They play differently in China – it's all about building
When Turkish high school friends developed Old Market Simulator, a modest farming and marketplace game, they never imagined it would find a massive audience in China.
Initially struggling with sales, the indie title barely cracked 1,000 copies. But after its release on Steam last October, it skyrocketed to over 201,000 sales – half of them from Chinese players.
The developers made a thank you video for Chinese gamers in January.
The developers, caught off guard by the surge, soon realized why: the game's farming and virtual economy elements struck a chord with China's massive gamer community, which has long gravitated toward simulation and construction-heavy titles.
Chinese social media platforms were quickly flooded with detailed guides and strategies, dissecting every aspect of the game.
Detail Excel spreadsheets dedicated to tracking the prices of items in the game posted on social media platform by gamers.
This phenomenon isn't new. Chinese players have a reputation for transforming games with open-ended mechanics into grand infrastructure projects, often prioritizing building over the core narrative.
Chinese players often get lost in the game's construction and not in a hurry to push forward the game's story.
Take Death Stranding, for example. The game, created by Hideo Kojima, presents a bleak post-apocalyptic world where players act as couriers, reconnecting civilization while avoiding ghostly entities.
But for many Chinese players, the real challenge wasn't survival – it was infrastructure. Instead of simply navigating rough terrain, they spent hours constructing highways and elaborate transport networks to optimize deliveries.
Similarly, in Euro Truck Simulator 2, a game about long-haul trucking, Chinese gamers went beyond logistics. They meticulously recreated real-world Chinese cities, from toll stations to roadside billboards, effectively turning the game into an unofficial city-building sim.
Even horror survival games like The Forest aren't immune. While the game is designed around searching for a lost child, some Chinese players instead focused on constructing elaborate roller coasters, skyscrapers, and entire urban settlements, leaving the storyline by the wayside.
A gamer built Chinese cities with toll stations.
Players get lost in the fun of building stuff instead of searching for their "son" in the game Forest.
The same passion for digital construction is evident in Minecraft, where Chinese gamers have recreated entire cityscapes, including hyper-realistic versions of Shanghai and Beijing. In 2021, a video of a player reconstructing the Great Wall of China block by block went viral, showcasing the sheer scale of their ambition.
Player replicate a city in Minecraft.
Bilibili user 我的世界蓝村长 replicated the Great Wall in 2021 in Minecraft.
The numbers reflect this enthusiasm. A 2023 report from the Indie Games Foundation in Poland revealed that Chinese players make up nearly 46 percent of all Steam users, with a staggering 55 million active players each month.
With over 600 million gamers across various platforms, China's diverse and passionate gaming community has the power to turn even the most niche games into unexpected successes.
Developers are taking notice. More indie studios are leveraging platforms like Xiaohongshu to tap into the Chinese market, recognizing that if a game resonates with this audience, it can achieve viral success almost overnight.
For Old Market Simulator, what began as a small-scale indie project has become a breakout hit, thanks to China's uniquely engaged gaming culture. And as history shows, when Chinese players pick up a game, they don't just play – they build, reshape, and redefine the experience entirely.
