Flat Screens and Flying Fists--Martial Arts Gaming in Taiwan

Millions of Chinese-speaking youth have grown up with their noses buried in martial arts novels. What young reader has not dreamed of flitting across the landscape in microgravity grace, like the heroes and heroines of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Who has not longed to meet as equals with justice-seeking heroes whose prodigious abilities would put the very gods to shame? Or to roam the spirit world in the carefree company of a celestial being? Such dreams once came true only under cover of sleep, but thanks to technology, we are not the limited beings we once were! Many gamers between the ages of roughly 20 and 30 have been righting wrongs and smiting fiends for over a decade now.

Soft-World International has released a string of imaginative games, including "Fighters of Louis Cha" and "Wulin Fighters." All the characters in these games have sprung from the martial arts novels of Louis Cha, and their on-screen heroics have captured the imaginations of gamers throughout the Chinese-speaking world. Company president Wang Chun-po is at center, vice-manager Chang Yi-min of the Taiwan Research Center is at front right.

Softstar Group got the ball rolling for martial arts gaming 11 years ago when, in an effort to distinguish itself from US and Japanese game makers, it released "The Royal Sword," Taiwan's first Chinese-style role playing game. It was just the first of an enormously popular five-part series released over a period of nine years. And the biggest hit of all is "The Enchanted Sword." Released in 1995, it continued to outsell all other games for five years running, despite not being upgraded until just this year.

Soft-World International was the next to hit the scene, making an immediate splash by purchasing the rights to make software based on the novels of Louis Cha. This agreement resulted in the hot-selling "Fighters of Louis Cha," "Wulin Fighters," and "New Fighters of Mount Chu." Perhaps the most original of these was "The Fighters of Louis Cha," which incorporates every single character and location from 14 different Louis Cha novels. The game has been powerfully addictive to readers of martial arts novels as well as gamers. Another company riding on Louis Cha's coattails is InterServ International, which entered the fray in 1999 with "Return of the Condor Heroes" and "Proud Smiling Wanderer." InterServ is particularly proud of its proprietary 3-D realtime engine and its technology for capturing facial expressions, which make for a very unique visual sensation.

Each game has won fan loyalty with its own particular strengths. "Fighter of the Enchanted Sword" is a runaway hit throughout the entire Chinese-speaking world, including Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, North America, and elsewhere. In mainland China, where the game has sparked a craze of monumental proportions, Hunan TV has produced a number of related programs, and many fans have written scripts of their own and offered them to the game's producers as suggestions for a sequel. In fact, in the mainland they are already filming a TV drama series based on "Fighter of the Enchanted Sword." In the six years since its release, the game has sold 600,000 copies in mainland China and 200,000 in Taiwan. After all this time, gamers still snap up three to five thousand copies every month.

Big video game competitions give gamers a chance to display their skills and find out just how they stack up against the very best.

Role playing games have always been the mainstream with Chinese martial arts games. The player assumes the role of the protagonist and proceeds through the game as the story line unfolds, experiencing all the thrills and spills of a Chinese knight-errant. Avis Tang, marketing director at InterServ International, explains: "This game affords players a chance to appreciate the worlds of Louis Cha and Ku Lung from a different angle, and injects a new element of fantasy into Chinese martial arts stories."

Most of the earliest martial arts games were played alone, usually on personal computers, and the objective was to survive to successively higher levels while fighting, training, hunting for treasure, buying, and selling. Over time, however, developers of the most successful new games started adding romance and forcing the player to make difficult choices. Engrossed players would often skip meals and miss sleep in their hurry to find out how the stories ended.

In the last couple of years, the rise of online gaming has propelled martial arts games beyond the one-player mode. Gamers can now log onto the Internet at the same time as their friends and fight together against formidable foes, sharing in each other's ups and downs. With Soft-World International's "Fighters of Louis Cha," for example, players can decide many of the attributes of the "avatar" that represents them on screen, including looks, dress, and fighting school. The Shaolin school is only open to males, while one must be an unmarried woman to join the Gu Mu school. Anyone considering learning martial arts in the Constellation school, meanwhile, had better become an expert in the art of flattery. Each martial arts school is like a big family, and has its own chat room. In addition to the fun of taking on a totally new identity for themselves, players can make friends in cyberspace with people of like mind. Who could resist the addictive power of that?

Chang Che-ming, a 19-year-old second-year engineering student at National Cheng Kung University, has been gaming for six years, and is a big fan of Softstar's "Fighter of the Enchanted Sword." Says Chang, "The plot is full of surprises, and is very imaginatively done. I especially like the mazes, which are very challenging. The only way to get through them is to re-create the maze in the room to get a feel for the layout." He is effusive in his praise of "The Fighters of Louis Cha," for he has long been a fan of Cha's books: "I can get my favorite characters to be on my side. They go along with me as I get through the levels and hunt for treasures!"

Kung Chun-ming, a second-year dentistry student at Kaohsiung Medical University, has been gaming for over ten years. An aficionado of history and martial arts novels, he is especially enthusiastic about "Royal Sword 3: The Untold Story." Says Kung, "I like the way Louis Cha weaves real history into his novels, and 'The Untold Story' does the same thing. The story revolves mainly around incidents that actually took place back in the Sui dynasty. The plot is really interesting, and the game isn't burdened by a lot of martial arts training and mazes. When I come to a really moving or exciting part, I save the game so that I can replay it again and again."

Softstar Group in 1995 released "The Enchanted Sword," the first big hit in the genre of martial arts RPG. The company has remained the premier developer of martial arts games ever since.

For gamers today, the object is no longer to graduate to ever higher levels by slaying monsters. Nowadays they're more interested in historical authenticity, surprising plot twists, interesting roles, and humorous, thought-provoking dialog. The production process has many stages: planning, key frames, artwork, programming, animation, music, etc. And within these categories there are yet more narrowly defined specialties, such as scene drawing, production of combat moves, and preparation of character designs.

According to Tsai Yi-lin, a manager in the marketing division at Softstar, "To produce a martial arts role playing game, the first thing you have to do is write a good script. Then you'll be able to create a long-selling product series." The most time-consuming part of making a video game is planning and writing the script, which usually takes eight months to a year, says Tsai, while three editors work together to complete the full-motion video (FMV) transitions, scenery, dialog, and action. The big selling point for "Spirit of the Sword," distributed by Softchina Corporation, is the dialog, which was written by the noted author Kevin Tsai.

Soft-World International's "Fox Dipper" is a good example of what it takes to make a successful game: over 70 musical pieces, 60 transitions, 500 scene drawings, 100 characters, and 200 props, not to mention five to seven minutes of 3-D opening animation. Development of the game took 18 months and cost over NT$10 million. During the last half-month prior to the deadline, a dozen or so members of the development team stayed at the office around the clock and slept on cots. A similar process takes place with the development of almost all martial arts games.

According to Chang Yi-min, a developer at Soft-World International: "You can count on it taking a year or two to produce a game, so from the moment you make the decision to develop a particular game, the developers have to have a good idea of where information technology is headed." Chang explains that one must first consider the rapid advances in hardware that are likely to take place over the coming two years. One must also ask whether martial arts role playing games will continue to appeal to gamers. "RPG gamers with a lot of experience start to get tired of mandatory training, and this has spurred game makers to work up better story lines, more sweeping scenery, better music, and improved special effects." At the same time, says Chang, "With the release of Pentium 4 processors and falling prices for hardware and memory, gamers are beginning to want the gaming experience to feel a bit like watching a movie. This is bringing about increased specialization in the industry, not unlike what you find in the movie industry."

Soft-World International, with 180 developers at headquarters and another 100 employees in mainland China, is probably the biggest game maker in Taiwan. Softstar, in the meantime, is planning to establish a school later this year in the Taipei suburb of Hsintien in hopes of bringing new blood into the game industry.

Chang Yi-min, a 13-year gaming veteran, strongly disagrees with those who argue that video games are headed for decline or doomed to go bust like the dot.com economy has done: "We've come a long way from the monochrome DOS screens of 13 years ago. Today we've got full color, animation, and a heavy emphasis on 3-D. This was all unimaginable back then. Besides, people these days want instant entertainment, and there's no end to what they demand when it comes to image quality. More kids are being born every year, so there's an inexhaustible source of new consumers, and as they grow up they keep wanting more. These factors keep us game makers pushing to make continual improvements." Sales for Soft-World International last year topped NT$1 billion, and Chang is convinced that the industry's best days are yet to come.

The prototype characters on the desks and computers hint at the playful and unrestrained spirit of game developers.

Competition in the industry is fierce. Dozens of new games are released every month, and it takes more than just a good product to achieve success in the marketplace. An imaginative, high-quality game that takes a player days or weeks to get through all the levels may be what gamers are looking for, but such products will seldom sell many copies without the benefit of attractive packaging and intelligent marketing.

The top-selling martial arts games in Taiwan today are "Proud Smiling Wanderer" and "Return of the Condor Heroes," from InterServ International. According to InterServ's Avis Tang, "The conventional wisdom is that advertising in the gaming magazines is the only way to market a game, but in fact there are other ways of going about it. The best alternative method is to establish tie-ups with companies from other industries. I'd like to see video games become a leader of the leisure industry. I think they could rank right up there with cinema. With 'Proud Smiling Wanderer,' for example, the developers put a can of a President brand beverage in a scene showing the Mongol army camp. Gamers have to pick it up to replenish their characters' strength. That was an idea of our marketing people."

A wide range of promotional goods have also been developed, including mouse pads, coffee mugs, and credit cards with the images of popular game characters, game theme songs on CD, collections of game images, covers from Louis Cha novels, and dolls based on video game characters that can be won at the penny arcade in a "claw game." Sales of "Return of the Condor Heroes" have gotten a big boost thanks to two of Taiwan's most popular cartoonists, whose dashing images of the main characters are printed on the box.

Music and sound effects are important keys to the development of a successful game. Shown here is a game company recording studio.

Korean games have been very popular in recent years at Internet cafes in Taiwan, to the extent that more than 10,000 people have gotten online simultaneously to play "Paradise," "Millennium," and "Heroes." With the Korean game industry gradually moving toward a dominant position in Japan's market, Soft-World International president Wang Chun-po comments with frustration on the comparatively short shrift given to the industry in Taiwan: "In Korea, if you work as a video game developer in a company for five years you're exempted from military service. The Korean government gives its game industry huge support in terms of both financial and human resources, but in Taiwan they see video games as something for kids. Not many Taiwanese university graduates with degrees in computer science would even know how to write a program for a video game." But Wang feels that Taiwan has a number of advantages that ought to make the local industry very competitive versus Korea. Taiwan has 5000 years of Chinese history and a rich folkloric tradition to draw upon, and if this were just combined with Taiwan's world-class information technology, the immense size of the Chinese-speaking world could provide tremendous market opportunities.

InterServ International has a special flair for marketing. The characters from its "Proud Smiling Wanderer" and "Return of the Condor Heroes" can be seen everywhere on coffee mugs, music CDs, computer mice, and his-and-hers watches. Play the "claw games" at a penny arcade and you might even win a Condor Hero doll! Pictured is Game Division marketing director Avis Tang.

Much of the action in martial arts games takes place in inns, ancient temples, and gardens.

"I work, therefore I read comics." The hard-working employees at gaming development firms often look to cartoons, comics and novels for inspiration.