Sometimes it is questionable what is inspiration and what is plagiarism. Especially if we ask the Chinese market. Not for any particular reason, but because of their culture, in China they do not have the same ideas as we do in the West about what plagiarism implies. They are much more inclined to copy and believe that a well-done copy, with style and elegance, has value in itself. Therefore, although there is a huge distance between inspiration and plagiarism in most cases, that does not prevent people from wanting to see conflicts where there are none.
The latest major conflict is related to Black Myth: Wukong. A game highly celebrated in China, which has made a lot of noise but passed without much impact in the West, and now seems to have inspired another game. Or so it seems from all the people claiming that a game has plagiarized it, in the most absurd controversy in video games at the end of the year.
Wukong Sun: Black Legend is an action and platform game for Nintendo Switch whose cover, according to the community, looks practically identical to that of Black Myth: Wukong. And that’s where the similarities end. Similarities, moreover, based on having the same main character, as both are inspired by the novel Journey to the West, one of the great classic Chinese novels published in 1592. From which we do not believe either game has plagiarized anything, as both have taken inspiration and then been tremendously unoriginal with their covers.
Journey to the West, one of the most adapted novels in the world
In fact, drawing inspiration from Journey to the West is not something new. This is a novel with countless adaptations to film and television, which served as inspiration for Akira Toriyama to create Dragon Ball, which already inspired the creation of a video game in 2010, named Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, by Ninja Theory, and is an essential piece of Asian popular culture. So much so that it is even known in much of the West, making accusations of plagiarism absurd from their very origin.
That’s why, although the controversy is amusing, there is no plagiarism here. Only a common inspiration. And in passing, the possibility of discovering a game that might have gone unnoticed otherwise, as is the case with Wukong Sun: Black Legend.
