin in May.

While the months-long lockdown in Shanghai this spring led many foreigners to leave China, Miaozi’s international employees stayed put and found the situation had little impact on their work.

“Luckily for us, it worked really well,” Lopez said in an interview with businessroundups.org. “We have not left China during COVID times. China was a very safe environment to be in, and we mainly focused on our development. The company and our team had all the infrastructure needed to develop from home should the need ever arise.”

“You can develop anywhere in the world,” he continued. ‘Of course it’s better if you’re face to face; it is always easier to communicate and solve problems. But the truth is that [the pandemic] didn’t impress us much.”

The studio’s naming speaks of the team’s affinity for China. Miaozi is short for the sound of cats, “meow” and “baozi”, a type of soft, fluffy, stuffed bun common in China – two things the team of 50 employees love.

“Downstairs around the office, there is a convenience store FamilyMart, and what people often get for lunch is these baozi, and everyone loves these baozi,” Jobse fondly explained the daily routine familiar to those who have worked in Shanghai. “But they also like cats. There are many street cats outside and people pet them and feed them.”

“We wanted to have something that crosses cultures and that everyone loves, and something that the Chinese and the rest of the people on the team would understand,” added Jobse.

When designing the game, the creative director took inspiration from Chinese science fiction, which generally convey a more uplifting message than their Western counterparts. news, art and culture instead of the cynical, negative sentiments of recent years.

“We succeeded in creating a science fiction game that is both innovative and positive,” Jobse noted. “Science fiction IPs are very, very focused right now on the negative and the dangers of outer space or the dangers of aliens.”

She then referenced the influence of The Wandering Earth, a Chinese blockbuster loosely based on a short story by Liu Cixin, the author of The Three-Body Problem.

“It’s actually quite a lot of inspiring little details that [we] could take from. The Wandering Earth, for example, really has this whole spirit of cooperation and collaboration [to] overcome this obstacle… Even if they come from different cultures or different backgrounds, they want to work together to achieve a common goal.”

As with many other industries, the development of China’s gaming sector is driven by foreign investment and partnerships. International gaming publishers coveted China’s burgeoning internet population, and Chinese gaming companies were eager to learn from their more established Western peers. NetEase itself has a long history of working with foreign publishers – last month marked the end of Blizzard’s 14-year licensing deal with Activision to exploit its games in China.

The relentless competition in the Chinese market has spawned a generation of Internet companies that emphasize short-term profits over long-term innovations. It’s a delicate balance. Lopez opined that his team has a high degree of creative freedom as long as certain expectations are met. “Within our studio where we produce games, we have an objective attitude. It is the intention that we produce a game within time and budget. In those borders lies our freedom,” he said.