“One City Embodies Three Kingdoms, Half-Step Into Jianghu” Launches in Shanghai — Kaiying Network’s Dual Chinese-Style Game IPs Cross Over With Urban Tourism Festival, Pioneering Game-Culture-Tourism Integration Model

[News report compiled from Jiefang Daily / Shanghai Observer, Game Daily, Sina Finance and other public industry media] On September 12 2026, “One City Embodies Three Kingdoms, Half–Step Into Jianghu”, a key Huangpu-district programme for the 37th Shanghai Tourism Festival, officially kicked off. Guided by Huangpu District Bureau of Culture and Tourism and hosted by Huangpu District Tourism Public Service Center (Shanghai International Visitor Center), the event is jointly delivered by Chinese game firm Kaiying Network. Two flagship Chinese-style game IPs from Kaiying — The Three Kingdoms: Hearts United, a nation-war SLG, and Legends of Gu Long Heroes, an officially-licensed 3D wuxia RPG adapted from Gu Long’s classic martial-arts novels — are brought out from digital screens and deployed across eight landmark public sites in Huangpu District, including the Bund, Yuyuan Garden, Dashijie and Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street. The initiative creates a walkable, check-in-enabled, interactive immersive urban-roaming experience, running from September 12 to October 8, 2026-. Legends of Gu Long Heroes will have its full-platform public beta on September 23, aligning the city-scale offline activation with the game’s new-version launch.

Project Overview & Core On–Site Experience

Centered around the creative theme “Three–Kingdoms Heroes versus Gu–Long Wuxia Legends”, the project adopts an integrated operational framework: dual–campaign map navigation + immersive themed installations + zero–threshold interactive quests + business–district linkage. It blurs the boundary between online gaming worlds and real-world urban public spaces.

1. Eight check–in venues: Covering eight Huangpu District tourist-information service centres (Dashijie, East-Bund Jinling Road, Chen Yi Square at the Bund, Yuyuan Garden, Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street, Shiliupu, Nanchang Road and Tianzifang). Visitors may collect a free ink-wash-art-style Jianghu Questmap at any site, then follow the map for city-wide roaming, stamp-collection and prize draws.
2. Three flagship themed–installation zones

• Dashijie: Knife–Whispering Love, Gu-Long-themed zone centred on iconic character Li Xunhuan, recreating the poetic wanderer-knight atmosphere;
• Jinling Road (Bund): Toast to Heroes, Three-Kingdoms-themed zone featuring Cao Cao and re-enacting the classic historical scene;
• Chen Yi Square (Bund): Heroes Gather, the main combined-IP exhibition where Three-Kingdoms generals and Gu-Long wuxia figures appear side-by-side, designed as the signature photo-spot for visitors.
  3. Five scattered thematic sub–sites: Yuyuan Garden (Cai Wenji), Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street (Diao Chan), Shiliupu (Zhao Yun), Nanchang Road (Fu Hongxue), Tianzifang (Ximen Chuixue). Locations feature lightweight gameplay including line-quoting challenges and scavenger-hunt puzzles. Completing tasks unlocks limited-edition souvenir gifts.
  4. Linked incentive system: Participants who complete stamp-collection missions can enter prize draws. Rewards include Huangpu cultural-tourism souvenirs, Huangpu River cruise vouchers, commercial-district consumption coupons and official game-IP merchandise. The design facilitates two-way value flow: cultural-tourism foot traffic drives local retail and hospitality consumption, while commercial vitality feeds back into cultural-tourism outcomes-.

Introduction to the two collaborating IPs

• The Three Kingdoms: Hearts United: An ink-wash-aesthetic domestic-developed SLG by Kaiying Network. It balances fast-paced combat and layered strategy, delivering a streamlined Three-Kingdoms battlefield experience.
• Legends of Gu Long Heroes: Officially-licensed 3D wuxia RPG adapting Gu Long’s literary canon, integrating famous works such as The Legend of the Condor Heroes(note: Xiao Li Fei Dao, Chu Liu Xiang, Jue Dai Shuang Jiao). Built around an open-world Jianghu map for immersive exploration, the title enters full-platform open beta September 23 2026-.

Core Significance of This Cross–Boundary Integration (Key Focus)

This “game-IP plus urban cultural-tourism” project is far more than a pop-up offline exhibition. It represents a practical, reference-worthy cross-border cultural experiment, whose value can be analysed across urban tourism, game-IP development, public cultural communication and cultural-commerce industrial dimensions.

1. For Urban Cultural–Tourism: Inject Youth–Oriented Digital–Cultural Content Into Public Venues, Broaden Festival Demographics

Traditional tourism-festival activities mainly target sightseeing-oriented visitors. This project embeds domestic-game IP into tourist-information centres and city public streets. It successfully unites three distinct visitor groups: Gen-Z game-players, family-with-children audiences and ordinary local citizens. The zero-ticket, low-barrier model transforms the Shanghai Tourism Festival from pure sightseeing into immersive city-wide cultural roaming. Furthermore, tourist-information service hubs are upgraded into urban–roaming service hubs, expanding the public-service function of cultural-tourism infrastructure and supporting Shanghai’s ambition to become an internationally-renowned cultural and tourism metropolis.

2. For the Game–IP Industry: New Offline Marketing & Operational Path, Breaking the Limitation of Digital Screens

Most offline activations for Chinese-style game IPs are confined to convention centres or enclosed shopping-mall pop-ups. This initiative deploys IP content across real-city streetscapes and builds a complete value chain: online social–media exposure → offline on–site check–in → secondary social–media sharing.

On one hand, fictional Three-Kingdoms and Gu-Long wuxia imagery steps out of game clients to deliver multi-sensory IP experience. On the other hand, the physical-world campaign synchronises with the open-beta launch of Legends of Gu Long Heroes, delivering emotionally-resonant marketing for the new game release. The case demonstrates that domestic Chinese-style IPs can escape purely online traffic competition. By leveraging city-level public-cultural resources, games can reach large non-gaming audiences and enlarge the total fan base.

3. Cultural–Communication Value: Digital Games as a Medium to Revitalise Traditional Chinese History & Wuxia Literature

The project carries two layers of indigenous-cultural heritage: the grand historical narrative of the Three Kingdoms, and Gu Long’s landmark wuxia literary universe. Video games, a medium beloved by contemporary youth, translate historical and literary figures into participatory public-city-culture content.

Rather than static museum displays, check-in quests, puzzle-solving and stamp-collection create youth-friendly interactive channels for popularising Three-Kingdoms history and Gu-Long martial-arts fiction. It realises digital adaptation and revitalisation of traditional culture, bringing Chinese-style cultural heritage out of books and game screens into citizens’ day-to-day urban life.

4. Industrial Value: Building a Closed–Loop Ecosystem of “Game IP–Cultural–Tourism–Real–World Commerce”

This is not a purely cultural showcase. Check-in routes are deliberately woven through Huangpu’s core scenic spots and commercial precincts. As visitors travel to complete quests, they naturally stimulate local sightseeing, dining and Huangpu-River cruise consumption. Coupons for tourism and retail further convert IP-driven footfall into tangible real-world spending. The model achieves mutual reinforcement: tourism generates commercial traffic, and commerce reinvests into cultural-tourism vitality. It delivers a replicable blueprint for integrated culture-commerce-tourism projects across China-.

5. Broader Industry Insight: New Possibilities for Game–Sector Cross–Boundary Collaboration

Historically, game-IP cross-media projects mostly centred on merchandise licensing, animation and film adaptation. This real-world case explores an alternative pathway: Chinese–style game IPs can enter deep co–construction with municipal public–cultural–tourism systems, rather than operating only as short–term commercial activations inside shopping malls. The tri-party collaboration model (government cultural-tourism authorities + city public-space assets + game enterprise) balances public-cultural-welfare objectives and commercial market demands, serving both game-players and ordinary citizens. It opens a new paradigm for domestic China-chic IP offline deployment.

Practical Challenges & Industry Observations

Nevertheless, the model faces inherent constraints. Deployed within open-air urban public infrastructure, installations are mostly limited to check-in displays and light-weight mini-games; deep-dive immersive narrative experiences remain difficult to implement. In addition, the activation is time-bound, running only for the tourism-festival window. How to convert short-term festival-time campaigns into durable city-cultural assets remains an open question for the industry.

Industry analysts note that with the continuous growth of China-chic domestic games, “game + cultural-tourism” will become an important track for digital-cultural industries. This Huangpu-Shanghai case stands out as one of China’s benchmark examples with deep-rooted official-tourism-sector participation. Its real-world outcomes will offer valuable references for cities nationwide.