I am Zhazhahui. If you are brothers, come and chop me up...
unique attributes, created by you! Fight the boss one-on-one and brush equipment. The imperial city is PK, the winner is the king. Dragon-slaying sword, click to get it!
Rough and stiff style, magical and exaggerated copywriting, and the SIPG-style stolen winter melon ( Mandarin ), the web game "Legend" has become a "strange flower" in the history of Chinese games. Since entering China in 2001, we can still impact our brain nerves in this strange form. The game "Legend" is just as its name suggests, and is not bad.
The "Legend" era
is different from the copycat impression of "one knife 999" and "equipment recycling" today, the legend of that year can be called the first phenomenal game in the history of Chinese online games in . Although this game with strong Chinese retro elements was made by Korean Actoz Soft , it was popular in the country once it was grandly introduced to China. The number of people online exceeded 500,000 in one year. In an era when computers were not yet fully popular, such performance was very rare.
In our impression, paid games seem to be difficult to move forward in China, but when the official version of the legend was released on November 18, 2001, the first batch of client CDs launched by Shanda were sold for more than 20 yuan, and a 60-hour game point card was sold out.
Many people have used up their point cards and cannot buy new ones, so they actually started to buy CDs to get the attached point cards. It is very similar to the crazy behavior of wealthy students back then to collect raccoon cards . In just one year, the revenue from Shanda Game alone reached 10 million.
Legend game screen
The popularity of legends marks the domestic game industry entering the golden age of online games , and also lays the foundation for the basic gameplay and operation mechanism of Chinese online games. Many famous online games will have the shadow of legends in subsequently.
From the perspective of industry development, domestic games at that time experienced the " prehistoric " of electronic games represented by Xiaobawang. The success of legend in business also allowed investors to see the "money-making" ability of online games, the influx of capital and the popularization of computers, which made the online game industry ride the wind.
Watershed In 2003, in September of that year, the country officially included online games in the national "863 plan ". The government invested 5 million yuan to support the development of original online games. Two game overlords emerged in this era.
The first one is NetEase Game and its "Westward Journey" and "Hamniest Journey" " . Among them, "Westward Journey" that has been publicly beta for nearly 18 years still entered the top 10 of the global game revenue in 2021's profit , which shows its money-making ability. Tencent Game also began to rise rapidly after " Crossfire " and later proxy " Dungeon and Warriors " was launched in 2007. Everyone knows the story of
. . Tencent and NetEase fell in love and fought each other, almost monopolizing the domestic game market. Taking 2021 as an example, Tencent Games' revenue was 174.3 billion yuan, accounting for 43% of the domestic game market share, while NetEase Games' revenue was 62.807 billion yuan, with a market share of nearly 20%. The two companies jointly account for about 60% of the domestic game market share.
Relying on its first-mover advantage, platform advantages, brand appeal, huge reserve of game professional talents and massive investment and acquisitions, the two companies have made a fortune in the game industry and have also discovered an unfathomable moat for the domestic game market. However, although the moat is wide and deep, there are always warriors holding sharp swords crossing the mountains, rivers and seas and want to "slay the dragon". Among the challengers, ByteDance is one, Mihayou is another .
MiHayou's success, a victory of a technical home
2010, a second-year student in the research group named Cai Haoyu , used the homemade falsh engine "Misato" to develop a 2.5D game called "Mother-in-law Story" . As soon as the game was launched, it became popular on 4399 (game website) and won the campus championship of the "Maqiu Flash Game Development Competition".
Both roommates and otaku Liu Wei, Luo Yuhao, Jin Zhicheng and netizens cici think it is reliable to engage in game development. In addition to the "hot" of self-employment at that time, several college students hit it off and decided to set up a studio miHoYo (Mihayou) , embarking on the road of entrepreneurship.
"Mihayou" founding team
They are both otaku, and they think otaku is a group of good, kind, loving, but at the same time very pitiful: they have a strong need to communicate with aliens in their hearts, but they are suffering from huge psychological pressure and dare not take action, and they are naturally very miserable and lonely in their hearts. , so the first goal of this freshman team is to develop a two-dimensional game belonging to the otaku to change this situation.
Not long after, the studio's first casual mobile game "FlyMe 2TheMoon" was launched. This is a pixel-style game for cute Q-version beautiful girls to pass the level. The game uses the system for 18 yuan to buy out, which is very unique in the domestic game market environment where players are accustomed to "free".
But at this time, it happened to catch up with the era when Internet was transferred from PC to mobile , and mobile games became the "hot spot" of the game industry. Although "FlyMe 2TheMoon" performed mediocrely, it allowed the hungry market to see potential. A company called Skye Network fell in love with Mihayou and invested 1 million.
Mihayou, who got angel invested in , has officially entered the "formal" R&D stage. Several Jiaotong University technical otakus received a salary of 4,000 yuan, rented a house worth less than 100 square meters, ate Shaxian and Lanzhou ramen. With higher efficiency than the donkeys in the production team, they launched the first "Bengfai Academy" , which is a horizontal 2D 2D shooting game.
Several people is both R&D and operational, and even acts as the "customer service mother" from time to time , but unfortunately, it is a pure 2D game with a small audience and no money to promote, so it is not selling well. Since "Benghuai Academy" is almost the only income of Mihayou, the team has become even more difficult. Although the company is in the international metropolis Shanghai, it seems that all the prosperity is not the same as them. It is normal to think about plans and do R&D day and night.
Because of love, several people chose to persist, and two years later, they launched "Bengfai Academy 2" . Learning from the lessons of "Benghuai Academy", this time they improved the world view and story background of "Benghuai", making the two-dimensional characters fuller, and at the same time, they also made great optimizations in the sense of impact and leisure system. What’s more important is that at this time a two-dimensional video platform “ Bilibili ” is rising. Mihayou seized the opportunity and changed the model that games had to be bundled with the application store at that time. opened Android internal testing on B station.
This cooperation can be said to be "Miaofrog seeds eat Miuqiqijiao and enter Mickey Miaomiao House - Miaodao Home". Because of the large number of 2D high-stick users on Bilibili and high-quality game content, "Bengfai Academy 2" has achieved unprecedented success.
The " collapsed 3" released later has improved the game quality on the mobile phone to a height that can drag down the mobile phone, connecting the second dimension and ordinary players, and has received wide praise. It was from "Cangfan 3" that Mihayou opened the door to overseas and ranked first among the top 30 overseas manufacturers' revenue list for a long time.
" Genshin Impact " can become the "Light of National Travel"? The success of the " collapsed " series has made Mihayou among the forefront of domestic game companies, but the expansion of the company's scale means that the competition between various forces is intensified, the original intention of "love" has begun to fade, and more and more questions have been encountered. A series of events such as " sexual suggestion, plagiarism, fraud in " made Mihayou realize that the "personality" created by the company is collapsing, and the company is also facing new pressure on performance growth.
Under such a background, the company's soul figures Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao disagree and determined to develop an open world game that can run on mobile phones. The "Genshin Impact" project was also officially launched.
After nearly 4 years of research and development of and US$100 million in R&D investment in , Genshin Impact was officially publicly beta in 2020. Whether it is art, plot, character design, open world, or planning, operation, and publicity, it has shown an extremely high level. Genshin Impact also breaks the restrictions on mobile and PC, Android and IOS platforms. Players can use each device to play unimpededly with one account. These advantages not only capture the hearts of domestic players, but also are well received abroad. In 2020, Genshin Impact won two international awards: "App Store 2020 Game " and "Google Play 2020 Best Game " in one fell swoop, and also won the championship of Chinese mobile game overseas revenue for six consecutive months.
More importantly, Genshin Impact's outing in the sea has achieved the " culture output " that we have always wanted to do but rarely achieved fruitful results. A few days ago, just during the death of Queen of England, the huge Paimeng (Genshin Impact Character) appeared in the Thames River in the UK, which triggered heated discussion among British netizens. They shouted on social media, " is Paimeng, China's Paimeng is taking over London! ". Some people even think that Paimeng is the new queen of Britain, and the degree of obsession with Genshin Impact can be seen.
Genshin Impact character "Paimon" suddenly appeared in the Thames River
is not just the UK. Foreign players who are used to playing "high-end mobile games" have no resistance in the face of Genshin Impact cute 2D characters and card-drawing krypton gold mechanism, and they all gave their wallets to express their love for Genshin Impact. According to data, the revenue of Genshin Impact Japanese servers (Japanese) and US servers (US) accounts for as much as 30%, even exceeding that of China. At the same time, Genshin Impact has also been the champion of Chinese mobile game overseas revenue for six consecutive months, and has been included in the " National Cultural Export Key Project ", which is a complete "Light of Domestic Games"!
Why is Genshin Impact a game that seems to the public as "just that"? Many people have never heard of, can cause such great upsurge in the global game industry? The author believes that the most important reason is that it can find a different approach and achieve the ultimate goal of the field (two-dimensional) that it is good at.
Genshin Impact or Mihayou did not go with the flow. Like some domestic game manufacturers, relying on low investment, low quality, and high circulation games, they took the path of " making quick money ", nor did they overemphasize technical parameters, original pleasure and heroism like foreign games. Based on the concept of "otaku", Genshin Impact found a deeper search in human nature - sense of gain and identity .
At the same time, from the game itself, the game quality of Genshin Impact can be regarded as " Conscience Work " among the many free games. Whether it is the picture quality, world view background story, or the exploration, development, and combat elements in the game, it meets the preferences of mainstream players at home and abroad.
is also very particular about clothing, lines, background music, and other details. In addition, Mihayou has done a very good job in localized operation and marketing, so it can break the cultural barriers and go overseas, and it is also subtly exporting Chinese culture .
Genshin Impact's 2D and Chinese elements
Reviewing the development history of Chinese games, we have introduced , learned from reference to self-developed , from occupied the market by foreign games, to the prevalence of copycat games, and then to the overseas , and achieved remarkable results!
But at the same time, we must also recognize the gap between the current technology depth, game quality, and IP operation of in the . The popularity of Genshin Impact may point us a path, that is, we do not have to try to compete with foreign game manufacturers on the road opened by foreign game manufacturers, but should pay more attention to our own advantages and give full play to our own strengths. Of course, the premise of all this is that cannot do without the "death fighting spirit" of game quality and content innovation.
