Game set in the past makes history

The Invisible Guardian designer wins leading international award in major breakthrough, Li Yingxue reports.

A Chinese-language game, attracting a worldwide audience, has scooped up a prestigious international award as players get a taste of history through a very modern format.

The Invisible Guardian went online in January on software distribution platform Steam, and soon made its mark. Despite minimal marketing efforts, the game has already been played by 10 million users worldwide. That number is set to grow.

The game, with a ranking of 9.7 out of 10 on review site Douban, is China's first 800-minute full-length live-action interactive film-type product that infuses multiple elements from games, movies and television.

It was a breakthrough in China's games industry, and also for its producer Guan Dan, who spent two years leading her prelaunch team.

International recognition was quick. Guan won an award as one of the five Chinese winners of the inaugural British Academy of Film and Television Arts' Breakthrough China program on Oct 28. She is the only games producer among the winning artists.

The BAFTA identifies, celebrates and supports exceptional talent working in the fields of film, TV or games, and launched the Breakthrough Brits initiative in 2013. This has brought more than 100 emerging British talent to global attention, including actor Tom Holland in Spider-Man and games producer Dan Gray in Monument Valley.

This year it launched BAFTA Breakthrough China. This is its first overseas collaboration recognizing new talent in the field, according to Lee Schuneman, the jury chair of this year's BAFTA Breakthrough China.

For the past 18 months, Schuneman has been flying between London and Shanghai viewing and selecting potential jurors and choosing candidates. The jury also includes Wendy Yu, founder of Yu Holdings, an investment-fund company; Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of Vogue China; and Wang Yi, vice-president of NetEase, a domestic games heavyweight.

"From a breakthrough perspective, what we try to spot is potential," Schuneman says. "We are looking for creative courage, excellence in their existing work, but really it's about potential and they must have a real motivation and a drive to succeed."

Besides Guan, the other four winners are Bai Xue, writer and director of The Crossing (2019), a feature film focusing on stories of "cross-boundary children"; Bonnie Chen, a fashion-model-turned actress, writer and director of her first short film, Clover (2019); He Bin, producer of The Crossing; and Ye Ting, line producer of the movie How Long Will I Love U(2018) which garnered about 900 million yuan ($128.5 million) in box-office takings.

Guan is a games producer from New One Studio, which launched The Invisible Guardian. Her other productions include the Make Me a Super Game series, short film Fantasy Lenses and the mobile game WeChat Dash.

The 36-year-old is an advertising graduate from Wuhan University of Technology, and has been working in the industry for six years. Guan became interested in the interactive arts three years ago, and started to focus on interactive films, first dabbling in short productions.

When she first came across the 80,000-word story for The Invisible Guardian, she was instantly drawn in and sensed it could be a genreleading game. She managed to find funding for her idea, and in early 2017 Guan became the game's producer and started building her team.

"When I first read the original story of The Invisible Guardian, I knew it was suitable for interaction as there was mystique and suspense," Guan says. "And it was also a touching, emotional story."