Lost Soul Aside, an action role-playing game, was a personal project for Yang Bing when he started working on it more than a decade ago. He was inspired by popular games like Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta.
Then he released the game’s initial trailer, which opens with a man in a flowing black outfit quietly approaching a wooden door in an empty expanse. As the man opens the door, the video transitions to a five-minute combat showcase. He fluidly bounces from enemy to enemy while leaving afterimages behind.
The trailer quickly received more than 1.5 million views. This was a personal project no longer.
Bing created a game studio, UltiZero Games, that now has about 40 employees and elevated Lost Soul Aside, which was released for the PlayStation 5 and PC last week, from an independent game into something bigger. The well-received trailer also inspired Sony to start an initiative called the China Hero Project.
China’s gaming industry has exploded in recent years, releasing some of the world’s biggest games, like Marvel Rivals, Genshin Impact and Black Myth: Wukong. But in 2016, when China Hero Project began, the country’s game development scene was nascent.
“Most developers with experience in China have historically been focused on PC and mobile, whereas console gaming as a mainstream thing is comparatively new,” said Bao Bo, the director of the China Hero Project.
Amid video game addiction concerns, China had banned the domestic production, import and sale of most gaming consoles in 2000. Chinese players instead flocked to computer games like League of Legends, Honor of Kings and World of Warcraft. When China lifted the console ban in 2015, Sony and Microsoft swiftly attempted to capitalize on a large base of potential customers.
Twelve games have been released under the China Hero Project, including Lost Soul Aside, its de facto flagship game. The support is different for each project, but primarily falls into four categories: funding assistance, development support, marketing and connecting developers with publishers.
“We want to find teams with the ambition and ability to create globally successful games, and then do whatever we can to make sure their games really shine on PlayStation,” Bo said.
Other games released through the China Hero Project that had moderate commercial success include F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch, part of the Metroidvania genre; AI LIMIT, a science fiction role-playing game; and ANNO: Mutationem, an action-adventure game.
The China Hero Project, which is an incubator, is genre agnostic. As long as Bo’s team enjoys a game, it has a chance to generate interest. Bo said that being selected by Sony requires a game to be outstanding in some capacity, whether that is gameplay, art or narrative.
“High-quality games have greater advantages,” Bo said.
After 12 years at Virtuos, a game development support studio, Bo became Sony’s director of game production for China in 2021. Sony was expanding its presence in the country after the success of its partnership with Genshin Impact, a popular mobile role-playing game.
In the latest round of applications, more than 200 developers applied to be part of the China Hero Project. Less than 5 percent were accepted.
The incubator has been successful enough to spawn similar Sony projects, including within India and another in the Middle East and North Africa region. But as the landscape in China has evolved, so has the China Hero Project.
Lost Soul Aside is a Cinderella story where an indie game was plucked from obscurity and transformed. Bo’s new goal is to assist established medium- to large-size teams and help elevate their performance.
The early hype around Lost Soul Aside did not exist in a vacuum.
When the game was unveiled in July 2016, fans of role-playing games were frustrated that Final Fantasy XV had been delayed several times. Lost Soul Aside’s gameplay and lead character shared enough similarities with Final Fantasy XV that Bing’s trailer felt as if he had single-handedly developed a version of the game.
Bing said considerable work went into perfecting Lost Soul Aside’s combat, which was the primary focus of that trailer. As the team grew, he said, the game changed drastically throughout development. There was continual refinement of the narrative.
“We tried many times to ensure that our systems matched the story line,” Bing said. He added, “We all hope that players’ expectations are met when they finally experience the real game.”
While the immediate interest in Lost Soul Aside allowed the game to grow to its current size, it also slowed things down. Bing wanted to wait until the game was up to his standards. But despite the growth, Lost Soul Aside’s development concluded just as it started.
“I just returned to the earliest stage,” Bing said, “when I was facing the computer every day and then try to polish the game.”
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