Collaboration opening new gaming frontiers

Sharing expertise

For Nowakowski, successful cooperation starts with finding a good match between the creative ideas of two companies and the audiences they want to reach.

He sees opportunities for Chinese and European companies to work together through crossovers and by developing games based on each other's intellectual property. IP refers to the characters, stories, fictional worlds and other creative elements owned by a company or brand.

"It has to make sense for the team in China," he said, adding that it must also fit CD Projekt Red and its own IP.

He pointed to Black Myth: Wukong, an action-adventure game inspired by Chinese mythology, as an example of how Chinese developers can combine impressive visuals, engaging gameplay and storytelling to create ambitious single-player games.

He said the game's success could encourage more Chinese players to explore similar titles, potentially creating new opportunities for overseas developers.

Sebastian Kalemba, game director of The Witcher IV, also praised Black Myth: Wukong for its combination of mythology and challenging combat.

He noted that cultural traditions can give games a distinctive identity, while universal themes such as love and friendship allow stories to connect with players across different countries and cultures.

The growing international popularity of Chinese games provides a strong foundation for such exchanges. According to the 2025 China Game Industry Report, released by the Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, overseas sales of China's self-developed games reached $20.45 billion in 2025.

Cooperation is also taking place through international game development teams, where studios in different countries contribute to the same projects.

At the recently concluded Poznan Game Arena in western Poland, Kamil Sciana, senior communications manager for Central and Eastern Europe at Ubisoft, said the French game developer and publisher operates two studios in China.

The company's Shanghai and Chengdu studios have contributed to several well-known international game franchises.

The Chengdu studio has worked on Assassin's Creed, an action-adventure series set in different historical periods. The Shanghai studio has collaborated with Ubisoft's Paris team on Just Dance, a music game in which players follow dance moves displayed on screen.

Chinese developers have also brought elements of their own cultural heritage into international projects. Ubisoft Chengdu led the development of Myths of the Eastern Realm, an expansion for the fantasy game Immortals Fenyx Rising that draws inspiration from Chinese mythology.