Do Chinese Gamers Actually Rate Western Games Worse? Analysts Have Given Their Verdict
Internet users have their theories, but at least one of them has been verified: the one about harsh Chinese players.
Do Chinese players rate Western games worse? Such a theory is supposedly making rounds on the internet, but without (relatively) credible data, it should be classified as typical internet wisdom, which does not always have anything to do with reality. However, the GameDiscoverCo agency, an entity we have already repeatedly cited – specializing in the analysis of data about Steam games – decided to verify this on its own.
GameDiscoverCo used review data from Valve's platform with the option to divide by languages and compared opinions written in English and Simplified Chinese - the two most popular languages on Steam. Initially, the analysis was based on ratings of about 8 thousand titles, but later it was limited to games that received at least 1,000 reviews.
The reason for this latest decision was simple: Chinese Steam users seemed to rate smaller titles that barely passed the 50 review threshold much more positively. Hence, the opinions about the games from the 90th percentile are 9% worse in English than in Chinese. (percentile, in short, determines what percentage of data is below a given value) in terms of grades.
After taking this correction into account, a similar trend could still be observed. More importantly, Chinese gamers were 2% more strict about Steam games in the median, and 10th percentile opinions in English were as much as 15% more positive.
The attitude of the Chinese towards specific games
GDC also cited examples of specific games. In some cases, the reason for differences in the evaluation of a given title is obvious. For example, Helldivers 2, which took a hit after the confusion with PlayStation Network (Chinese PSN accounts are not supported and the title may still be unavailable, despite Sony lifting this requirement).
The agency also claims that games featuring multiple failure mechanics (i.e. any "roguelikes") are not popular among Chinese Steam users (see Peglin and Wildfrost). However, we quote, "straightforward Western AAA titles" - GTA, Forza Horizon etc. - are evaluated similarly in China as they are in the West.
