While Chinese studio TiGames’ FIST Forged in Shadow Torch was received quite well both critically and in terms of sales, the Chinese game development scene is mostly known for mobile games rather than high-profile “core” game releases. Sony is aiming to fix this with the “China Hero Project,” which TiGames is a part of.

In an interview with MP1st, TiGames CEO Tao Zhang states that he thinks the foundation of story-driven offline games made in China is considered “weak” currently, and also comments about the China Hero Project as well.

MP1st: I feel not a lot of people are putting enough focus on the China Hero Project. Perhaps that’s due to how most of the world sees the Chinese market as one flooded with copycats, and this notion has spilled over to gaming as well. What does the studio think of this, and how does this idea get pushed out of people’s minds?

Zhang: Chinese game industry has its own story which is different from the world, and the foundation of the story-driven offline game is weak. Nevertheless, it still is a growing market that players expand their need for high-quality games from all over the world. China Hero Project is a response to this kind of change, making it possible for small developers like us to bring games to global platforms like PlayStation. Our faith is to develop games that could be accepted by players all over the world and letting people realize that Chinese developers are capable of producing high-quality games through this.

Zhang does have a point. Having said that, aside from FIST, another China-based studio — Game Science — is working on a single-player story-driven game, Black Myth Wukong, which looks to bolster the country’s games lineup.

We’ll have our complete interview with TiGames going up very, very soon.