The History Behind Chinese Games¶

A second book the author planned, widening the view from esports to the games industry as a whole. The project stopped when he moved into documentary filmmaking. What exists is a foreword, 8 chapters and 1 extra, 10 pieces in total, all of them available in Simplified Chinese.

Translated so far¶

Foreword, why the author widened his behind the scenes history from esports to the whole games industry, after a year and a half and more than 50 interviews (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 1, 2026)
Chapter 1. Jichuan Mingjing: Zhang Mingjing and His Bond with Japanese Games, from hunting Japanese cartridges at Shanghai's Confucian Temple market to localising Sakura Wars and running Chain Chronicle (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 2. Youku Is Not a Media Outlet: Xiucai, Games Editor-in-Chief, from a directing degree at the Shanghai Theatre Academy to rebuilding Youku's games channel around Dota casters, and why a platform is not a media outlet (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 3. WoW: Blizzard Never Actually Wanted a Divorce from The9, how The9 won the World of Warcraft licence and then lost it, from a million characters of localisation and a Mongolian voice actor for Ragnaros to the servers The9 would not upgrade and Bobby Kotick's order to split (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 4. Xuecha: What We Missed Was More Than a Few Consoles, a Wuhan boy who grew up in locked-up console rental rooms, became the first Chinese games editor sent to cover E3, and watched thirty years of banned and stalled consoles cost China more than the hardware (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 5. Tianlang's Dream of Industrialised Cosplay, a Shanghai cosplayer who turned a hobby into a Hangzhou prop workshop, built Chevrolet's touring Bumblebee, then took the call from Tencent that put him at the centre of League of Legends in China (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 6. Huang Feng, Founder of Wangyu Internet Café, a twenty-year-old who borrowed his way into six games-only computers in suburban Shanghai, lived through confiscated machines and smashed-up premises as he expanded, and gambled against a collapsing trade to build China's leading internet café chain (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 7. Shan Jun's Dilemma: A Chinese Indie Game Developer, a Shanghai comic artist who taught himself game programming at school, became Shanda's youngest project manager at twenty-three and was dismissed two years later, then spent a decade trying to make a Chinese indie fighting game work on Xbox Live Arcade (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Chapter 8. CEO Huang Yimeng, No Longer an Angry Young Activist, a Shanghai student expelled for refusing to delete the video everyone was passing around, who built VeryCD and China's electric donkey, turned XD Network into a games company on the back of Shenxian Dao, and then set out to end the joint-operation model that had made him with TapTap (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)
Extra: A Baseball Game in Boston, a Red Sox game at Fenway Park in August 2014, and what its pacing, its between-innings rituals and 200 years of formalising a sport suggest about how esports events should be built (reviewed against the Chinese original on August 3, 2026)

Help improve these translations¶

English chapters are published as working translations and reviewed chapter by chapter. Each chapter states its current review status. If you spot a mistranslation, a wrong name, or a factual error, please open an issue or send a pull request. Corrections are welcome and credited.