From Product Export to Cultural Export: CMGE's "Technology + Culture" Dual-Driven Globalization Practice
The global gaming industry is undergoing profound technological transformation and market restructuring. Artificial intelligence is shifting from an auxiliary tool to a core production factor, and globalization has become an inevitable choice for gaming companies to break through growth bottlenecks.
CMGE, a Guangdong-based global IP game operator, has adopted a "technology + culture" dual-driven approach to going global. This strategy not only enables the company's own breakthrough development but also accumulates practical experience for cultivating new quality productive forces in Guangdong's gaming industry. In 2025, the company's overseas business revenue reached RMB 358 million, a year-on-year increase of 31.6%, with the proportion of distribution revenue rising to 30.8%. Overseas distribution business revenue achieved double-digit growth for two consecutive years. With a solid business layout, the company has been recognized as a "National Key Cultural Export Enterprise" for multiple consecutive years and has been included in the "Guangdong Top 500 Enterprises" list.
AI Full-Chain Reshapes R&D and Operations Ecosystem, Activating New Quality Productive Forces in the Industry
The traditional production chain of the gaming industry has long faced practical pain points such as lengthy development cycles and high labor costs. Many independent developers and small-to-medium-sized creative teams in China possess creativity but often lack global distribution channels, localization capabilities, and stable monetization pathways. In the past, the industry's application of AIGC was mostly limited to isolated areas such as art assets and copywriting assistance, and had not yet formed a full-chain system covering creative incubation, prototype development, global distribution, and commercial monetization.
Based on the vast market opportunity of global casual games and the actual needs of domestic developers, in May 2026, CMGE reached a strategic partnership with Jiyi AI, a subsidiary of Kingnet Network. Using SOON by Jiyi AI — the first gaming industry-specific specialized model independently developed in China — as the technological foundation, they launched GamePartner.AI (GPA), a one-stop AI game intelligence platform targeting the global casual games market. This creates a differentiated technology implementation path aimed at helping build an ecosystem for Chinese casual game developers to go global.
Screenshot of CMGE's GamePartner.AI official website
Unlike AI creation tools that focus solely on content generation, GamePartner.AI integrates a complete closed-loop system covering market research, AI game generation, multilingual localization, global channel distribution, ad distribution, data iteration, and revenue settlement. It attempts to solve the long-standing industry problem of the disconnect between R&D and distribution. Developers can quickly generate playable casual game prototypes with a functional framework using only natural language descriptions and uploaded reference videos, compressing development cycles from several weeks under traditional models to hours or days. The development cost for a single commercial game can be reduced to the thousand-yuan level, significantly lowering the financial and technical barriers to bringing creative ideas to life.
In the distribution phase, games created with GamePartner.AI can be connected to CMGE's global distribution system with one click, quickly listed on major global gaming platforms such as App Store and Google Play, and fully integrated with leading ad monetization platforms including Google AdMob and AppLovin. Since June 30 this year, multiple premium IAA casual games created with GamePartner.AI have been successively launched in overseas markets and have begun large-scale commercial promotion. The platform has currently attracted over 300 small and medium-sized development teams and independent creators who have shown interest and joined, and this number continues to rise. The technological value is gradually transforming into tangible industry growth.
Sorting Go: Mini Mart, a cozy sorting-and-organizing game set in a supermarket, is the first in-house title developed by the Jiyi AI team using the GamePartner.AI platform.
New quality productive forces are led by technological innovation, with new production tools and methods giving rise to entirely new industrial efficiency. The core essence of new quality productive forces lies in reshaping production factors and revolutionizing production relations through technological innovation, using new production tools to unleash long-term industrial growth potential. GamePartner.AI, where AI handles standardized, repetitive development work, allowing creators to focus on creative cores, and enables the platform-based, inclusive sharing of distribution and operational capabilities, is a concrete, replicable manifestation of new quality productive forces in the gaming sector.
CMGE's exploration of "AI + gaming" precisely aligns with the national "15th Five-Year Plan" that strongly encourages "game going global," and the national Leading Plan for Technological Innovation in Online Publishing that promotes "AI + content creation." It also closely aligns with Guangdong Province's policy direction for promoting high-quality development of the online gaming industry. Guangdong Province's Several Policy Measures on Promoting High-Quality Development of Guangdong's Online Gaming Industry explicitly states: "Guide and support gaming enterprises to drive more small and micro enterprises to go global, creating a 'Guangdong-produced game going global matrix.'" GamePartner.AI's model of using AI capabilities and commercialization services to lower the barriers for domestic small and medium-sized teams to go global is a vivid practice of the "large driving small, cluster going global" pathway.
From a short-term industrial value perspective, GamePartner.AI is expected to fully activate the "long-tail" vitality of the gaming industry ecosystem, revitalize the vast number of long-tail creative ideas in the industry, and fill the gap in overseas expansion for small and medium-sized creators in Guangdong and even the national gaming industry. From a long-term perspective of developing new quality productive forces, the AI industrial production paradigm built by GamePartner.AI is expected to further drive the domestic gaming industry to iterate its production factors, gradually reducing reliance on large numbers of basic development personnel, and shifting toward a new industrial form driven by intelligent technology and prioritized creative value. This will lower the overall cost of Chinese digital cultural exports, expand the global supply of domestically produced games, and provide long-term technological support for the large-scale, normalized going global of Chinese culture.
National Style IP Revitalizes Traditional Culture, Strengthening the Content Core of New Quality Productive Forces
New quality productive forces point not only to technological innovation but also require quality cultural supply as an indispensable core of the digital cultural and creative industry. China's excellent traditional culture provides an endless source of creativity for digital products, enhancing their spiritual depth. Games, through interactive and immersive digital means, break the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional cultural dissemination. Together, they form the content foundation for the high-quality development of digital culture and creativity.
The Legend of Sword and Fairy (Xianjian Qixia Zhuan) is one of the most representative game IPs in China's Xianxia (immortal hero) culture. With its roots in traditional Chinese chivalrous spirit, rich heritage integrating classical literary aesthetics and traditional folk culture, enduring market appeal, and broad user recognition, it has been selected multiple times in official rankings of the most influential game IPs. In 2024, it was officially included in the Game IP Exhibition Hall of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.
In 2024, The Legend of Sword and Fairy IP was included in the Game IP Exhibition Hall of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association
As the copyright holder and operator of this IP, CMGE has for many years deeply cultivated the value mining and youth-oriented exploration of the Sword and Fairy IP, continuously deepening its global cross-media IP narrative capabilities. It persistently creates distinctive national-style cultural products, enriches the Sword and Fairy IP game matrix, and promotes traditional culture to reach a broad user base in interactive, perceptible forms.
The Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China share cultural roots with the mainland, and user aesthetic preferences are highly similar, making them natural extended markets for the Sword and Fairy IP. CMGE's New Sword and Fairy: Asking the Sword with Emotion (Xin Xianjian Qixia Zhuan Zhi Huijian Wenqing), after achieving commercial validation in the mainland with over 8 million pre-registrations and first-month revenue exceeding RMB 200 million, topped multiple charts upon its launch in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan in December 2023. Subsequent operations further incorporated regional folk customs through innovative online-and-offline campaigns, integrating Xianxia culture with local daily life scenes and effectively evoking the "Sword and Fairy sentiment" among local audiences.
Moreover, Sword and Fairy World, independently developed by CMGE, after version iterations and continuous refinement, will also be launched in the second half of 2026 in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, as well as Singapore and Malaysia, further deepening regional market deployment and strengthening cultural recognition of the Sword and Fairy IP among Chinese gamer communities.
Leveraging a long-term IP operation strategy, CMGE has now formed a three-dimensional layout around the full-industry-chain development of the Sword and Fairy IP, creating a "Sword and Fairy IP Universe": game products, animated films, literary novels, cultural and creative derivatives, and more are promoted synergistically. At the same time, it continuously collaborates with intangible cultural heritage resources, promoting cross-industry cooperation between traditional art forms such as Yue Opera and IP content. 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Sword and Fairy IP. The launch of the animated version of The Legend of Sword and Fairy III, nationwide offline immersive tours, IP cross-industry collaborations, and other diverse formats have further expanded the IP's influence.
Sword and Fairy 30th anniversary nationwide offline tour, with live events drawing large crowds
Technology Empowers Cultural Renewal, Expanding the Development Space of New Quality Productive Forces
The "culture + technology" integration model is using youthful language to activate cultural genes and reshape the modern expression of traditional culture. Technological iteration divorced from cultural value easily falls into homogeneous competition. Only by deeply integrating technological vehicles with cultural connotations can sustainable, hard-to-replicate core competitiveness be formed, injecting lasting momentum into the industry's new quality productive forces.
In recent years, CMGE has launched a series of technology-empowered practices around The Legend of Sword and Fairy IP. The Legend of Sword and Fairy IV: Remake, which received its version number in June this year, is an RPG single-player game developed by UP software in collaboration with CMGE and Cube Game. The game uses Unreal Engine 5 technology to reconstruct the classic story, striving for a balance between classic and innovative elements while preserving the original plot, characters, and cultural texture.
The product combines both IP influence and UE5 next-generation visual performance. Since the release of its teaser trailer and gameplay trailer, total views on Bilibili have exceeded 4.6 million. Leading overseas gaming media such as IGN reposted and reported on it immediately, and gamer communities both domestically and internationally have continued to engage in discussions, further demonstrating the influence and vitality of this national-level IP.
The Legend of Sword and Fairy IV: Remake official gameplay trailer
The Sword and Fairy XR project is the world's first outdoor large-space XR experience tailored for Apple Vision Pro, launched through a collaboration between AStation Fantasy Scene and the Sword and Fairy IP. Leveraging Apple Vision Pro devices and self-developed spatial fusion technology, it achieves a realistic overlay of real-world scenes and Xianxia environments.
At this year's 23rd China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Exhibition (ChinaJoy), the Legend of Sword and Fairy XR project officially debuted. Players could experience immersive Xianxia combat scenes through gestures such as clenching fists to summon swords and opening palms to activate shields.
At ChinaJoy 2026, international players experiencing the immersive XR demo (Source: AStation Fantasy Scene XR Space official WeChat account)
Currently, Guangdong is accelerating the promotion of high-quality development in the online gaming industry, with an increasingly complete industrial ecosystem spanning policy guidance, platform development, talent cultivation, and overseas service support. The deepening of digital economy cooperation within the APEC framework under the Asia-Pacific region further provides broad cooperation space and policy opportunities for the globalization of the gaming industry.
For Guangdong's gaming industry, Lingnan culture and traditional Chinese culture offer a rich treasury, with vast amounts of content awaiting digital exploration in the future. Making good use of games as a new cultural vehicle to transform traditional cultural resources into digital products with commercial value and communication value holds long-term significance for strengthening the content core of the province's new quality productive forces.
CMGE, carrying cultural cores through national-style IPs, deeply integrating traditional culture with cutting-edge technologies, and continuously exploring the possibilities of "AI + gaming" while expanding development boundaries through global communication, has provided new ideas through its exploration and practical experience for the technological expression and innovative transformation of games. It also offers a vivid reference for the high-quality development of Guangdong's gaming industry.
Looking ahead, as global demand for digital cultural consumption continues to grow, and with the rising global influence of Chinese culture presenting significant opportunities, more and more Guangdong gaming companies like CMGE are expected to transform their technological momentum and cultural depth into core competitiveness for participating in global market competition. They will step onto a broader global stage and contribute more "Guangdong strength" to the international dissemination of Chinese culture and the development of the global digital industry.