Will Paradox ever make a game that properly focuses in on and represents China?

[GundamMerc]

@GundamMerc A year ago, before the arrest of the Canadian citizens. In and out of Asia constantly though. Wouldn't go back to China with the trade war. I still have a lot of friends in China, and they're all pretty intent on leaving. I feel bad for the South Africans the most, because most of the ones I worked with feel like they can't go back to South Africa, and China doesn't exactly make them feel welcomed (A fun event happened where my friends house was raided as part of a routine security bureau check. Lots of illegals working there now because of visa issues.)

As for Falun Gong, even if they are a cult (a claim which I would refute by both definitions of cult) - I live near several Canadian Falun Gong practicianers who have fled china and they're pretty down to earth. I'm sure there are fanatics, certainly, as with every situation - But are you sure your friend wasn't taken by the CCP? I mean, I've dealt with a lot of weird situations. Most of Henan's Midrange and High range children were my and my colleagues students - and saw first hand a lot of the CCP's weird exertion of control. My favourite bar was military owned and got shut down (CCP crackdown on the side businesses that the Chinese military has to pay their soldiers.), and knew the owner very well.

Considering I still get weird religious texts from him, yeah I'm sure he wasn't taken by CCP. When I say disappeared, I mean I have no clue where he went, not that there is no trace of him. You'd actually be surprised at how widespread and influential Christian cults are in Asia.

 

[Waverunner]

Have you ever stopped to think that perhaps this is because the Chinese people remember the trauma of civil war, being invaded, and before that supposedly "liberal" Western powers first hooking their nation on Opium and then exploiting China for its wealth? If the US had been through such a multigenerational trauma, I'd bet that we wouldn't go to fetish-level heights of freedom of speech. I'd be praying for peace, order, and economic prosperity instead. You see all the news stories of "oppression", but the average person in China isn't affected by that. They go about their daily lives like everyone else. If people like you were to be believed, China would be equivalent to North Korea, but we both know that's not true in the slightest.

You’re right, China isn’t North Korea. They operate like NK but on a much larger scale under the guise of psuedo capitalistic ideologies. The only difference is that one actually has a strong global economic impact, strengthening millitary, and actively undermines international law and norms.

I bet you haven’t heard of China’s Muslim community and the horrors they’re experiencing as part of China’s re-education policy. I’m sure the people who follow the CCP without question experience some form of prosperity. Trying to normalize how China operates sets a dangerous precedent.

How is an average citizen not affected by oppression? They cannot go to any site they choose without VPNs, you cannot read any book that you want unless it’s approved, and there was a time not so long ago where they told you that you could only have one child. Let’s not even get started with how Hollywood today has China washed all the movies we see today so they can sell their films to China.

 

[Sturmir]

I mean, maybe we should just let this thread die. I think the OPs question has been thoroughly satisfied, and there is a possibility someone is going to get upset and escalate things.

 

[orochi2k]

The fact that you stated this has caused me to not even read the entirety of your post. Judging by other peoples responses, I'm glad I didn't. I do however congratulate you on passing an exam that is written by the CCP to continue their propaganda.

If China is as free as you claim, then why are they banning any references to 997? I lol'd at you trying to defend the decision to ban Winnie the Pooh. How insecure of yourself do you have to be to ban a cartoon character for children across the nation?

Thus, you failed to see my post is full of anti government materials. I am totally against all the censorship possibly more than any of other people here by actions.

First, I do not claim China is free. Instead, I am telling you China is supposed to be free according to law. However, government does not always act according to law. Thus, people like me use laws to fight government's illegal action. Remember, we are the ones struggle most against HOI4's remove from Steam store.
Now some people claim our purchase on online stores are a grey market. That, I can not stand.

Second, I think you are talking about 996. Government didn't "ban any references of it". However, many internet companies in China blocks its information in their browsers they made and claim it's because it violates the law. Government medias are actually quite supporting to 996.ICU right now at least on the surface as they always try to pretend they are lawful. As government running medias are reporting it, how can you claim all the reference to it is banned? You can find all the details even just on 996.ICU's github.
I personally endorsed this social activity whose name... you, sir, not even got correct.

Third, I do not defend the action of "ban" Winnie the Pooh. I was trying to point out "ban Winnie for crying out loud" is a ridiculously fake news. Almost everything "banned" in China is more or less political related most of the time. China didn't even "ban" Mortal Kombat....yet, because government doesn't care.
I am also pointing out it's not a "ban" like what people understand in western countries.
It's not from official government channel like German bans Nazi. It's more under the table. Thus, the government can't officially admit or support it. The "banning" here is a black op. Thus, it's much easier to fight back because the government wants to maintain a good face on the surface. They sometimes concede to keep a good face.
Great Firewall failed to block Steam for many times. Their greatest defeat is on Github where almost all programmers in China rally against them for once. (They even tried use Great Firewall's offense capability to DDoS Github after people pushed back their blockage.)
It's not they technically can't. It is still a political struggle.
China, and even the Chinese government, is not just an single entity. Let's say....there are factions here. You shall not deny at least some people are still working on to make things better. Not all people are brave enough to charge against tank. That doesn't mean those people are defending government. But, when people are doing all those, you will not even read. Because this is not your fight after all. As you claim " passing an exam that is written by the CCP to continue their propaganda.", you failed to see people suing government for illegally blocking Google, thus makes the government unable to officially admit the blockage and delayed their plan of shutting down the internet.

As for myself, I can legally share Winnie the Pooh's video I legally bought from Amazon to my friends here when they come to visit. I can help them legally buy it too just as I have helped many to acquire HOI4 after it was removed on Steam. Now, what government can do? Sue me? Prosecute me? No, that will make them look bad against law. Thus, not worth the effort.

Look, it's not a "ban" many think. That's why many HOI4 players in China can still openly sharing the purchase links, videos, guides, fan arts, screenshots, posts everywhere. And that is totally legal.

Now come to think about it. The on the table/under the table mechanic of government for China can be something quite fun in games.

 

[jalner]

Will KFC ever make a recipe that properly focuses in on and represents Chinese Food?

Hey I changed the title from Paradox to KFC and China to Chinese food

 

[orochi2k]

Will KFC ever make a recipe that properly focuses in on and represents Chinese Food?

Hey I changed the title from Paradox to KFC and China to Chinese food

Well, they did. To be honest. KFC achieved great success in China for making KFC-style Chinese food.
Chinese people know those are not the traditional Chinese Food, but still it's very delicious. But, of course they will not have any censorship problem except they had a huge healthy crisis in their supply chain once. But, that's quickly fixed.

The point is, if something is made by a company outside China. People in China totally understands it will not 100% represent China in all details. But, that is absolutely fine. We will still enjoy it if it is fun. (Unless some random creepy Big Brother jumps in or send his agents to jump in and scare people away.)
That's why people in China still love Koei's totally fantastical ahistorical Dynasty Warriors.

But, again, seriously, why people keep wanting to make such heavy focus in China?
People in China don't mind the content goes off even quite a bit. (But, many are against government censorship)
Government in China is very hard to be appeased. (Still, I will encourage you not even try to comply at all unless you really really just want to make those money.)
Such focus narrows down your target audience group. In modern day's globalization, even many people here have agreed your money can be put in somewhere less risky.


Take HOI for example. How can you appease your players who want to see a real world war AND a government who don't want people to see it at the same time?

Many assumed Chinese people have a hard feeling about this game because of those history.(I mean, come on! We don't even mind Vic2 a period in history when Qing China got rolled over by 8 nations over and over again! )

The truth is, it's only CCP that don't want people to know the truth of civil war just as they officially deny almost all the efforts their most hated enemy number 1 (Nationalist China) put in Anti-Japanese war.

The game itself is so well received. It was on internet everywhere in China. And that's why the government talked to Valve in October 2017. Not any day before that. Not on game release.
People do love it. And love it so much that makes government nervous. (Oh, great, now people may think I am defending the government )

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

If you want a game about China that doesn’t contain game mechanics introduced and utilized by western game developers...maybe find an “eastern” game studio....

That said, wtf is a western-centric game mechanic?

CK2 uses French-style Feudalism and pretends it applies to the whole planet with small corrections. That's a good example.

 

[Ratgar]

I can attest, KFC in china is nothing like KFC back home. When I was in Dalian there was like this delicious orange flavored drink called something like orange paradise on the menu. I have no clue where they got that from. And if I recall most of the menu items were completely different. Also, the restaurant itself was far classier than anything like what you find in the US. It was almost closer to a sit down tablecloth restaurant back home. But this was probably six years ago, I don't know what they are like now.

 

[SirAlexius]

Just gonna put it out there, that as a fan of Paradox Interactive you are not obligated to buy and play every game they release.

If some people want to play a game about China and you don't, maybe just let them have what they want so they can enjoy it. You can keep playing the other games that you do enjoy.

From what I understand, Paradox is planning to add more games to their GSG porfolio, so if one of them happens to be about China but you don't want to play it, then you don't have to.

 

[ForgottenCheese]

This is a dope idea. What period of China would be the best for the game?

It would suck if the game gets banned in China, but you don't need to be from China to appreciate a game like that. I'm not from Europe, and I love playing European countries in paradox games.

 

[Warial]

This is a dope idea. What period of China would be the best for the game?

Warring States, Three Kingdoms would be the most marketable and fitting PDS gameplay. Plenty of possible starts, not too many blobs at the beginning. Other periods are less fitting as the rivalring factions tend to be be quite big, limitng greatly the number of tags. That's why later periods are better off as part of of greater games, as there's not much point in Tang-Song era game which is limited to China and the neighbourhood.

 

[insoman]

please dont. It will be hopeless consider their low level of far east history.

 

[Rupmalya.K]

As a fellow neighbor I'll insta buy if they release a GS game in China.It has one of the most interesting history in the world.

 

[orochi2k]

This is a dope idea. What period of China would be the best for the game?

It would suck if the game gets banned in China, but you don't need to be from China to appreciate a game like that. I'm not from Europe, and I love playing European countries in paradox games.

So far as we known, only games covers anything of communism in China and also highly accepted by people got "banned". (Again, please note, players in China may feel offended by this word. As ban usually indicates something from a legal body, for example: German bans Nazi, which indirectly implies all Paradox players in China are acting something illegal while we are not. Reasons have been explained above. As some government running medias tried to frame Paradox players as illegal before, this matter can be... sensitive. Even on this forum, you can find posts about some Paradox players in China fear they may get arrested for just owning the game while I defended them.)


Thus, anything before 1800s are almost totally safe. The game may not get officially approved by the government.（As it requires Paradox to cooperate with Tencent again to get a chance to be considered to be approved just like what they did with Stellaris and City Skylines ） But, it will also unlikely to get attention from the government to make them try to remove you. So far as we know, the only Paradox game gets such attention is HOI4(Not even any previous HOI games), and there is no other Paradox games so well accepted by players in China to make government to interfere.(Still, what they did is just remove it from one online store which didn't even stop people from keeping buying it, playing it, streaming it, making tournaments of it publicly... Think about it, what will happen if someone post something about Nazi in German, that will be totally different.) Thus, consider it as an honor.
Usually, you will achieve a great sales before you get a "ban".



As for the interesting period of history:
1, Spring and Autumn/ Warring kingdoms which is the only true feudal period in China (everything after that is more highly centered bureaucrat)
During this period of the time. The Zhou Dynasty owns a small land in capital severing as the son/high priest of heaven while local petty kings rule their own kingdoms. (Or...you may call him Pope if you like )
They follow a common moral code of Zhou, considering themselves as civilized against the barbarians around them.
Such code including things like: armies must let enemies to form their formations before fight each other. Soldiers shall not kill those already wounded enemies. Petty kings can only fight each other when having a CB... (A famous conversation during a war: The king of Sui: "I have no guilty, you can't war against me" The king of Chu: "I am a barbarian!" which basically tells only barbarian declare war without CB, So below to find out why Chu went to become "barbarian" and no longer being "civilized")
But, The kingdom of Qin whose lands are poor and right next to barbarians seeks to gain power, thus decided to abolish such moral code and went rogue. They made laws such as "collect enemy ears/heads to gain reward". Thus, other kingdoms got caught by surprised and fall one by one. Eventually, Qin dethroned Zhou Dynasty, thus, ended the Spring and Autumn and started warring kingdoms.
During the warring kingdoms, 6 other remain kingdoms also "reformed" old moral code trying to fight agains Qin and among themselves. It's a period of war/conspericy/diplomacy/reshape moral codes/find value of life/even...ideology.... Old faiths got challenged, new thoughts sparks among politicians. But, in the end of this legend, the "evil" won. Qin annexed the remaining 6 kingdoms. The king of Qin claimed being the first Emperor of China.(He also ordered to burn everything Confucius wrote, to show his deep disagreement to old values) But, shortly after his death, old nobles of 6 kingdoms overthrowed his heir and once again fought each other.....

So..basically, in CK2's turn. it's a period someone rage flipped the table and mudered Pope. And then, all Christian kingdoms turned into Pagen(or other faith) Tribes and no longer play by the rules.
Or in HOI's turn, everybody failed to stop Hitler, some of them even tried to turn Fascist, but still got annihilated, Soviet got facerolled, Britain surrendered, USA made a final stand but got slaughtered, Axis won, and then German also killed Italy and Japan. But, after that world conquer , German fall into a civial war with 7 or more ideology.

2, The Romance of Three kingdoms. Almost everybody knows now....


3, The end of Song Dynasty. It's a period when Song, Liao, Jin, Mongolia competed to be the emperor of China. Sometimes they even cooperate to fight their common enemies. Song evacuated to the south after losing war against Liao, but survived in Byzantine style, while north side of China keeps changing owners among Liao, Jin and finally Mongolia.
Koei made a Genghis Khan game about this period.

4, The end of Qing Dynasty. Revolutions, westernizations, civil wars. But, you are likely going to get banned. Because people can't stop but to streaming it everywhere and big brother will get mad.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

4, The end of Qing Dynasty. Revolutions, westernizations, civil wars. But, you are likely going to get banned. Because people can't stop but to streaming it everywhere and big brother will get mad.

I wonder if we will ever see a proper Vicky 2 mod showcasing it

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

I really want to be able to play China in a way that doesn't seem cobbled together from unique mechanics that are great in spirit but are ultimately derived from super Western-centric games. I don't mean that as a bash to paradox, a lot of super important and interesting history is from Europe but it does mean that China has always felt wrong in the way it plays, to me at least. It does seem a lot like China really often gets the short end of the stick in terms of representing how the region actually worked in the time frames of paradox games.

Go find a chinese studio that makes those kind of games. A western studio will inevitably screw it up for literally any reason. If you find that the chinese game made by chinese devs doesn't sit right with you, then the reality might just be that you don't understand china enough.

 

[SirAlexius]

Go find a chinese studio that makes those kind of games. A western studio will inevitably screw it up for literally any reason. If you find that the chinese game made by chinese devs doesn't sit right with you, then the reality might just be that you don't understand china enough.

No offense, but this seems pretty dishonest. Paradox could easily make an interesting China experience if they built a game centered on China. Their research is thorough enough to be able to accurately cover any part of the world given enough written records and scholarly research on the topic. What some people are saying here is that Paradox has never really tried to make a game that focuses on China, and has included China more as an afterthought in some of its other games. This does not mean that Paradox is destined to screw up any project they make that relates to China, or that a "Western" game studio can't make a good game about China.

 

[Warial]

Their research is thorough enough to be able to accurately cover any part of the world given enough written records and scholarly research on the topic.

You are really giving them too much of a credit here.

 

[SirAlexius]

You are really giving them too much of a credit here.

I'm not saying they are better than historians, but I would also not say that they are substantially worse than any other game studio out there in terms of making historical content.

 

[icedt729]

Go find a chinese studio that makes those kind of games. A western studio will inevitably screw it up for literally any reason. If you find that the chinese game made by chinese devs doesn't sit right with you, then the reality might just be that you don't understand china enough.

So it's literally not possible for anyone who is not Chinese to make a decent game about China? You don't think that's a bit of a stretch?