Mid-game, players can tap to watch an episode of a short manhua drama; meanwhile, an upcoming survival mobile game has scrapped weapon and pet gacha entirely. Two seemingly unrelated developments in China’s games industry have converged on the same question: beyond rolling out new content nonstop, what else can games do to keep players coming back?
On October 23, an analysis from DataEye noted that Crazy Water World, developed by Yi World, has integrated short drama episodes directly into the game. Alongside core gameplay of base construction and resource management, players can watch two serialized works: Global Flood: I Dominate the Apocalypse With a Water Purifier and Crazy Water World: I Win Big With the Infinite System. Both tie into the game’s post-apocalyptic ocean survival setting, rather than existing as completely disconnected content.
The title has delivered solid performance. Its WeChat mini game version has stayed within the top 13 of the grossing chart over the past 180 days, peaking at No. 2; its standalone app version reached as high as No. 17 on the iOS grossing chart. It should be clarified that these figures reflect the product’s overall performance, and cannot be simply attributed to the addition of short dramas. Still, for survival simulation games that require repeated log-ins and waiting for resource production, embedding episodic viewing content does offer a viable way to fill idle waiting time.
Previously, many games used short drama and manhua content as user acquisition creatives — leveraging twist-filled plots to drive clicks and redirect viewers to download pages. Crazy Water World is taking the opposite approach, serving serialized stories to players who are already inside the game. Whether in-game viewing will extend average session length and boost user retention remains to be verified by follow-up data.
In the same week, Starving Wilderness — developed by Shengqu Games and published by Tencent — also drew industry attention. Officially licensed from the Don’t Starve IP, the mobile title confirmed its November 24 launch date, with pre-registrations now open. More notable than the launch schedule is its revamped monetization system: weapons and pets are no longer obtainable via gacha. The original gacha pools have been replaced with an exchange shop, where relevant items can be earned through daily gameplay activity; ascension materials can also be collected through sandbox gameplay. Monetization will instead be focused primarily on cosmetics.
This was by no means a last-minute call ahead of launch. The adjustment was first announced back in April on the official Ji Huole broadcast, and has drawn renewed public attention alongside the launch date reveal. For survival titles, exploration, crafting and collection are inherently core gameplay loops. If key progression resources are overly tied to paid mechanics, players can easily feel the game is “unenjoyable without spending.” Whether removing power-focused gacha will improve player experience will depend on actual balance design and live operations after launch.
One title supplements its core loop with embedded derivative short dramas; the other refines its monetization model to reduce mandatory pay pressure. While they take seemingly opposite directions on the surface, they share the same underlying logic: moving away from designs focused solely on user acquisition and monetization, and instead reflecting on why players would choose to open the game a second or third time.
It remains inconclusive whether in-game short dramas will meaningfully lift retention, or whether gacha removal will translate to more stable public reputation. What is clear, however, is that Chinese publishers are already experimenting with different approaches to keep players engaged for the long term.
*Data aggregation is sourced from Gghubs.