UltraPlayers: What Australian Developers Need to Know About China’s Games Market

China now accounts for around 20% of global player spending but almost 40% of the industry’s growth since 2019. Unlike many international markets, PC and console continue to drive a significant share of that growth, making China an increasingly important opportunity for Australian developers.

But succeeding in China isn’t simply a matter of translating a Steam page.

In this guest article, IGEA member UltraPlayers explores how Sydney studio Sweaty Chair’s Tingus Goose generated more than 50% of its first ten days’ sales from Asian markets by combining thoughtful localisation with platform-specific marketing, community building and culturally relevant positioning.

Beyond Translation: How Tingus Goose Generated 50% of Its Sales in Asia 

What Tingus Goose taught us about positioning, Chinese platforms, the pathway of game discovery, and long-term community building 

In December 2025, Tingus Goose, developed by Sydney-based studio Sweaty Chair, launched on Steam. UltraPlayers, a Melbourne-based publisher, led the game’s publishing across Asian countries.

Within its first ten days, the game sold more than 50,000 copies, with over 50% of sales coming from Asian markets. 

For many developers outside Asia, the region is highly attractive—but difficult to approach with confidence. The challenge is not simply translating a Steam page or localising a trailer. It is understanding how local players discover games, how they talk about them, what makes them care, and how attention becomes trust and purchase intent. 

This article focuses primarily on mainland China, where we carried out the deepest localisation, content, and community work for Tingus Goose. The broader sales result came from Asian markets overall, but the case study below shows how we approached the Chinese market specifically. 

The key lesson is simple:

Regional publishing is not about placing the same game into a new language. It is about helping that game make sense within a new player culture.

1. Localisation Starts With Meaning, Not Translation

When entering a new market, it is easy to treat localisation as a language task.

Translate the in-game text. Translate the store page. Translate the trailers and marketing assets. Then wait for players to understand the product.

But the real question is not whether players can understand the words. It is whether they can immediately understand why this game is worth noticing.

For Tingus Goose, this mattered enormously. The game was distinctive, but not easy to categorise. It had an absurd visual identity, unusual humour, and a gameplay loop that could be difficult to explain in a single screenshot.

After reviewing player comments and early community reactions, we noticed something important: players’ first response was usually not about genre or mechanics.

It was emotional.

They were not asking, “What kind of game is this?”

They were saying things like:

• “This is absurd.”
• “What kind of mental state made this?”
• “Is the developer alright?”

That told us something critical about the market opportunity. Chinese players were reacting first to the game’s emotional and cultural signal—not its mechanical category.

So we did not initially position Tingus Goose as a specific genre. We positioned it as a state of mind.

Before launch: create awareness through contrast

During the pre-launch period, our goal was awareness rather than immediate conversion.

We wanted people to see Tingus Goose, remember it, and feel compelled to talk about it. To do that, we used contrast.

Our early slogan was: We Care About Your Mental Health.

For a game with such deliberately bizarre visuals, the seriousness of that line created an immediate contradiction. Players did not need to understand the gameplay. Seeing the slogan beside the game’s imagery was enough to trigger curiosity and discussion.

The phrase also worked because it reflected a familiar style of Chinese internet humour. When young players encounter something wildly absurd, they often use tongue-in-cheek comments about “mental state” or ask whether the creator is okay.

We were not inventing a new language for the game. We were tapping into one that players were already using.

That gave Tingus Goose an accessible local meaning before players knew its mechanics.

At launch: turn player experience into the reason to buy

As launch approached, the central question changed.

Players already knew the game was strange. They now wanted to know: Is it actually fun?

So we shifted the positioning from surprise to experience.

The new slogan became: Looks absurd. Surprisingly addictive.

This was more than a copy change. It reflected a change in what the market needed from us.

At this stage, we focused on amplifying real player reactions:

• Streamers reacting live to unexpected gameplay moments
• Themed UGC activities that encouraged players to create and share
• Highlight reels featuring unusual builds, satisfying outcomes, and player reactions
• Short-form content built around the game’s increasingly compulsive feedback loop

These materials communicated the game’s real appeal more effectively than a feature list could:

• Constant feedback and accumulation
• The satisfaction of watching systems compound
• The feeling of “I do not know why, but I cannot stop playing”

We stopped trying to persuade players through claims. We let real player experience become the proof.

This created a clear progression:

For us, this is one of the most important roles of a publisher: recognising how players currently perceive a game, then adapting the message as awareness develops.

2. Design a Clear Conversion Path, Not Just a Channel Plan

Once a game has the right local positioning, the next challenge is helping it reach the right players.

In Western markets, a player might discover a game through Steam, YouTube, press coverage, or a Discord community. In China, discovery is more fragmented. Different platforms play different roles in the journey from first impression to purchase and retention.

For Tingus Goose, we treated platforms as one connected system rather than a list of posting destinations.

Not every game should use every platform in the same way.

A cosy game, a hardcore simulation, a social co-op game, and an absurd idle game will each need different entry points. The job is not to be everywhere. It is to understand where the game is most likely to be discovered, discussed, trusted, and eventually bought.

For Tingus Goose, the player journey looked like this:

Platform discovery → emotionally resonant content → official QQ community → sustained trust, support, and purchase intent

The right platforms helped players discover the game. The right content gave them a reason to care. The community gave them a reason to stay.

3. Create Native Content, Not Identical Posts Everywhere

Different platforms require different storytelling.

Posting the same trailer, feature list, and screenshots everywhere may be efficient, but it rarely gives each audience a reason to engage. For Tingus Goose, we adapted the content angle based on what each platform was designed to do.

Heybox: create topics people want to discuss

Heybox users see a constant flow of game news, discounts, new releases, and developer updates. A standard gameplay introduction can disappear quickly.

So our focus on Heybox was to create topics that could generate discussion.

For example, when Steam declined Tingus Goose’s application to participate in Steam Animal Fest, we reframed it into a deliberately counterintuitive story:

“Geese are not animals: Tingus Goose will not be attending Steam Animal Fest.”

The joke treated the game as something too strange to qualify as an ordinary animal game.

A week before launch, we also created a participation-led post:

“Leave a question about the game and your ID—we will add your name to the official community thank-you list.”

Both posts reached Heybox’s Top 10 trending list and helped the game reach beyond its existing audience before launch.

Bilibili: turn absurdity into content value

Bilibili users are generally more interested in entertaining or meaningful videos than straightforward gameplay explanations.

Rather than explaining every feature of Tingus Goose, we focused on the emotional response it created.

The game’s visuals and tone were already strong enough to provoke immediate reactions, so we developed content around real-life experiences relevant to the target audience, including:

• Appearance anxiety
• Social anxiety
• Workplace pressure

During Lunar New Year, we created a “Spring Festival Survival Guide” themed around the familiar pressure and absurdity of returning home for the holidays.

On the surface, these videos were about everyday life. Underneath, they helped viewers understand the emotional language of Tingus Goose.

This was more shareable than a conventional gameplay breakdown because it connected the game to something players already recognised in themselves.

Algorithms are part of the work

On Bilibili, Douyin, and RedNote, good content alone is not enough.

These platforms are built around recommendation systems. The same video can perform very differently depending on its title, cover image, publishing time, early engagement, completion rate, and even the tone of the comments.

That means publishing requires ongoing testing:

• Which topics generate the strongest click-through rate?
• Which formats keep viewers watching?
• Which emotional hooks encourage sharing?
• Which posts create useful discussion rather than passive views?

It also requires consistent publishing. Each new piece of content is another opportunity to learn what connects with the audience and give the algorithm a clearer signal about who the game is for.

Across the campaign, Tingus Goose achieved:

• Heybox: 107 posts, 610,000+ views, and 25,000+ interactions
• Bilibili: 58 videos and 59 written posts, generating 1.8 million+ views and 130,000 likes
• RedNote: 110 posts, generating 1.7 million+ views and 22,000 likes
• Douyin: 47 videos, generating 1.2 million+ views and 70,000 likes

These results were not created by one viral post. They came from ongoing experimentation, platform-native content, and a clear understanding of what each channel was supposed to contribute to the conversion path.

4. Community Operations Turn Attention Into Trust

For many developers, publishing is organised around launch day: prepare the store page, contact creators, release the trailer, then launch.

In China, publishing often starts months before release and continues long after it.

Players are not only evaluating the game. They are also evaluating whether the team behind it cares about them.

That is why we see publishing in China not as a launch event, but as a long-term conversation.

Building a community world, not just a support channel

We established the official Tingus Goose QQ Group in July 2025, ahead of the game’s 2 December launch.

Our first goal was to make the group feel like an extension of the game’s world.

Instead of using standard community-management language, we created:

• A group announcement framed as the Tingus Goose Mental Health Code
• A weekly in-universe “explainer” series featuring bizarre facts about the game’s world
• The Goose Circle Code: First Commandment, which players later shared in other QQ Groups and Steam reviews

This created a sense that joining the community was not simply joining a customer-service channel. It was joining the game’s culture.

Give players reasons to return

Building a group is easy. Giving players reasons to stay is harder.

Before launch, we ran a recurring “Crazy Goose” activity every Tuesday, with low-barrier participation and small prizes.

After launch, we ran themed UGC activities each week. Players submitted artwork, screenshots, jokes, and creative interpretations of the game. We then turned those submissions into highlight compilations for official channels, while participants collected digital badges.

We also posted regular guide videos and discussion content. In some cases, players who had already completed the game saw a new or more unusual way to play and reinstalled it to try again.

Fast support protects player trust

QQ Groups are also important because many Chinese players expect to speak to a real person when they encounter a problem.

They do not necessarily want to submit a form or wait for an email response. They want fast clarification, help, and reassurance.

For indie games, this matters during the launch period. If a problem is not resolved quickly, frustration can move from the community into public Steam reviews. Early review sentiment can directly affect trust and future conversion.

For the first two months after launch, we assigned team members to monitor and support the community in real time.

Over several months, the Tingus Goose QQ Group grew to nearly 3,000 members. Its peak participation rate reached 34%, with day-to-day activity around 17%—well above the engagement levels we typically see in comparable game communities.

One player later wrote a dedicated post praising the game’s community operations. That response confirmed what I mentioned earlier: players notice when a development or publishing team genuinely cares about their experience.

5. What This Means for Developers Exploring Asia

The complexity of Asian markets is not primarily about language.

It is about information flow, community culture, player behaviour, and the different ways trust is built.

In China, a player may discover a game through Heybox, form a first impression through Bilibili or Douyin, develop an emotional connection through RedNote, and build trust through an official QQ Group.

Each platform plays a different role. The publisher’s job is to understand and connect those roles into one coherent system.

For Tingus Goose, our work can be summarised in four areas:

1. Positioning the game differently at different stages—moving from awareness to conversion based on how local players actually perceived it.
2. Selecting the right platforms and content angles—rather than publishing the same material everywhere.
3. Designing a clear conversion path—bringing interested players from discovery channels into a long-term official community.
4. Building trust through ongoing operations—using community activity, fast support, and player feedback to strengthen the experience after launch.

The goal was not to make Tingus Goose feel like a different game for Chinese players.

It was to help the game become understandable, discussable, and meaningful within a different cultural context.

That, for us, is the essence of publishing.

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UltraPlayers works with distinctive PC games that have the potential to travel across markets and cultures. We help development teams identify where local publishing can create real value—through positioning, content, community, and a player journey built for the market.

We would be glad to start with an honest conversation with developers about where publishing could make a measurable difference.