英文版三国杀进入美国市场

Yoka Games, a Beijing-based card game developer, recently released the English edition of the most popular card game in China, Sanguosha, into the US market, trying to grab a bite of the overseas market.

Sanguosha, or Killers of the Three Kingdoms, is highly popular in China, occupying 80 percent of the market share of 30 million board game players. Named after Chinese classic novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is one of the first original card-based role-playing games with Chinese elements. Each player takes a role card based on characters from the novel, equipped with distinct skills and weapons. War in the game is waged channeling the fury, intelligence and cunning of the novel's characters. It has won millions of Chinese fans among worldwide, ranging from 10- to 60-year-olds.

Du Bin, president of Yoka Games, says they have long been considering expanding from the Chinese mainland into Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and now the US.

"We have different strategies for various markets. People in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan basically read and write Chinese in traditional characters, so all we need to do is to replace simplified characters with traditional ones. But for the US, we need to translate them into English and convey the cultural meaning behind the lines."

Sanguosha was first brought to US university campuses by Chinese students, but it soon attracted local students, eventually showing up in UC Berkley's course catalog. This sped up the pace of releasing an English version of the game. Du Bin says, given what the reputation of the game has achieved in the country, Sanguosha will receive a warm reception.

However, the translation work turned out to be difficult.

"There were two obstacles we found hard to overcome for the translation. One was translating the idioms, like Nan Man Ru Qin, Nan Man means barbarians from the south and Ru Qin means invasion. Why does it have to be barbarians from the south? It will definitely baffle foreign players. The other one is translating role skills, we have Qing Cheng, Guo Se, Tian Xiang. How does someone describe those in English? It takes a whole lot of brain work. "

Thirty thousand packs of English Sanguosha have been put into the overseas market, and market performance of Sanguosha in the US is optimistic. However, Du Bin says that, aside from sales and profits, they also hope the game will arouse local people's interests in the Three Kingdoms novel and Chinese culture.

"We don't expect players to be experts of the Three Kingdoms history. Like in China, many players start knowing very little about the time period, but they are intrigued to look into it after playing the game. We hope to see that in the US."

For CRI, I'm Wang Wei.