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Contributing author | Zheng Jiani

Editor | Wang Weikai

Produced by | Prism·Tencent Xiaoman Studio

August 23,Shanxi Expressway(000755.SZ) hit the daily limit for the second consecutive day, continuing the sharp upward trend of the past four days.

Among the many "monkey concept stocks", Shanxi Expressway can be said to be the "most ridiculous" one. Shanxi Expressway has a frank attitude towards this. Its secretary's office responded to the author of "Prism" that they are not clear about the reason for the stock surge. The company's main business is highways, and it does not involve gaming business.

But some investors gave the "logic" for the stock surge: when traveling to Shanxi, tolls are the first ticket to the event.

The Internet world is being dominated by a game. On August 20, Black Myth: Wukong was officially launched, attracting the attention of the entire network. According to data from QQ Browser, the average daily search volume for "Black Myth: Wukong" increased by 55 times on the day of the launch, and is still rising.

The basic setting of this game is taken from the "Journey to the West", one of the four great classical Chinese novels. In the gaming industry, "Journey to the West" is not a new theme, such as "A Chinese Odyssey" and "Fantasy Westward Journey". Sun Wukong is also a frequent guest in many games, such as in "Honor of Kings", where he is a popular "jungle" hero.

However, Black Myth: Wukong still became popular and became a huge hit. Some industry insiders called it "the hope of the entire Huaguo Mountain". What is even more rare is that this game was snapped up by local cultural tourism companies. In the past, local cultural tourism companies preferred to link up with IPs of film, television and literature, and games with "mixed reputations" were not their first choice.

This is also the reason for the unexpected increase in Shanxi Expressway. According to incomplete statistics, Shanxi accounts for 27 of the filming locations in the game, and these filming locations have become potential popular tourist destinations.

Monkeys from the "Dongsheng Divine Continent" have brought Shanxi to the forefront

The exquisite artwork left a deep impression on many players. For example, Xiao Xitian made one player's eyes light up.

The player told the author that unlike the real scene of Shanxi Xiaoxitian, the hanging Buddha heads in the game are changed into monsters. After the player enters the cave, the main color of the screen turns completely black, "giving people a sense of the end of the world and the collapse of Buddhism, which may also fit the background of this game - 'destroying Buddhism'."

Zhong Lei (pseudonym) is a senior practitioner in the gaming industry. He told the author that in game production, "chief artist" is an important job, responsible for the visual effects and art style of the game. They will go to various places to find suitable real scenes, and then model these real scenes to create the game scenes and pictures.

In his opinion, Shanxi has many ancient buildings, and many of them are from before the Yuan Dynasty or even the Tang Dynasty, which is closer to the era described in "Journey to the West" and more suitable for the style of this game.

Shanxi is known as the "treasure house of ancient Chinese architecture" for its terrestrial cultural relics. Data shows that among the 2,165 ancient buildings rated as national key cultural relics protection sites, Shanxi has 421, ranking first in the country. There are 495 ancient wooden structures before the Yuan Dynasty, accounting for about 85% of the country.

After "Black Myth: Wukong" became a hit, the filming locations in the game became popular, and Shanxi was the first to seize this wave of traffic dividends.

Among the 27 filming locations in Shanxi Province, Xiaoxitian in Xi County, Foguang Temple, Nanshan Temple, and Jinge Temple in Mount Wutai in Xinzhou, Qinglian Temple in Jincheng, Erxian Temple in Xixi, Lingchuan, and Jade Emperor Temple in Zezhou have become hot search terms in recent days.CtripInformation provided to the author shows that from 0:00 to 12:00 on the day of the launch, search popularity in Shanxi Province increased by more than 10% compared to the previous day, and search popularity in cities such as Datong and Shuozhou increased by 20% month-on-month.

Take Xiaoxitian in Xi County as an example. According to media reports, staff at the scenic spot said that after the game filming location was announced, the number of tickets sold by the scenic spot on August 20 increased by 300% compared with August 20 last year.

"There must be a few young people who love playing games in Shanxi Province's cultural and tourism department." Wang Meng (pseudonym) joked to the author.

He is a veteran gamer. He became interested in the game when the first live demo video of Black Myth: Wukong was released on August 20, 2020. But he has always felt that playing games is just a small thing to kill time and is not "presentable".

It was not until August 20 last year that he discovered that the Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture and TourismBilibiliA short video of "Black Myth: Wukong" was released on the platform, showing the local filming locations of the game. So far, it has received 1.98 million views.

"The provincial-level cultural and tourism department released such a video? And it was posted on Bilibili?" Wang Meng recalled. He was a little surprised when he first saw the video, which was in stark contrast to the official account's rigid impression.

In order to capture this group of young people who love playing games, the Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism also specifically noted in the introduction of the official account of Bilibili that they are "an important source of inspiration for many scenes and characters" of this game, and on the evening of August 22, they launched the "Follow Wukong to Travel in Shanxi" event.

It seems that this monkey, whose ancestral home is "Dongsheng Shenzhou" and who is the king of Huaguo Mountain, is from Shanxi.

Black Myth: Wukong is not a free game. Players need to recharge to experience it. In Zhong Lei's opinion, people who are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a game are considered high-end.net worthUsers, this group of people often have good consumption power, which makes them a group worth attracting for cultural and tourism industries in various places.

A large-scale "cyber recognition" scene

In addition to Shanxi, the cultural and tourism industries in Chongqing, Sichuan, Anhui, Fujian, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and other places also responded quickly, all wanting to take advantage of this "huge traffic."

Taking Chongqing as an example, the city's Culture and Tourism Development Committee announced that the Thousand-Armed Guanyin statues of Dazu Rock Carvings and the Western Pure Land Transformation of Baoding Mountain are all Chongqing elements. The article also detailed that the images that appear at the 19th second, 1 minute 02 seconds, and 11 minutes 39 seconds in the game video are from Chongqing.

This explanation was jokingly called "counting down to identify scenic spots" by netizens. The article also quoted Jiang Siwei, director of the Dazu Rock Carvings Research Institute, as saying that through games, more young people can understand it, providing a new path for the protection and promotion of Dazu Rock Carvings.

In fact, the "Journey to the West" and cultural and tourism journeys have a natural sense of action and empathy, which is an important reason why cultural and tourism institutions and platforms across the country have set off a creative boom.

Even if they are not gamers, some netizens have shown great interest in visiting these filming locations in person.

In order to provide travel convenience for netizens, some platforms have also launched related products. For example, QQ Browser has specially launched a tour map of the "Black Myth" filming locations. Just click on the icons of these filming locations, you can quickly find local tour guides, on-site information, popular questions and answers, etc.

In March this year, QQ Browser launched a travel product. So far, it has developed travel maps for 42 cities and more than 2,200 attractions, produced more than 280 selected travel routes, and served a total of 20 million users.

In the past few years, from Zibo to Harbin to Tianshui, many cities have "unexpectedly" been favored by traffic and have become the top cities envied by cultural and tourism industries everywhere. The traffic is carried by barbecue, ice and snow world, malatang and other local specialties.

However, in this wave of traffic competition, the game IP is the C position. Compared with barbecue, ice and snow world, and spicy hot pot, game IP has the attributes of cross-regional, diversified, and no specific ownership, which enables more cities to establish connections with these IPs and find the communication hotspots that suit them.

If we look back at the development history of games in recent years, we will find that the phenomenon of local cultural and tourism industries competing for Wukong is not accidental. For a long time, well-known domestic games have been leveraging traditional culture and interacting with local cultural and tourism industries.

For example, Honor of Kings collaborated with Foshan to design the "Lion Dances in the East" skin for Luban No. 7 and the "Bruce Lee skin" for Pei Qinhu. A Chinese Ghost Story linked up with the Xi'an Beilin Museum to allow players to experience ink-and-wash dance drama online, and also reproduced the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Qin Shihuang Mausoleum, allowing players to experience the magnificence of the ancient battlefield.

In addition to the "competition for monkeys" in the cultural and tourism industries of various places, many places have also staged a large-scale "cyber recognition" scene. For example, Nanjing is not a filming location, but it does not affect the determination of this ancient capital of Six Dynasties to compete for traffic.

On August 20, Nanjing Publishing published an article titled "Wukong: Nanjing Mom is Proud of You", which took "cyber recognition" to a new level. The article wrote that Yang Qi, co-founder and art director of Black Myth: Wukong, is from Nanjing, and although Wu Chengen, the author of Journey to the West, is from Huai'an, he came to Nanjing many times in his life.

This kind of "recognition of relatives" made netizens "unable to bear it", and some people left a message jokingly: they are "taking advantage of the popularity".

Huazhong University of Science and Technology is the alma mater of Feng Ji, the founder of Black Myth: Wukong. This top 10 university in the country also used its official account to "take advantage" of the traffic. When introducing Feng Ji, it generously admitted that Feng Ji was "addicted to games" 20 years ago and "gave up the postgraduate entrance examination."

This is not what a "good student" should look like, but the school also wrote: "From dreaming to pursuing dreams and then to creating dreams, from an 'internet addict' to a well-known game producer, Feng Ji has always been passionate about it and thinking calmly."

The Wandering Earth of the Gaming Industry

"When I played the game in the past, I just glanced at the background settings, but every object in 'Wukong' is made very delicately. Even an inconspicuous pillar may be engraved with fine gold characters." A game player exclaimed to the author that he can even experience scenes from the original "Journey to the West" such as plucking a hair to transform, seventy-two transformations, and having a bronze head and iron arms.

This game became popular because it is one of the few domestic 3A games on the market.

The so-called 3A refers to "A lot of money", "A lot of resources" and "A lot of time". The series such as "Red Dead Redemption", "The Witcher", "Assassin's Creed" and "Call of Duty" that are well-known to players around the world are all outstanding representatives of 3A games.

If we use movies as an analogy, 3A games are the "blockbuster" of the gaming industry. The protagonist of this "blockbuster", Sun Wukong, is lonely yet powerful, confident yet unruly, and his fate is determined by his own will, which happens to be what the current society and netizens like.

"It is rare in the domestic game industry to invest seven years to carefully craft a game." Zhong Lei told the author, "Previous game manufacturers made fast food, but Black Myth: Wukong was made to the standard of a state banquet."

In his opinion, the gaming industry is a quick money-making industry with a fast iteration speed. No one can guarantee that a game that takes six or seven years to develop will still be popular after its launch.

"Someone said that this game represents the hope of the entire Huaguo Mountain, which is very accurate." Zhong Lei sighed to the author. If other domestic games are the monkeys of Huaguo Mountain, then "Black Myth: Wukong" is the Monkey King of Huaguo Mountain, leading peers to challenge the "3A" field that has always been monopolized by foreign game companies.

Zhong Lei called this game the "Wandering Earth" of the industry. Before this movie, many people believed that China could not make good science fiction movies. The same was true for the gaming industry. Previously, it was believed that China could not produce its own 3A games.

In recent years, games have begun to appear on some important stages in the international community and have taken on the important task of cultural communication.

For example, the protagonist of the "Tokyo Eight Minutes" at the closing ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics wasNintendo"Mario"; the image of parkouring on the roof with a torch at the opening ceremony of the just-concluded Paris Olympics was derived from Ubisoft's eighth installment of "Assassin's Creed", "Unity".

In China's traditional culture, there are many myths and legends that can be adapted into game IPs, such as Journey to the West, Classic of Mountains and Seas, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, etc., but few are as successful as "Black Myth: Wukong".

On the day the game was launched, a picture began to circulate online. The top of the picture showed the excitement of domestic players, while the bottom showed that foreign players were reading the original Journey to the West. Some American social platforms were also joked by netizens as turning into a foreign-language exhibition of Journey to the West, and Chinese netizens explained the difference between monsters and demons online.

Feng Ji, the creator of Black Myth: Wukong, once explained why he was so obsessed with adapting classics. According to Game Grape, he once said that he had considered doing original work, but there are many Chinese classics that are full of vitality.

"There is a saying that Journey to the West is China's "Lord of the Rings", and Romance of the Three Kingdoms is China's "A Song of Ice and Fire". We ourselves have classics that can impress users. So our greatest motivation is to make the classics explode again. This is why we did Journey to the West first and then Romance of the Three Kingdoms. We may do Journey to the West again in the future." Feng Ji said.