Black Myth: Wukong failed to wake up Tencent and NetEase

Maintaining a sense of calm is incredibly difficult in the face of "Black Myth: Wukong."

The game is incredibly popular. At 10 a.m. on August 20th, "Black Myth: Wukong" was launched globally, and it seemed that all working people in China fell into two categories: those who were playing the game during work hours and those who were watching others play it while on the clock. By 11 a.m., there were already over 100,000 people online in the live streams of Douyin hosts such as "Zhang Daxian" and "Sao Nan," watching the Monkey King battle fiercely with his archenemy, the God Erlang.

By 8 p.m., the pace of updates on Weibo related to the game noticeably increased, as those who had been watching others play during work finally got off work and those who could, quickly downloaded the game to play. Of course, not everyone had the "means" to do so, as "Black Myth: Wukong," dubbed as "China's first AAA title," has high requirements for computer specifications. The official recommendation on Steam is that if using an Nvidia graphics card, it should at least be an RTX 2060.

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Indeed, the title of "China's first AAA title" is a heavy burden on the shoulders of this game.

There is no clear definition for AAA games, but they are generally considered to be high-investment, large-scale, high-quality games. Former Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Shawn Layden once stated in 2020 that most AAA games at the time had production costs ranging from $80 million to $150 million and required a game development period of up to five years.

The creation of "Black Myth: Wukong" took over six years by the game's developer, Game Science, and after several years of "expansion," the company now has just over a hundred employees.

As for the production cost, the producer of "Black Myth: Wukong," Feng Ji, previously revealed that the game's development cost per hour is estimated to be between 15 million and 20 million yuan. The team estimates the overall game duration to be over 15 hours, and the actual research and development time is 1.5 times this duration. Based on this rough calculation, the development cost of "Black Myth: Wukong" alone is at least 300 million to 400 million yuan.

A hundred-person company, six years of time, and several hundred million yuan in development costs, the birth of "Black Myth: Wukong" itself was unexpected. People did not expect that in the context of the entire Chinese gaming market leaning towards online games, mobile platforms, and pay-to-win models, a game like this could still emerge. Unlike the common "freemium" model, "Black Myth: Wukong" is a paid single-player game, priced at 268 yuan for the standard edition on the Steam platform.

Thus, the "popularity" of "Black Myth: Wukong" was not an overnight phenomenon. Exactly four years ago, on August 20th, a 13-minute gameplay demo video had already piqued the interest of players across China. Since then, Game Science has been releasing videos on this date every year to showcase the gameplay experience, with public anticipation building up until it erupted yesterday.By now, both gamers and non-gamers are aware that a remarkable black monkey has emerged from China. Even the co-branded products launched by Luckin have sold out, with Luckin's CGO (Chief Growth Officer) Yang Fei lamenting in his social circle, "The national surrounding products sold out in seconds," "It has overturned the team's perception," "It's more reliable than ten Father's Days."

However, amidst the jubilant voices, unsettling phenomena have also begun to surface.

As "Black Myth: Wukong" was released, a neighboring AAA game, "God of War 4," saw an influx of Chinese negative reviews, seemingly in retaliation against some foreign media's previous criticism that they couldn't understand the game's plot without having seen "Journey to the West." On this basis, some of the latest Chinese comments attempted to "hedge" with positive reviews. The discourse between the two sides has already deviated from the game itself, turning into a verbal battle.

The simmering controversy is another side of the sensation surrounding "Black Myth: Wukong": this already rare domestic single-player game is being tasked with the heavy responsibility of "revolutionizing the Chinese gaming industry." Subsequently, absolute supporters have emerged, questioning posts that point out bugs in the game process: "So what are you trying to say?" Opponents who have not played but firmly refuse to buy have also appeared; this is a backlash, using resistance to counter the "forced recommendations" across the internet.

Interestingly, the current situation of "Black Myth: Wukong" is strikingly similar to the scene at the beginning of the game: I, the old monkey, want to be a happy monkey in the Flower-Fruit Mountain, but you insist on making me a beautiful Buddha.

Black Wukong is great, but to let it bear everything is a bit unfair.

A

The excitement of Chinese players is truly justified.

"You have ridden warhorses in the Sinai Desert; been a pirate in the European seas; experienced the chaos of war in America; been a silent assassin in Egypt. Finally, you return to your Eastern homeland to be a hero of your own. Put on this golden hoop, and after a tune of 'Cloud Palace Swift Sound,' 'Where is the Way?'" Such a sentiment appears in the Steam platform's "Black Myth: Wukong" comment section and on various social media, and it's unclear which one is the "original," but that's not important.

What's important is that this passage speaks to the hearts of many. A veteran gamer whose gaming enlightenment came from playing "World of Warcraft" in an internet café more than a decade ago said this: Before watching the live stream of Black Wukong, I didn't expect that seeing the familiar Journey to the West world and such beautiful Chinese copywriting in a big production game would be so exciting.Stumbling upon a game and then searching the entire internet for a localization plugin has become a necessary skill for Chinese PC gamers. There are so many fun games, but they can be difficult to understand. Official localizations are either non-existent or, more often than not, unsatisfactory, sometimes turning surprises into shocks. Who remembers when "The Elder Scrolls Online" was finally "localized" with an official Chinese update in 2022, eight years after its launch? Many players opened the game with high expectations, only to be confused by phrases like "dynamic grandma," "cursed some explosions," and "the corridor is still alive," which seemed like Chinese but not quite, and even calling it machine-translated is an overstatement.

This time, it's finally the turn of Chinese players to worry about foreigners with thick eyebrows and big eyes. Some players marvel at the ancient Chinese text in the game interface, exclaiming, "It's unbelievable that foreigners can understand this."

The reactions of foreigners indeed confirm the guesses of Chinese players. In a meme, Chinese players are seen happily launching into the air on the release day of "Black Myth: Wukong," while international players are frantically catching up on the novel "Journey to the West." Under related posts, foreigners share their experiences, saying it's exactly like them.

"Black Myth: Wukong" certainly deserves praise, and it should be praised heavily. Amidst the acclaim, the game has also achieved commendable sales figures.

In June, "Black Myth: Wukong" launched its global pre-sale. The standard edition of the game is priced at 268 yuan on PC platforms like Steam/WeGame, while the deluxe edition is priced at 328 yuan. Additionally, the game's official store also listed physical deluxe and physical collector's editions, priced at 820 yuan and 1998 yuan, respectively.

According to the "2024 National Game Sales Half-Year List" published by the National Game Sales Ranking, as of July 13th of this year, "Black Myth: Wukong" has accumulated sales of 1.2 million copies, with a total sales revenue of 390 million yuan, breaking the pre-sale record for domestic games. For comparison, the list only includes "domestic buy-to-play games" released that year, with the second place having sales of 520,000 copies and a total sales revenue of just 17 million yuan.

This is only an incomplete pre-sale result. On August 20th, "Black Myth: Wukong" was globally released, and within less than four hours after its pre-load was opened, the bandwidth usage for downloads on Steam skyrocketed, reaching a peak of 70 Tbps, breaking the peak record for bandwidth usage on Steam. The previous record holder was "Cyberpunk 2077," with a record of 51 Tbps.

According to the statistics of the National Game Bestseller List, by 8 PM on August 20th, the game had already sold 3 million copies on Steam, and with the addition of sales on WeGame, Epic, and PS platforms, the total sales exceeded 4.5 million copies, with an estimated total sales revenue of over 1.5 billion yuan.

In terms of the number of players, by 2:30 PM on August 20th, "Black Myth: Wukong" had already surpassed 1.14 million concurrent players on the Steam platform, overtaking "CS2" to top the Steam most-played list (the top five of the list are mostly multiplayer online games). By 10 PM, the concurrent player count for "Black Myth: Wukong" had already broken through 2.2 million, not only topping the real-time list but also ranking second in the historical peak of concurrent players on Steam, with the first place being "PUBG: BattleGrounds," which had a peak of 3.2572 million concurrent players.At present, although it is not clear how much additional cost "Black Myth: Wukong" has beyond the development expenses of 300 million to 400 million yuan (such as promotional costs), it is almost certain that it should not be a problem for it to break even. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, against the backdrop of the Chinese gaming industry's focus on mobile games, online games, and gacha mechanics, this highly anticipated high-quality single-player game that has been awaited by the public for several years has not only delivered but also has the potential to be profitable, which in itself is like a myth.

B

After discussing the pleasant aspects, it is also necessary to touch upon some less pleasant ones.

If you visit the Steam review section for the game "God of War" (commonly known as "God of War 4" in China) and look only at the latest Chinese comments, you will find that the recent reviews have been engaging in a virtual battle. On one side are players leaving negative reviews, with criticisms mainly focused on the lack of Simplified Chinese localization and "inability to understand Greek mythology"; on the other side are those who want to defend the rating of "God of War 4," even expressing dissatisfaction with fans of "Black Myth: Wukong" who are accused of leaving bad reviews.

Whether it is indeed fans of "Black Myth: Wukong" deliberately leaving negative reviews is actually difficult to ascertain. It can only be said that there were significantly fewer negative reviews before mid-August than after, and many of the negative reviews after mid-August were identical in text. This text closely resembles the review given by IGN after the official lifting of the media embargo on "Black Myth: Wukong." "God of War 4," as a representative AAA game, is seen as a benchmark for "Black Myth: Wukong."

After the praise, IGN pointed out the cultural barrier issue of "Black Myth: Wukong," stating that without having read Wu Cheng'en's "Journey to the West," it is often difficult to understand the game's plot. The editor who wrote the review also mentioned encountering crashes, audio issues after language switching, and game bugs during play, ultimately giving the game a score of 8.

This score and the practice of considering cultural barriers have displeased some Chinese players (in fact, most Chinese players did not have the opportunity to experience the game at the beginning of the controversy). It's not just the "God of War 4" comment section that seems to have retaliatory actions, but more direct dissatisfaction is directed at the IGN reviewer. On platform X, the reviewer had to respond to this matter, asking players to wait for the full review.

The disputes surrounding "Black Myth: Wukong" are almost happening on every social media platform. A Weibo user named Lu David LUDAWEI, who describes himself as a "senior concept designer for Honor of Kings and Tian Yu," posted three consecutive Weibo messages related to "Black Myth: Wukong," stating, "Some fans of Black Wukong mocked me with my first watercolor painting and Yang Qi's painting" and "The Kàng Jīn Lóng I drew in 2016 was criticized by some fans of Black Wukong." The comment section under his posts is also quite lively, with a tense atmosphere.

It is not a coincidence that "Honor of Kings" personnel have been targeted. As "Black Myth: Wukong" was released, jokes about big companies followed suit. Someone posted a meme saying, "Do you play the WeChat version or the QQ version?" The image photoshops Black Wukong into a mobile interface, accompanied by the classic login screen of Tencent games.The correctness or incorrectness of these two examples is not actually important; what matters is the heavier expectation that "Black Myth: Wukong" carries: externally, it bears the responsibility of competing internationally, and internally, it bears the responsibility of rectifying the domestic gaming industry.

The experiences of the main creative team also make the symbolic significance of "Black Myth: Wukong" more vivid.

The relationship between the developer of "Black Myth: Wukong," Game Science Studio, and Tencent is well-known. In 2013, a self-developed MMORPG game "Dou Shen Zhang" by a Tencent subsidiary studio was released for public testing. Shortly after, producer Feng Ji and lead artist Yang Qi left Tencent to establish Game Science.

"Dou Shen Zhang" also attracted countless expectations at the time. That online game with the theme of the Journey to the West ultimately failed due to poor subsequent operations, a cliff-like decline in the storyline, and a 180-degree shift in profit style (it started to focus on microtransactions), leading to a rapid drop in reputation within a few months, and eventually fading into obscurity.

Those who left to start anew presented the "milestone of domestic AAA games," while the big factory that stayed behind engaged in the widely criticized microtransaction model. To outsiders, this is a story of "conscientious" game developers breaking away from the big factory, which is just like Wukong himself. Many people even hope that "Black Myth: Wukong" can change the atmosphere of the domestic gaming industry and set off a wave of AAA single-player games.

However, such a burden may not be shouldered by a single Black Wukong.

C

Feng Ji, one of the founders of Game Science, once denied any discord with his former employer. He answered on Zhihu regarding "What do you think about Tencent investing in the 'Black Myth: Wukong' development team 'Game Science'?" as follows: "Thank you all for your concern. It might be a bit different from what people outside think; we have never had any issues with our old employer and have always maintained normal contact. After the release of Black Myth, the familiar faces from Tencent came to visit in groups for the first time."

This response was written in 2021, and the "release" mentioned refers to August 20, 2020, when "Black Myth: Wukong" released its first PV (promotional video), which unexpectedly went viral, with views on Bilibili exceeding ten million.After Tencent promised not to interfere with the product operations and daily management of the company, nor to "take advantage of being the investor" to take away the game distribution and operation rights, Game Science finally agreed to Tencent's investment. According to the current information displayed by Tianyancha, the equity structure of Game Science is as follows: Feng Ji holds 38.76%, the executive holding platform Shenzhen Game Interactive Enterprise Management Center holds 27.36%, Hero Game holds 19%, the employee holding platform Shenzhen Game R&D Enterprise Management Center holds 9.88%, and Tencent holds 5%.

Regarding the failure of a game, Feng Ji has also stated: "Whenever the outcome is not satisfactory, it is advisable to first look for reasons in one's own positioning, attitude, and capabilities, and reflect on who one truly is, how much hardship one has endured, and how much effort one has put into research."

Another member of Game Science, "Zhao Zhao," responded to the failure of "Dou Shen Zhan," saying: "It's actually quite ironic. The higher-ups had good intentions, but the failure of Dou Shen Zhan was indeed a slap in the face. Objectively, it also pushed Tencent to adopt a more conservative product strategy later on. This is because the cost of trying is very expensive, and the risks caused by human factors are extremely uncontrollable."

In other words, "Dou Shen Zhan," or rather, the shattered dream represented by "Dou Shen Zhan," is the result of unfavorable circumstances in terms of timing, location, and people. It is too simplistic to blame a single major company. The story of "Black Myth: Wukong" is not just about slaying dragons; it is a legend forged by much courage, persistence, and a bit of luck.

Before creating "Black Myth: Wukong," Game Science spent the first three years developing two mobile games, "Hundred Generals" and "Art of War: Red Tide." During those years, China's gaming industry was shifting towards mobile games, and it was during this period that Tencent launched "Honor of Kings" in 2015, sparking a nationwide craze. It can be said that Game Science kept up with the industry's hot spots and first established a foothold. Especially "Art of War: Red Tide," which was launched and recommended simultaneously in over 154 countries in the Apple App Store, is the first truly successful work of Game Science.

The ideal is very beautiful; Game Science has had the ideal of making single-player games from the beginning, but ideals need to bear fruit in reality.

It is often said that mobile games and free in-app purchases, or "pay-to-win" mechanics, are like "mowing the lawn" (exploiting players), but at the end of the day, mobile games are profitable. Take, for example, "GTA5 (Grand Theft Auto V)," which is a very successful and enduring game. Released in 2013, it is still contributing to significant sales. Over more than 10 years, "GTA5" has sold over 200 million copies, with sales exceeding $8.5 billion.

That sounds like a lot, but calculated at the standard price of 268 yuan for "Black Myth: Wukong," it would have to sell more than 30 million copies. In contrast, well-known mobile games can generate hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars in revenue in just one month. For instance, according to the 2023 annual mobile game revenue rankings compiled by foreign media AppMagic, "Honor of Kings" ranks first with a global annual revenue of $1.48 billion, and "Genshin Impact" ranks fourth with a global annual revenue of $944 million.

Not only in China, but international players also find themselves in the situation of cursing while spending money on in-game purchases. This is human nature. According to Sensor Tower's May 2023 rankings of Chinese mobile games' overseas revenue and downloads, 38% of the overseas revenue of miHoYo's "Honkai: Star Rail" comes from Japanese players, and 21% comes from American players.

There is also skepticism about the return on investment for AAA games. Shawn Layden, the former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment mentioned at the beginning of the article, has repeatedly "sounded the alarm" about AAA games. As early as 2021, he stated that the era of making games with a cost of $1 million is over, and with each new generation of consoles, the cost doubles: "The problem with this model is that it is not sustainable.""We cannot wait for the cost of next-generation games to double again and then sit back and wait for the gaming industry to grow on a corresponding scale. The entire industry should pause and reflect: What are we creating? What are the expectations of our audience? What is the best way to convey the message we want to deliver?" By the way, according to LinkedIn information unearthed by the media at the time, Sean left Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2022 and joined Tencent Games as a strategic consultant.

After more than six years of lying low, a meticulously crafted buy-to-play single-player game has been developed. Regardless of what lies ahead, "Black Myth: Wukong" has already fulfilled the expectations that were placed on it when it showcased to Chinese gamers four years ago: the game it delivers proves that China is capable of producing games of this quality. The sales volume since its pre-sale launch proves that Chinese gamers are willing to pay a substantial price for high-quality single-player games.

In the short term, "Black Myth: Wukong" will undoubtedly have a certain driving effect within the industry, attracting more eager enterprises and investors. As for other responsibilities, let's not let the Black Wukong "bear it alone."

The sales cycle for single-player games is very long, not a race against time. Let the game return to being a game, and let Wukong have a path that does not lead to becoming a Buddha.