How Black Myth： Goku Goes to the Altar ｜ Power Plant

Original, Zhang Yongyi, Power Plant

Reporter, Zhang Yongyi

Editor, Gao Yulei

In the three years before "Black Myth: Wukong" (hereinafter referred to as "Black Myth") was officially launched on August 20, 2024, every year on August 20, the developer Game Science will release more about the game on the same day, and each time it will attract a carnival from the Chinese player community.

As a representative of the "Ninth Art", a good 3A game masterpiece does have the probability of becoming a cultural symbol similar to a classic movie or music: not to mention the Westward Journey theme with its huge influence on the Chinese cultural circle, and "Black Myth" has indeed given Chinese players a new look that they have never seen before in various real-world demonstrations and demos – a domestic 3A game masterpiece that is not a bluff and can actually be played. It has also received huge traffic dividends.

The huge popularity of "Black Myth" on social media has even made August 20 a time that game developers have avoided in the past few years: no one dares to go head-to-head with "Black Myth". A game producer from a listed company told reporters that two years ago, due to the release rhythm of game science, they chose to delay the original release of August 20 by a week, just to avoid the pressure of "Black Myth" to grab the headlines.

From this perspective, "Black Myth" has not yet been released, and it has established a kind of "grandmaster" status in the industry, which is the only influence in the history of Chinese games.

But only influence is obviously not enough for game science: although the three-day pre-sale sales of over 100 million yuan is already dazzling enough for domestic games, it is still far from the profitability of "Black Myth".

According to analysts estimate, "black myth" the entire R & D + promotion cost estimate has exceeded $100 million, according to the current "black myth" physical version of the price, the current 1.10 million reservation users can not even let investors including Tencent return, profit is far away.

In any case, "Black Myth" has already made a strong mark in the history of Chinese AAA game development: but what makes it more famous than sales or "China’s first Westward Journey-themed AAA game" may be that few games can achieve such a degree of controversy.

Traffic can bring more sales to Game Science, and sales directly determine how many investors in "Black Myth" are willing to continue to support the development of its sequel.

But in the Chinese Internet, "Black Myth" has stirred up enough traffic and controversy: various official marketing methods have also essentially promoted this force to gradually form a storm sweeping the Internet: every time there are various nodes, there can be many famous UP masters of B stations, holding magnifying glasses carefully looking for every detail in the picture to make an analytical video and feed it to the long-awaited audience.

Regarding these controversies, the game science officials have never made an official response, but a state of letting it ferment, which is considered by some players to be "fully committed to game development", but objectively such inaction has also caused the originally fragmented discussion space to be further impacted.

The "sudden death" of a game masterpiece with high hopes is not too uncommon news in today’s game development industry. This is also the story mode that is most suitable for current social media dissemination, and even this mode often makes a game truly in the center of social media attention.

"Cyberpunk 2077" is a classic example: after experiencing high expectations before the launch three years ago, and after the launch, the game experience was too poor to meet expectations, leading to word-of-mouth collapse, the developers continued to tinker within two years after the release to improve the overall experience of the game.

Even though the final answer sheet still did not meet the initial expectations of players, the word of mouth of the game has changed from "mostly bad reviews" to "rave reviews". Under the label "special reviews", 82% of the 650,000 reviews were positive feedback. Community Manager Marcin Momot expressed his support and gratitude to the players on Twitter: "We are very pleased that the latest review of Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam has received a lot of positive reviews. Thank you, really appreciate it!".

Lead designer Pavel Sasko also retweeted the tweet, expressing emotion: "This means a lot to me, I never thought it would reach this level. I always believed it was possible, but I didn’t expect to see it in person. Thank you again for this opportunity."

It seems that a happy ending has been reached, and few people will mention it again. Today’s version is still far from the effect of the original promotional video eight years ago.

But the situation before the sale of "Black Myth" is even more than that of "Cyberpunk 2077". On the Chinese Internet, there are even extreme fans who force famous people (most of whom are not even related to the game industry) to stand in line and publicly state whether they "support domestic games". This phenomenon is also one of the contemporary Internet surfing landscapes.

No matter what the final product of "Black Myth: Wukong" is, it cannot and will not be a "perfect story". There is a huge gap between the Chinese game industry and the world-class level in the content of 3A games, which determines that it is difficult to reproduce a story like "Three-Body Problem" that "single-handedly pulls Chinese science fiction to the world level" in the game industry.

At the time of writing this article, the news that another domestic 3A space shooter game "Boundary" is about to stop operating came: this is also a niche, but also high hopes of some players "domestic game light", in the development stage, there are many halo blessings including "selected by Sony China Star Works".

According to a statement released by Star Games, the publisher of "Frontier", the reason why the game decided to stop operating is that the development studio Lancet has not been able to make changes to various problems in the game after the game was officially launched, and has not made new game content in the past year, leaving the number of online players of the game "almost zero".

The former "domestic game light", which took seven years to develop, has been in operation for less than a year and has been mired in the whirlpool of competing interests of all parties, even Li Mingbo, the turtle game producer who left Tencent to found the Lancet start-up team.

This may indeed be a sobering story, but what is even more sobering is another story that has almost exactly the same starting point but different endings: Wang Xinwen, who also left Tencent to start a business, founded Lilith, and has now achieved earth-shattering wins globally, becoming one of the few gaming giants that can compete with miHoYo.

The decision to start a 3A game was a life-or-death choice in itself, and almost everyone who could make such a choice was blessed with a feeling. In the public interviews, it was not difficult to feel the feelings of the creators of game science: to create a wonderful Westward Journey world for Chinese players, or even to build a "Westward Journey Game Universe" similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a good enough fascinating story is an inevitable prerequisite.

At the same time, "Black Myth" currently presents a sense of "pursuing the ultimate in all kinds of details" – not only the strongest art and image quality level in China, but also an action system that is not inferior in the world.

But even if you look at the world, few games have been able to take into account so many elements in the past. Game developers of all kinds will inevitably make trade-offs between various parts of the game during the game development process. From another perspective, this is also the process of injecting characteristics into the game.

Several players/media people who have participated in the trial play at multiple stages told the "Power Plant" reporter that although the various scene designs of "Black Myth" have been striving for the extreme, it may be because the domestic game development team is relatively less exposed to the development of high-image quality 3A games, and the priority selection of various elements in the picture is insufficient, resulting in the current recognition of the game screen is relatively low, so there is a lack of some unique iconic styles belonging to "Black Myth".

In addition, the development team of "Black Myth" is relatively inexperienced compared to international first-tier game manufacturers, and it is inevitable to convey to players from the details of the game. The current combat system of "Black Myth" is also relatively complicated. According to the development experience of similar works in the industry in the past, if such a choice can be perfected, it will undoubtedly create an epic work.

But for inexperienced teams, once they are out of control, it is easy to fall into the problem of "veteran players are fun to play, but new players have a long time to get started": For "Black Myth", which has been out of the circle and attracted a large number of so-called "outsiders" on social media, this is likely to be a serious problem that will lead to the rapid polarization of the game’s reputation after the game is released.

But now this expectation of "Black Myth" has been significantly disconnected from the ability of the development team. This decision to forcibly maintain the game’s expectations has further exceeded the risk of the entire project beyond the developer’s control: during this period, the game development team has to overcome various technical problems, which is even worse for the inexperienced game science.

For industry insiders, even if they are not worried about the quality of the final appearance of "Black Myth", they are all concerned about the various discussion environments surrounding "Black Myth": viewing the performance of "Black Myth" from the perspective of a "normal business game" is now even a luxury.

A "Black Myth" that was held up to the altar would eliminate the normal discussion space, and all reasonable doubts would be deformed in this vortex. Everyone had to be cautious in self-censoring their speeches to avoid stabbing other innocent people in this debate.

Now that "Black Myth" is about to be released, the market mood is hardly a healthy state: in an atmosphere where excitement and skepticism coexist, and both factions try to bring down the other by any means. Whether "Black Myth" finally achieves a result that exceeds everyone’s expectations and becomes the most successful work in the history of Chinese games in recent years, or the final quality of the game does not meet expectations, it is not a good development direction.

I just hope that if "Black Myth" really brings more than expected performance, please keep a rational discussion and leave enough room for reasonable criticism – the development team’s immaturity determines that this will never be a perfect work, and a lot of room for improvement means that the improvement of the game is also crucial to the subsequent sales/word-of-mouth of "Black Myth".

If "Black Myth" unfortunately does not live up to expectations, please bear with them. It remains one of the important explorers of the history of China’s AAA game masterpiece – the explorer itself has to bear the huge pressure of the unknown, just like the subtitle of the final promo, "Face Destiny".