From "The Tragedy of Single-player Games" to "Domestic 3A Hope", what has Tencent done for "Black Myth: Wukong"?

Today, "Black Myth: Wukong" officially launched.

As the game with the most potential to challenge AAA masterpieces in China, "Black Myth: Wukong" (referred to as "Black Myth" below) made its debut, bringing its developer Game Science into the public eye.

As the public delves deeper into the core team of "Black Myth," they will find that Tencent is unavoidable.

Wall Street News previously mentioned that the founder of Game Science, Feng Ji (Yuka), and the lead artist Yang Qi were both core members of Tencent's "Warriors" project. Tencent also completed a strategic investment in Game Science in March 2021, holding around 5% of its shares.

As China's largest game company, Tencent has long been involved in the layout of AAA games. They have also invested heavily in self-developed high-quality games like "Ideal," but have not made much of a splash.

With the continued popularity of "Black Myth," Tencent's love-hate relationship with single-player games over the years has also come to light.

Facing the Tragedy of Single-Player Games, Tencent Aims to Be the "Key"

Single-player games have always been a "black hole" for Chinese game companies.

Since the beginning of the mobile internet era, Chinese mobile games have been on the path of "constantly imitating, constantly surpassing," and have successfully gone global in recent years, realizing the dream of dominating the mobile end. However, domestic companies have not been dominant in high-quality games on the PC and console ends, and can even be described as weak.

For the Chinese game market around the year 2000, AAA games meant high investment, high costs, low profits, and rampant piracy issues. The pay-to-play model was not as profitable as online games and mobile games.

Therefore, the general consensus in the industry at that time regarding single-player game development was "spending money and effort without much return": Developing single-player games instead of mobile games is like charity.

Related data shows that as of 2020, the sales of domestic single-player games accounted for less than 0.5% of total game sales.

At this time, Tencent also realized the gap in the single-player market and chose to go against the tide.

In June 2020, Tencent announced a brand new open-world first-person shooter game called "Code: SYN" at its annual game conference, and showcased a demo of the game.

Game critic Zhang Shule explained to Time Weekly that Tencent made this decision to fill the gap:

"The presence of impressive single-player games often determines a game company's true strength and player recognition. Tencent's position as a game giant is only based on revenue, not on R&D capabilities. This is exactly the gap Tencent needs to fill to become a top player in the global gaming industry."

Some also believe that Tencent's choice to expand into the single-player game market was largely inspired by Microsoft Although Microsoft is the world's largest operating system developer, a large part of its revenue actually comes from gaming, mainly relying on its Xbox platform's single-player games.

According to reports, the number of Xbox users is much lower than Tencent's WeGame, but it can almost achieve the same level of revenue as Tencent's gaming business, indicating that the single-player game market is profitable.

Moreover, in recent years, the development of the domestic single-player game market has begun to show momentum. In early 2012, the domestically produced single-player game "Dyson Sphere Program," which was launched just one week, sold 350,000 copies. As of April 2021, "Gu Jian Ba Huang," which was launched at the same time, has sold over 2 million copies.

Clearly, the potential of the domestic single-player game market is huge, it just lacks the key to unlock it.

The Road of Self-Development, Once Stopped at "Dou Zhan Shen"

Entering the single-player game market was also a vision from Tencent: to create high-quality self-developed games.

In 2008, Tencent, which was already profitable in the gaming business, decided to focus on self-developed products and established eight game studios. Feng Ji and Yang Qi, who joined Tencent, entered one of them, the Quantum Studio, and led the "Dou Zhan Shen" project starting from 2009.

Similar to "Black Myth: Wukong," "Dou Zhan Shen" also features elements of Eastern culture, epic narratives, and the Sun Wukong IP. The project was highly anticipated by the management during the planning stage.

According to previous reports, Tencent's internal positioning for this game was "not for profit, just for reputation," showing its level of importance.

However, things did not go as planned.

As an MMORPG online game, "Dou Zhan Shen" required frequent content updates, which conflicted with the team's expertise in single-player game style. The slow update speed of the production team could not keep up with the players' pace, leading to extremely unstable quality in subsequent versions of the game, continuous decline in user data, and a barrage of criticism In the final episode of the documentary "The God of Fighting - Love to Spray Planning," Feng Ji jokingly said:

"The most miserable thing was before the Spring Festival. At that time, Lion Camel City had just launched, and I was on edge every day. There were probably more than 20 players waiting for me downstairs at the company, and I heard that some people had already blocked the entrance to the residential area where I lived."

The grand failure of "The God of Fighting" seemed to set the tone for "China will not have AAA masterpieces."

In the end, in 2014, when Tencent adjusted the studio architecture, Quantum Studio and Lightspeed Studio merged to become the Photon Studio Group. Feng Ji and Yang Qi chose to resign and start their own business, forming Game Science.

Insufficient R&D, supplemented by investment

To make ends meet, Game Science released two games in 2015 and 2017 respectively: "Bai Jiang Xing" and "Chao Chao," which are a card game and a "real-time competitive game." The former was once jokingly referred to as a knockoff version of "DOTA."

However, the team did not forget their original intention of leaving Tencent: to make high-quality single-player games that they excel at.

In 2018, Game Science quickly set up a single-player project team in Shenzhen and moved to Hangzhou at the end of the following year. This marked the official development process of "Black Myth."

In August 2020, Game Science released a gameplay video of "Black Myth," which caused a sensation in the gaming community. It topped the Bilibili hot list within 2 hours of its release and instantly became a hot topic on Weibo, Zhihu, and Douyin.

During this time, Tencent did not stop exploring self-developed games and maintained contact with Game Science.

In March 2021, Tencent completed its investment in Game Science and promised the "three no's" principle in this investment: no intervention in operational decisions, no seizing of project leadership, and no seeking of distribution and operation rights.

Tencent stated:

"The main purpose is to help old colleagues successfully complete the project, without deliberately pursuing any commercial returns."

In addition to financial support, Tencent also provided technical support to the core team. In 2012, Tencent invested in Epic Games and had long-term technical cooperation with the Epic team. It owns multiple projects developed using the Unreal Engine. "Black Myth" also uses the Unreal Engine, and during development, it received technical support from Tencent.

However, Tencent's investment in Game Science still sparked some negative public opinion. Feng Ji later explained on Zhihu:

"The road we choose is not easy, so all along, for those who identify with our values and are willing to help us achieve our dreams, whether it's people, technology, or funding, we will engage in serious contact and conditional acceptance on the premise of maintaining independence, and we also hope to gain everyone's understanding."

根据冯骥的说法，Tencent 在此次合作中确实没有干预游戏科学的日常经营，也没有意欲主导《黑神话》的发行运营，完全遵循了 “三不” 原则，唯一的目的就是帮团队 “把《黑神话》顺利做出来”，并表示：这个行业很需要这样的产品。

For Tencent, filling the gap in "single-player games" may be more important than the games themselves.

正如冯骥所言：

"Setting foot on the location road is more important than reaching the Ling Mountain."

Currently, according to enterprise information from QCC, Feng Ji is the actual controller of Game Science, holding a 38.76% stake; the second and third largest shareholders are Shenzhen Youke Interactive Enterprise Management Center and Shenzhen Youke Research and Development Enterprise Management Center, with stakes of 27.36% and 9.88% respectively, both controlled by Feng Ji, meaning Feng Ji holds a total of 76% of the shares.

In addition, Hero Entertainment holds a 19% stake through its subsidiary Tianjin Hero Golden Control Technology Co., Ltd. (Huayi Brothers holds a 5.7% stake in Hero Games); Tencent holds a 5% stake through its subsidiary.