Cultural analysis of the video game industry: a comparison between the West and China

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Filipe Daniel Abreu
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/24502
• topic: China; Localization; Culture; Video game industry; West; Localização; Cultura; Indústria dos video jogos; Ocidente; Gestão

The growth of the video game industry and the recent rise of China as an economic superpower appear almost in parallel time. China has a very large video game market, with one of the largest player bases in the world. However, Chinese culture is quite different from that of the Western world, mainly due to its socialpolitical and cultural context. While the industry may look at this abundant and promising market as a guaranteed opportunity, not understanding the culture could spell failure. In the world of video games, success means hard work and adapting products to certain markets is essential. In this context, this dissertation aims to provide a better understanding of how video games are adapted, taking into account different cultures and some existing challenges. It mainly seeks to describe the Chinese cultural context, which is extremely important for this industry, but also addresses the socialpolitical context with direct influence on the product, namely the regulations existing in China. In addition, specific cultural items and the challenges of localization will be discussed. In a practical approach, differences are presented between the international (Western) version and the Chinese version of several video games. The objective is to demonstrate that these differences do, in fact, exist, as well as to present possible explanations for this fact. Based on the differences found and a study of the reasons why they exist, it will be possible to have a better understanding of the various reasons why these same differences exist, whether for cultural reasons, due to laws, or other reasons.