AGAINST ALL ODDS

Amid government censorship and turbulent market trends, China’s vibrant indie scene is fighting for survival.

- Steven Messner

West of the neon towers of Shanghai’s Pudong district, along the Wusong River that winds through a much quieter part of the city, a few hundred developers are challenging the conventions that define China’s unparalleled $33 billion videogame industry. In a market defined by free-to-play online games, the term ‘indie’ doesn’t mean much to a lot of Chinese gamers.

But that doesn’t stop over 10,000 attendees from gathering on the first floor of the enormous Shanghai Convention and Exhibition Center of International Sourcing to showcase Chinese indie games. Called WePlay Game Expo, this conference is the only one of its kind in China—a haven for a fledgling indie scene whose future depends almost entirely on the regulations of China’s government and, surprisingly, a Seattle-based company: Valve.

Though China has more gamers than anywhere else in the world (roughly 800 million), its industry is also the least diverse. Free-to-play mobile, and PC games—most oozing with pay-to-win schemes and loot boxes—have reigned supreme since online gaming exploded in the mid-2000s. But WePlay Game Expo and the developers who attend it are looking to change that.

It’s like a miniature version of PAX West, the game convention that invades downtown Seattle each August. Though there are a few big-budget, international games (a 2K Games booth sporting the divine visage of Borderlands 3’s iconic Psycho greets me as I walk in), deeper into the swell of the crowd is where the coolest stuff is.