Before the green grasslands and bears dominated the screen, whose childhood memories were not made up of puzzle pieces filled with EVA mechas, Detective Conan, Sailor Moon and Dragon Balls?

Before the green grasslands and bears dominated the screen, whose childhood memories were not made up of puzzles filled with EVA mechas, Detective Conan, Sailor Moon and Dragon Balls?

In Taiwan, people connect the acronyms of Animation, Comics and Games to form a unique ACG culture.

Now, with the addition of more subcultures such as fan fiction, game information, and figure peripherals, everyone has begun to use another more inclusive name - the second dimension.

From Castle in the Sky to Naruto, from Inuyasha to One Piece, the two-dimensional culture has deeply influenced the young people of an era.

Among them are the three earliest founders of Mihayou : Cai Haoyu, , Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao.

Just like the classic line of the Sandaime Hokage in "Naruto": "As long as there are leaves flying, fire will burn. The shadow of the fire will illuminate the entire village and make new leaves sprout."

Two-dimensional " "The Will of Fire" has long been integrated into every self-breakthrough of MiHoYo.

Once upon a time, teenagers who were influenced by the grand world of the second dimension have grown up, and MiHoYo has already broken through the shackles of game companies and built a full industry chain covering comics, animation, games, music, novels and animation peripherals around original IP. , has become a key national cultural export enterprise that can also affect the memory of a generation.

Today, let us talk together. In this Internet world where magic and crisis coexist, what has MiHoYo done right?

Back to the beginning of the story, everything starts from the graduate dormitory of Shanghai Jiao Tong University .

Just like the fate of Steins;Gate, three ACG fanatics, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao, were arranged into the same dormitory when they were studying for a master's degree in computer science.

At that time, although the two-dimensional and shamate were almost at the same level of heterogeneity, their common hobbies and similar dreams made the three old otakus determined to promote China's two-dimensional culture after meeting each other at a late date. The best in the world. The

action started during college.

If we look at Cai Haoyu, one of the founders of MiHoYo, we can see that with the open source literature community he developed with his roommates, he successfully won a scholarship of 200,000 yuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Technology Innovation Competition.

The dream is beginning to get closer to reality.

By the 2010 First Maqiu Flash Game Development Competition, Cai Haoyu’s self-made game Saha Story already had a complete plot, rich scripts and more than a dozen levels.

Saha Monogatari received a lot of praise and won the championship of the campus group and the Intel special award, accumulating valuable experience for future game development.

The timeline is pushed forward, In 2011, the MiHoYo team was officially established.

In the same year, MiHoYo's first mobile game "Fly to the Moon" landed on the IOS mobile game platform.

Although this game has no plot connection with MiHoYo's subsequent series of games, it is in this game that the protagonist of the Honkai Impact series, Kiana, who will allow MiHoYo to ascend to the throne of the second dimension in the future, is born.

I have to say that the miHoYo team, which has just left campus, is indeed very motivated.

The second year after the release of "Fly to the Moon", miHoYo immediately launched its first real work - Honkai Academy!

Cai Haoyu once said at the finals of the "Xinxin Entrepreneurship Talent" that attracted investment: Otakus are a group of very good, very kind, very loving but very pitiful people. They have a strong need to communicate with the opposite sex, but because of They dare not act due to huge psychological pressure, so otakus generally belong to this kind of people who are very distressed, lonely and lonely.

We are here to solve the needs of otakus!

It can be seen that the MiHoYo team, as a group of technology-savvy otakus, has long understood the core customer group portrait and the most important customer needs of the second dimension. However, in an environment full of DNF and LOL at that time, the subject matter was small The popularity of Honkai Academy among the public can only be described as tepid, and it failed to bring ideal results to MiHoYo in terms of profitability.

Before the dream could even be shipped, the society was already demanding a signature for its delivery. MiHoYo had to stop and re-determine the way forward. In the end, should we just go with the flow and follow the market and make quick money by making reskinned games like Journey to the West and Three Kingdoms, treating players like leeks? Or should we stick to our original aspirations and persevere on the road to the second dimension, even if we eventually disband.

Shakespeare said: Life and death are a question, and MiHoYo’s choice is to live toward death.

The setbacks of Honkai Academy 1 made MiHoYo realize that in the world of the Internet, the best of the best is hard to make progress without good operations and matching publicity channels.

After clarifying the direction and summing up the experience, MiHoYo once again entered the development of Honkai Academy 2. In order to speed up the progress, some members of the development team even postponed their graduation.

Finally, on December 11, 2013, the internal beta of Honkai Academy 2 for IOS was officially launched.

learned from the failure experience of Honkai Academy 1. MiHoYo chose to cooperate with the most popular mobile game platform at the time, the 91 platform.

Looking at it now, the 91 platform at that time was indeed a field full of hope, but in the field of hope, the second dimension was besieged on all sides.

1 platform’s main customer base is not direct users of ACG. Honkai Academy 2’s performance on the 91 platform was mediocre, and all data failed to meet MiHoYo’s expectations.

A basin of cold water was poured on MiHoYo's rekindled passion.

In the face of cold data, we don’t know whether MiHoYo’s internal insistence on the road to the second dimension has wavered. However, as word of mouth and popularity have been basically established on the IOS platform, MiHoYo has reached the point where it must be The point where has its last stand against .

Once it fails, team members will face the problem of unemployment after graduation; once it fails, they will be labeled as entrepreneurial losers; once it fails, MiHoYo will really be gone; once it fails, China's two-dimensional culture may It is no longer difficult to go out into the world.

Fortunately, miHoYo seized the last chance.

is like the journey of the Dragon Quest, until the desperate situation, the halo of the protagonist will never be opened.

To release Honkai Academy 2 on Android, MiHoYo chose Zhen Xiao Po Station, which was also just starting out, which is now Station B.

In 2014, the internal beta download channel of Honkai Academy 2 at Station B was opened.

On the one hand, it is the ACG website platform that has attracted a large number of old two-dimensional fans; on the other hand, it is a game company that pursues dreams, is obsessed with technology, and hopes to save the world with technology geeks.

The combination of the two immediately caused waves in the two-dimensional circle. The effect is comparable to Coke with ice or milk tea with all sugar!

Honkai Academy 2 spread rapidly in the 2D circle, and countless old 2D fans directly "cheers". The daily search volume of Honkai Academy 2 on Baidu quickly reached the level expected by MiHoYo.

One year after its launch, Honkai Impact Academy 2 brought more than 66 million yuan in revenue to miHoYo. The linkage business of Honkai Academy 2 also contributed 2/3 of 2014’s profits to Station B.

Faced with countless players’ likes, coins and attention, MiHoYo understands the principle of going all out in one go, then failing again, and finally consuming all three. It decisively synchronized the release of Apple’s IOS App Store, and in just two months, it was on the top of the list. Top paid list.

For a time, MiHoYo became famous.

Even if it is Goose Factory , they can't help but send their own one-click triple connection based on their previous attention!

At the same time, Penguin did not forget to extend an olive branch and invited MiHoYo to join its team.

Facing the temptation of the Goose Factory, MiHoYo Technology House's journey of saving the world has once again reached a crossroads.

Everything seems to be back to the time when the investors suggested making a skin-changing game and the money was running out. Should you kneel down and cut the players' leeks, or should you insist on standing and make money?

In the end, the original intention defeated the temptation, and miHoYo once again made a choice: stick to the path of technology nerd to save the world!

Having made money from Honkai Academy 2, the MiHoYo team was finally able to offer a million-dollar annual salary to recruit Niu The above conclusions are basically drawn from 2D mobile games. MiHoYo decided to establish its own technical barriers. Simply put, it is to make 3D mobile games that others cannot copy and that are different from the mainstream 3D mobile games in the market.

Honkai Academy 3 started research and development under this background.

In the blink of an eye, the page of the story turned to 2016.

Honkai Academy 3 was born. With the awareness of establishing technical barriers, Honkai Academy 3 relied on an aesthetic story mechanism that was comparable to 3A masterpieces, and far exceeded the art style and picture quality of the same era. It was a great success, even because The graphics are so detailed that it was once ridiculed as a computer game.

In addition, coupled with miHoYo's in-depth insight into the two-dimensional culture, there are only three male characters in Honkai Academy 3, and the other charming and beautiful female characters not only make domestic players unable to help but put money in, but also On Google play, the outstanding Honkai Academy 3 has also attracted a large number of players from Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, completely out of the circle in the two-dimensional mobile game industry!

According to MiHoYo's prospectus , the full-year revenue in 2016 increased directly from 172.651 million yuan last year to 424.0223 million yuan.

However, just when MiHoYo was making great progress, its listing failed.

The Securities Regulatory Commission clearly pointed out in the feedback on MiHoYo’s prospectus that in 2017, the two products Honkai Academy 2 and Honkai Academy 3 accounted for 98% of the revenue. MiHoYo holds the “Honkai” IP, which is The ability to continue to make profits in the future will have a certain impact.

MiHoYo itself also realized the risks of a single IP.

Therefore, they had to choose to break away from the Honkai system from the inside out and seek new products and directions.

MiHoYo fell silent, was like a beast after confirming its target, crouching down, concentrating, and accumulating power to move like thunder.

However, the complete opposite of MiHoYo’s state is the acceleration of the two-dimensional breakthrough.

After the release of Honkai Academy 3, mobile games such as Onmyoji and Naruto were launched one after another, greatly expanding the two-dimensional player base.

Between 2017 and 2020, more and more competitors, such as Identity V, the deviant Millionaire King Arthur, the big IP mobile game Fairy Tail, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, began to squeeze into the two-dimensional game track.

A game company called Origami became popular because of the launch of the female-oriented development game Love and Producer , which unexpectedly opened up the wallets of female players for the two-dimensional mobile game market; during the epidemic, domestic original IP mobile games will be available tomorrow Ark detonated the market and once again expanded the boundaries of two-dimensional mobile games.

At the same time, non-two-dimensional mobile games represented by Honor of Kings and Peace Elite have also begun to work hard to harvest mobile game users after a long dormant period.

The two-dimensional mobile game market is in urgent need of a phenomenal masterpiece to stabilize the basic market.

In September 2020, in the face of market demand, MiHoYo, which had been silent for 4 years, responded and released the mobile game Genshin Impact!

Because it is partially similar in gameplay to the 2018 annual game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact was questioned by many players before the public beta. However, the world view based on the Nosti mythology Based on the story, coupled with the art style that surpasses the games of the same era, and the reference to the folk culture of different countries in the real world, Genshin Impact has become so popular after its official public beta that it has refreshed global players’ understanding of Chinese mobile games, and has successively won GDC awards. -Game Developers Choice Award, Apple-Visual Image Award, 2021GRAND AWARD, TGA-2021 Best Mobile Game Award.

In addition to the professional recognition it has received for its gameplay, the high integration of the cultures of various countries in the world background of Genshin Impact also allows players from all over the world to deeply experience the Chinese culture Yin Yang and the Five Elements , eat tea and listen to operas, and also In different game maps, you can experience medieval European fantasy, ancient Southeast Asian style, and Soviet-Russian heavy industry style.

In January 2022, miHoYo launched the storyline animation "Goddess Pi Guan", which made players all over the world hear the well-spoken Chinese drama. Even Xinhua News Agency , China News Service and other official The media also reported repeatedly.

The Ministry of Commerce, Central Propaganda Department, Finance Department, Ministry of Culture, State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television,officially named Genshin Impact as a key national cultural export project in 2021-2022.

It is worth noting that Genshin Impact is much more than that.

On the one hand, the emergence of Genshin Impact marks that MiHoYo has stepped out of the technical, industrial, and technical route of the game industry, breaking the long-standing , industrial, technical, and industry structure represented by goose factories and pig farms.

has made more game manufacturers realize that with the advent of the new media and big data era, the distribution channels that have long been monopolized by big game manufacturers cannot form a user blockade for truly good games;

On the other hand, game background The eclectic collection of world cultures not only displays the humanistic architecture and historical features of different countries and nations in the real world, but also plays a positive role in promoting the export of Chinese culture.

According to IGN Southeast Asia, Malaysian News Broadcasting also used the background music "Fire Like Fire" from "Genshin Impact" in its Lunar New Year program.

In 2021, the Game Working Committee mentioned in the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released that the growth scale of China's game users dropped by 3.48% compared with last year. The dividends of the game population tend to be saturated. It is already the next step for Chinese games to go overseas. An inevitable trend in the first stage. MiHoYo is undoubtedly off to a good start.

Looking back at MiHoYo’s entrepreneurial journey from a God’s perspective, it’s hard not to lament the arrangement of fate and the greatness of the dream. If it weren’t for Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei, Luo Yuhao and other members of MiHoYo’s founding team, they would stick to their dreams and stick to technology. The concept of saving the world, at the crossroads of several choices, MiHoYo may have lost its way and disappeared from everyone.

Nowadays, with annual revenue exceeding 10 billion, MiHoYo has been selected as a key national cultural export enterprise. It has undoubtedly slapped in the face those investors who denounced domestic mobile games and underestimated the potential of the second dimension.

With one step at a time and solid technical and production capabilities, MiHoYo's new vision is to create a virtual world in which one billion people around the world are willing to live in by 2030.

This day is not far away from us. During this period, we don’t know what kind of crossroads MiHoYo will go to, but we believe that this group of technical geeks who take saving the world as their own responsibility will make The right choice.