The Wandering Earth


Have you heard of the sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth? While it has had modest success with a limited release in the United States, it is now China’s second-highest-grossing film of all time with over $679 million in domestic box office sales.

The screenplay is based on a story by Liu Cixin, a renown Chinese sci-fi author who has popularized the genre with his award-winning stories, including the novel The Three-Body Problem (which also has a movie adaptation in the works and received praise from Barack Obama).

Simulating a Disaster Film


Earth being ripped apart by Jupiter’s tidal forces in Universe Sandbox.

Critics say The Wandering Earth often falls victim to the trappings of disaster films (overblown CGI, heavy-handed sentimentality, etc.), but what excites us is the scenario that plays out in the film.

To us, the plot summary reads like a description of a simulation in a not-too-distant version of Universe Sandbox: [SPOILERS] In the future, Sun evolves into red giant and threatens Earth habitability → Gigantic thrusters are attached to Earth (you better believe this fits well into our development plans) → Earth is propelled farther from the Sun and freezes over → Tidal forces from Jupiter wreak havoc as Earth approaches the gas giant and prepares for collision → A GIF of this terribly interesting disaster is captured and the simulation is shared to Steam Workshop… oh wait that part wasn’t in the film.

Of course, we weren’t the only ones to see this potential. Video creators in China familiar with Universe Sandbox immediately got to work simulating the events of the film.

Here are a couple of the more popular ones that we’re aware of:

 

Sales Boost

The news of the rising popularity of these videos in China was shared with us by our proofreader for the Chinese language in Universe Sandbox. And sure enough, this correlated with a sharp rise in Universe Sandbox sales in China that we had noticed a week before, along with an influx of Steam reviews written in Chinese (some of which mentioned The Wandering Earth explicitly).

The overlap with Steam’s Lunar New Year sale meant that, for the first two weeks in February, Universe Sandbox copies sold in China made up 50% of our total sales on Steam. Compare this to the previous two weeks, when Chinese sales accounted for only 7% of total sales.

 

Translating Chinese

Needless to say, we’re extremely grateful for the exposure brought to us by The Wandering Earth and the content creators who used Universe Sandbox to explore its premise. It’s also not hard to imagine that our support for Chinese in Universe Sandbox, which we added last summer, also played a part in making it more accessible and appealing to Chinese players. That said, we don’t want to overlook some criticism we have received about the current Chinese translations. Some reviewers noted that, while it’s appreciated that there is support for Chinese, the translations themselves could be vastly improved.

As with all of the languages we support, we currently rely on community volunteers to suggest improved translations and vote on the best ones. We have contributors now, including a proofreader who approves the best translations, but this is a big project — we are often changing and adding text, and we have no way ourselves to review the quality of the translations. We hope that as the community grows, we have more community members able to help improve these translations.

Want to help translate? Just click “Help Translate” on the Home panel and follow the instructions. Learn more

Want to be a proofreader that approves translations? Let us know!