How Black Myth Wukong relates to India and why India never made AAA games?

Black Myth Wukong is widely regarded as the biggest video game release of 2024. The game features Sun Wukong, a Chinese mythological character appearing in the most famous novel across Asia, ‘Journey to the West’. The game has broken several records in both sales and player count, reaching 2.2 million concurrent players on Steam alone.

While the story is about the aftermath of Wukong’s task to accompany the Chinese Buddhist monk to India. The story reveals that the monk spent over a decade studying Buddhism across different places in India to gain knowledge and find solutions to various problems.

The character Wukong in particular seems inspired by one of the Indian gods ‘Hanuman’ who is also described as a monkey with immense knowledge, powers and immortality. His presence is one of the biggest proof of how someone can utilize the history and create beloved a character in both literature and video game.

Also Read: A week ahead of release, Black Myth Wukong tops Steam bestseller charts

Journey to the West is one of the few examples telling us how rich and vast the Indian history is, but at the same time, it also raises a lot of questions. Why do everything about India comes from things made outside of India?

In terms of video games, there are only a handful of small indie titles from India that make use of history and mythology. The country is yet to put out an actual AAA title that can capture the attention of many despite their efforts in the AVGC sector. Let’s find out why.

Why India never made AAA games?

Despite having probably the most content to make AAA video games based on, India never did. The reason behind this can get very complex, and it’s not because they don’t have the skills or technology. Several big studios, including Rockstar Games and Ubisoft, have studios in India.

•  Market and investment issues

One of the big reason for the lack of AAA games in India is the market. The gaming market is dominated by mobile games. The games are free, the phones are inexpensive, and high quality games can be played anywhere, which sets a bar impossible to cross.

Even if a company plan on making a AAA title, they are blocked on the first stage itself, the funding. Most of the AAA games take tens of millions of dollars and years of development time. Indian investors play it very safe, with no one ready to take risk for something that is less than a quarter of the same market.

Black Myth Wukong costed $75 million (600+ crore) with a development cycle of six years. The game sold around 18 million copies, with estimated revenue reaching over $800 million. No one is shilling out that much money for a video game in India.

•  Religious and Political issue

Black Myth Wukong's connection to India is much more interesting and gives us an insight as to why India can never do something like this. Compared to the novel, India have an entire library of rich historical figures and gods, which can be used as the building block for some of the strongest stories in AAA games.

Sadly, this is where the biggest problem for the Indian gaming sector lie. Black Myth Wukong is based around a fictional character which have a striking resemblance to Hanuman. Despite the character killing gods from Chinese mythology, it can be passed as fiction, which people enjoy without a second thought.

India, however, is a home to thousands of gods, and having them fight with each other, let alone one of them emerging as a victor, will be the controversy of the decade. This adds the fear of public scrutiny, which results in no funding, which results in no game development, which result in no growth of PC gaming in India, and we’re back to square one, aren’t we?