Incorporate Chinese cultural elements into the game, allowing global players to “check in” with China in the game

China News Service, Guangzhou, October 20th. Title: "Planting" Chinese cultural elements into games. Players around the world "check in" in China in the game.

China News Service reporter Cai Minjie

The lights in the tea restaurant flicker, and the brick walls, wooden tables and chairs, and ice room tableware are all in the mirror. The Cantonese-speaking character "Reverage" appears here... This is a scene from the global e-sports game "Fearless Contract".

"The game is presenting a diverse, trendy and modern China to the world in a 'moisturizing and silent' way." Jin Yibo, CEO of Tengjing Sports and publisher of the fearless contract mobile game, recently said that the game is embedding Chinese cultural elements into the daily experience of players around the world through heroic characters, city linkage and other methods.

In recent years, overseas young people’s interest in China has continued to grow. The latest "China Haul" (China Shopping Unboxing) is moving from "taking a look" to "packing Chinese goodies and culture into boxes and taking them home". In addition to these offline experiences, online games are opening up another path.

According to the "China Game Industry Report from January to June 2026", the actual sales revenue of self-developed games in the overseas market was US$12.372 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30.22%.

"Tens of millions of users play and interact with the game repeatedly every day, and the cultural impact is deeper and more sustained." Jin Yibo said that a globally popular game is further extending this curiosity into the urge to "want to come to China."

On the way to sea, many domestic games cleverly combine traditional Chinese cultural elements such as music, poetry, and martial arts with modern game design, allowing overseas players to enjoy the fun of games while feeling the profoundness of Chinese culture.

In June this year, the game map "Tianshu Yunque" inspired by Zhangjiajie was launched globally. The overseas design team made a special trip to Hunan to collect the scenery and deeply integrate iconic landscapes such as peaks, canyons, and clouds into the game scene.

According to data from the Hunan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, a new Zhangjiajie cultural tourism map "Tianshu Yunque" was released globally on June 21. By the beginning of July, it had been played more than 2.6 billion times across the entire network, and the content had been interacted with more than 36.9 million times.

"The key to exporting culture overseas is to 'understand the cognition of both sides'. Cultural communication is no longer a one-way output, but a 'two-way rush' that is spontaneously clocked in, shared and retold by young people time and time again." Jin Yibo said that during the Fearless Contract Global Championship, more than 200 top players, anchors and content creators from around the world came to China, and Chinese player "Kangkang" also gained a lot of popularity overseas. In the overseas player community, "I wanna go to China" has become a frequent message.

As the first stop of the 2026 "Fearless Tour", Guangzhou has collaborated with many parties to deeply integrate e-sports events with Guangfu culture: a "Fancy Tile Opening" themed party was held under the Canton Tower, and traditional folk customs such as lion dance and ball throwing, tile guessing and other innovative combinations with e-sports culture; the event also cooperated with time-honored brands to launch a "City Pass" check-in plan to drive customer traffic from related companies.

Jin Yibo believes that high-frequency, high-quality content iteration is the new experience that Chinese e-sports can provide to the global industry. The goal of all this is still to make more Chinese elements more fashionable, so that the world "want to come to China and understand China" because of a game.