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text丨xu junhao

after more than a week online, black myth: wukong remains popular.

the cumulative reading volume of multiple "black myth: wukong" related topics on weibo has exceeded 4 billion, and the reading volume of the topic "sales exceeded 10 million copies" on august 23 alone was 170 million; topics such as the game's photography competition and hand-drawing have recently been on the xiaohongshu hot search list, and hidden plots and movie-style editing are at the top of the popular lists of douyin and kuaishou; tickets for the "black myth: wukong" offline theme concert went on sale on august 28 and were sold out within 2 minutes of the sale.

according to data from research firm vg insights, global sales of black myth: wukong have exceeded 15 million copies.

it should be noted that black myth: wukong has four versions for sale in china, namely the digital standard version priced at 268 yuan, which includes expansion content, the digital deluxe version priced at 328 yuan, the physical deluxe version priced at 820 yuan, and the physical collector's version priced at 1,998 yuan, which includes physical items. the digital standard version is more expensive overseas than in china. in other words, even if calculated at the lowest price of 268 yuan, the total sales of the game have reached 4.02 billion yuan.

according to a research report released by huatai securities on august 27, the first-month sales of black myth: wukong are expected to exceed 20 million copies, of which overseas revenue accounts for about 20%; the annual sales are expected to reach 30 million to 40 million copies, corresponding to a revenue of 10 billion to 14 billion yuan.

this achievement is enough to make "black myth: wukong" one of the best-selling games in the world.

in comparison, the speed at which black myth: wukong reached its sales milestone is close to that of well-known games red dead redemption 2 and elden ring. red dead redemption 2 was produced by the well-known american studio rockstar games and released in october 2018. it sold more than 17 million copies in two weeks, and its cumulative sales have reached 65 million. elden ring was launched by the well-known japanese game developer from software in february 2022. it sold more than 10 million copies in the first week of its release, and its cumulative sales have now exceeded 25 million copies.

according to the official data summary of global game sales on wikipedia, as of august 2024, among games released after 2010 and whose release platforms include pc, "red dead redemption 2" ranks fourth and "elden ring" ranks fourteenth. according to the data predicted by huatai securities, "black myth: wukong" can be included in the top twelve of this list, and it is also the only domestic game on the entire list.

in addition to the well-known story of "journey to the west", "black myth: wukong" has excellent production, exquisite graphics, ups and downs of the plot and high-level gameplay. what makes this game break through the circle and become a phenomenal work is not only the game itself, but also the algorithm traffic plus the spontaneous multiple dissemination of users, which provides unlimited possibilities for high-quality content.

01

domestic 3a tops the list

before the launch of black myth: wukong, there were a lot of discussions on zhihu about "why there are no 3a games in china".

the so-called 3a games refer to the concept of high quality in credit ratings. some also say that they refer to stand-alone games that take a lot of time, resources, and money to develop.there is no strict boundary for classifying 3a games. players mainly use whether it is a "big production" as the benchmark, and also comprehensively consider factors that determine the quality of the game, such as graphics quality, gameplay, etc.

as mentioned above, the development team of red dead redemption 2 spent eight years and invested more than $400 million, or about 2.84 billion yuan. as an open-world adventure game, red dead redemption 2 is known for its "realism": the hair and beard of the player character in the game will grow over time; players can feed horses, which will interact intimately with players and die due to injuries or lifespan; players can interact deeply with almost all npcs, or non-player characters, and have a high degree of freedom of choice.

earlier domestic stand-alone games, such as the "legend of sword and fairy" series and the "gujian qitan" series, won by plotting, but they were still far from 3a games in terms of cost, picture quality, and gameplay.

this is similar to what the film industry calls a "special effects blockbuster", which takes the audio-visual senses to the extreme and is a concrete presentation of the film industry's standards. in the minds of players, 3a games represent the highest level of game production - this is why "black myth: wukong" as "china's first 3a game" has made domestic players excited.

in black myth: wukong, the player plays a monkey called "destiny man". the character's hair and skin texture are delicate and realistic, and the expression is lifelike and the movements are smooth. the game type is arpg, that is, action role-playing. the player controls the character to run around the map, fight monsters, and participate in the plot. the combat system is both visually beautiful and difficult to operate.

after the game was launched, the monsters "ghost" in the first episode and "tiger vanguard" in the second episode sparked heated discussions among netizens because of their high difficulty in fighting. because the "tiger vanguard" plot involves delivering food and "monkey heads as wine", players jokingly called dying in the "tiger vanguard" battle "delivering food", and a series of "playing with memes" pictures and animations were derived.

the sounds of the characters running, stepping, jumping, using items, and different actions and spells in the game are all true stereo surround. a user of bilibili, "nuozi miaowu", posted a video of himself beating a "ghost" by listening to the sound, and the video has been played 4.867 million times.

many people attribute the previous "no 3a domestic products" to the gaming market environment, especially the difference between the buyout and internal payment models.

the buyout system is the sales model adopted by most stand-alone games, that is, players pay a one-time buyout, and after paying, they can download and install, and then experience all the game content. in-house paid games will design a large number of gaps in player experience in the game, such as differences in characters, weapons, and decorations, etc., to induce players to pay multiple times, that is, "krypton gold". common recharge amounts for mobile games with internal payment models are 168 yuan, 328 yuan, 648 yuan and other levels. for example, in "onmyoji" by netease games, many players even recharged 648 yuan. some players calculated that it would cost 1,000-2,000 yuan to draw some ssr (highest rarity level) cards.

the direct benefits make game manufacturers focus on the payment rate and neglect the quality of the game. as a result, the game industry has the term "skin-changing", which means that similar or identical gameplay can be released online by changing the style, name and value.

domestic online games, including pc, mobile and web games, are mainly based on internal payment systems, while stand-alone games are basically bought out. the market size of the two is very different.

according to the "china game industry report from january to june 2024" released by the china audio-video and digital publishing association, in the first half of 2024, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market was 147.267 billion yuan, of which mobile games accounted for 73.01% with 107.517 billion yuan, occupying a dominant position; the actual sales revenue of pc online games was 33.763 billion yuan, accounting for 22.93%; the actual sales revenue of web games was 2.34 billion yuan, accounting for 1.59%; the actual sales revenue of stand-alone games was 797 million yuan, accounting for 0.5%.

in this case, it is "not cost-effective" to spend a high cost on 3a games.

as early as 2007, feng ji, the creator of black myth: wukong and the founder of the development company game science, wrote an article titled "who murdered our games?", accusing game manufacturers of blindly making money and only studying how to make players addicted, "forming gangs and hating each other", and then "spitting out more rmb". the article also mentioned the need to make "great games".

now, black myth: wukong is a game that keeps its word. according to feng ji, the development cost of black myth: wukong is estimated to be 15-20 million yuan per hour of game time. the initial estimated game time was 15 hours, but the actual game time was over 22.5 hours. it can be inferred that the cost of black myth: wukong is over 330 million yuan.

02

take advantage of the right time and place

looking back, we can see that "black myth: wukong" has gone through a long period of accumulation.

feng ji worked at tencent games and developed the online game "god of war" based on "journey to the west". however, this game, which was launched in 2014, lost a lot of players in less than half a year, and a large number of internal payment projects also eroded the good reputation the game gained during the testing phase. in the same year, feng ji left tencent and founded "game science". game science developed mobile games such as "hundred generals" and "red tide", which enabled the company to have cash flow, and it was not until 2018 that the "black myth: wukong" project was launched.

the timing is closely tied to the growth of gaming platform steam.

steam is a digital distribution platform for electronic games launched by valve, a well-known american game company. when it was launched in 2003, it only provided automatic update functions for games. later, it gradually developed into a comprehensive platform for game publishers.

in the gaming world, steam is as important as the apple and google app stores combined:the platform itself has an anti-piracy mechanism, which can curb game piracy to a certain extent; it is extremely convenient for players to purchase, download, install, and update games, and it is very friendly to buyout stand-alone games, and they can also obtain game achievements on the platform; players gather on the platform to evaluate and discuss the games.

domestic online games have cultivated players' awareness of paying, but before steam, there was no channel to buy genuine games in china. in 2015, steam launched rmb settlement services and officially entered the chinese market. two years later, influenced by the hit buyout game playerunknown's battlegrounds, domestic players gradually became familiar with steam. on zhihu, a netizen even asked, "why do i start buying genuine games involuntarily after using steam?" a large number of answers with more than 4,000 likes under the question all point to the convenience of steam.

in addition to the maturity of the channels, the development of game technology itself is more critical.

feng ji once said that if "black myth: wukong" was developed 10 years ago, it would require at least double the manpower and resources.

the development of game engines is the foundation of game development. it is a core component of interactive real-time graphics applications and can provide game designers with a wealth of development tools. "black myth: wukong" uses the "unreal engine 5" (ue5) game engine, which will be officially released in 2022.

ue5 has extremely powerful rendering capabilities, including the lumen global illumination system, which can respond to changes in light sources in game scenes in real time. this is how the light and shadows in black myth: wukong, which amaze players, were born. according to haike finance, almost all scenes in black myth: wukong have lighting changes comparable to those in the physical world, such as the tyndall phenomenon caused by light shining in from the top of ancient temples, courtyards, caves, and woods, as well as the different flows of light on the surfaces of characters and objects.

game character action design is also an advantage of ue5. after the art designer imports game resources such as character images into the engine, the character's actions such as raising hands, taking steps, taking off, and falling are all realized by the engine. there are a lot of snow scenes in the third episode of the plot of "black myth: wukong". the running and jumping of the characters in the snow will change the shape of the snow on the ground. this uses the virtual height field mesh in ue5, which can add various details of real-time dynamics.

it is worth mentioning that ue5 was developed by epic games, a well-known american game company. tencent acquired 40% of epic's shares as early as 2012, and then invested in game science in 2021.

technological advances have led more game companies to join the 3a trend.

virtuos, which was previously famous for its game production, has also shifted from outsourcing production to self-development. at the chinajoy exhibition in july 2024, virtuos announced the first-person action stealth game "legend of tang dynasty: pipa xing" under development. previously, tencent games also announced that it was developing the 3a open world game "the last sentinel", and netease games established a 3a remote work game studio "bullet farm" in the united states. the studio invested by netease also officially announced "yanyun sixteen sounds", which is known as a domestic martial arts 3a work.

03

beyond the game

players' anticipation and love for black myth: wukong have pushed up its popularity.

on august 19, the day before the game went online, xinhuanet released an exclusive interview video with the main creative team, which was played 2.199 million times on bilibili. the earlier popularity came from the game's first trailer. in august 2020, "game science's new work "black myth: wukong" 13-minute real-machine demonstration" was released on bilibili. soon after it went online, it topped the ranking of the entire site's playback volume, and it was followed by hot searches on multiple platforms such as weibo. now the video has been played nearly 60 million times.

at that time, many netizens commented that if the game really matches the content of the promotional video, they would definitely "get into it".

the meticulous craftsmanship of black myth: wukong has indeed impressed the players. since the game was launched, a large number of players have shared the details full of chinese cultural connotations they have seen everywhere on social media. for example, the common "return to city" operation in the game, which is to quickly teleport the character from the wild to a safe place, most games directly use the names of "return to city scroll" or "return to city rune", but black myth: wukong calls it "shrinking the earth into an inch", using the allusion of "shrinking the earth into an inch" in classical literature.

there is also a common save location in rpg (role-playing games), which has a special form in "black myth: wukong" - the land god temple. when saving, the "god's man" will pluck out his hair, turn it into incense, and burn incense at the land god temple. netizens have even created a homophonic pun for "sun shangxiang". moreover, the land god temple will have different appearances depending on the map scene. for example, the land god temple in the snow will be covered with falling snow, and the snow will only be shaken off when the incense is burned for the first time.

according to haike finance's observation, each monster in "black myth: wukong" has a biography, and the content includes character poems and corresponding stories; some monster biographies are from the original "journey to the west", while others are re-written by game designers closely following the original, and there are a lot of plots hidden in the biographies of ordinary monsters.

for example, the first episode of the story takes place in black wind mountain, which is from the 16th episode of journey to the west, "the monks of guanyin temple plot for treasures, and the monsters of black wind mountain steal the cassock." the characters of the original novel, such as elder jinchi and black bear, all appear. however, these contents are not simply copied from journey to the west, but a continuation, telling that after the journey to the west is completed, black bear returns to black wind mountain, rebuilds the guanyin temple that was burned down in the original novel, and tries to revive his old friend.

the lines in the game are also talked about by players with great relish. for example, at the end of the first chapter, the black bear demon asked guanyin, "the monks have severed their worldly ties and their golden seas have dried up, so why can't the elder let go of a piece of clothing?" guanyin replied, "if i don't put on this piece of clothing, how can the living beings know that my worldly ties have severed and my golden seas have dried up?" these two lines of dialogue alone have triggered a lot of discussion among users on various social platforms. not to mention the ancient buildings such as chongqing dazu rock carvings, shaanxi shuilu temple, shanxi foguang temple, and intangible cultural heritage such as "shaanxi storytelling".

the richness of game details enables players to explore and dig out enough materials. coupled with the support of the algorithms of current social media platforms, these contents can continue to ferment and keep the popularity high. based on game strategies and plot understanding, the content extends to music, art, ancient architecture, cultural tourism, and photography. the influence gradually expands from game players and enthusiasts to people interested in chinese culture, and finally generalizes to the general public and overseas.

details are like stones thrown into the lake, creating ripples one after another.taking xiaohongshu as an example, a large number of contents about "shaanxi storytelling" were released after the launch of "black myth: wukong". many notes have more than 3,000 likes, and this genre is also nicknamed "shaanxi rap" by netizens. the related videos of the game have been played more than 31.5 billion times on douyin and more than 5.4 billion times on kuaishou. the number of views of specific topics such as "tiger pioneer", huangfengling plot, spider spirit, and original scene check-in are also in the tens of millions. on the day the game was released, related videos also occupied the youtube popular list. many overseas netizens commented that they hope that bloggers who understand "journey to the west" and chinese culture can help interpret this game.

it can be said that "black myth: wukong" has become a milestone in the history of chinese game development. it shows people what a good game should look like, what level it can reach, and what kind of traffic and revenue it will bring.what a large number of players hope is that "black myth: wukong" is the beginning of domestic games taking this step, and the gaming industry can go further.