188. The Infinite Pursuit of Customer Centricity - what's behind the AAA Game Wukong's explosive sales
Developed by Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong is the newest sensation in gaming that has broken multiple global records, achieving superb financial success: only two weeks after release since 20th August, the first Chinese 3A Game game, has sold 18 million units worldwide, at peak with more than 2.4 million concurrent players, the specular design of characters, astonishing Szenario beauty and technological innovation has won the heart of global game players, with overwhelmingly positive feedbacks on Steam platform, in total almost 580,308 international reviews, even the critics IGN has given a 8-9 out of 10.
In today's blog let's deep dive into the success of this game and explore why it has won the hearts of game players, with true customer centricity.
WHAT IS BLACK MYTH: WUKONG?
It is an action RPG rooted in ancient mythology, originated in the 4 classic Chinese mythological novel: "Journey to the West", written in 16th Century during Ming Dynasty. This fantasy is based on the real adventures of a Tang Dynasty (618-907) priest Xuanzang as he travel west in search of Buddhist Sutra in today's India (most likely Varanasi).
ABC has published their review here
In the game, player is set out as the Destined One to venture into the challenges and marvels ahead, to uncover glorious legends from the past. Spoilers alert: there were more than 160 game bosses appeared in the game.
1. Explore Demand Patterns and Listen to Users - set clear objectives and connect with users' emotional needs
our objective is simply offering great gaming experience that players enjoy - Feng Ji (CEO of Game Science)
Ever since the launch of cellphone, mobile games or social games have become increasingly popular often with easily accessible free download but complex paywall or subscription model, that make users stick to the games and search for new equipments, characters or maps, but overtime, quality stanard get deteriorated.
Black Myth: Wukong is different, it focuses on providing great gaming experiences that is complete, paid once, no hidden cost, no social interaction necessary but with very demanding technical requirement, emotionally connected with users who are familiar yet unknown to the story to be told.
CEO Feng Ji stated that at the time when foreign standalone games started, domestic purchasing power and technological level were limited. When the internet era arrived, online games quickly became mainstream, and standalone games were seen as niche with few teams willing to develop them.
However the sales of local brand is nearly zero, by 2016, Feng Ji felt that the time had finally come, as market research found that nearly one-third of active users on Steam, the world's largest game distribution platform, were from China. In other words, just the huge number of Chinese players alone were growing weary of mobile games and online games of varying quality, and were actively seeking high-quality new games, considering in the past 10 years, the purchasing power has been continuously improving, requiring higher levels from game products.
On the technical level, the development tools available on the market have matured enough to support an unknown Chinese product that matches international top-class standards.
2. Develop Demand Forecasting Models - apply MVP and leading indicators to test ideas
Unlike most previous popular Chinese video games that make profit by encouraging continuous micro-transactions after paywall while limiting production costs, Black Myth: Wukong is a Triple-A high-end games with one time purchase, AAA means, the producer has to invest:?
When a game is defined as a triple-A, it means it is as well-made as premium and quality with a large development and marketing budget, and is classified as a market now dominated by Japanese, American and French companies like Sony and Ubisoft.
Game Science released the mobile games 100 Heroes and Art of War: Red Tides before they started the development of Black Myth: Wukong in 2018.
The investment of providing one hour game play is around 15 million RMB, nearly 2 million EUR, considering the long development cycle, they have moved the location from Shenzhen (birth place of Tencent) to Hangzhou (birth place of Alibaba) to cut cost, but they were lack of talents and don't have enough confidence if 3A would be a big hit, since the Chinese market is a mobile game market.
So what do you do? Post a 13 minutes trailer on Bilibili and later IGN, each has attracted 50 million local viewers and 10 million international viewers respectively.
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so that they were able to attract more investments, talents and time, this was a low cost experiment, a MVP. With the feedbacks received, they were able to invest and improve art work continously, for example, exchanging architectures from Japan to 3D scanned original architectural patterns.
3. Harvest the power of ecosystems and distribution channels, done is better than perfect
The total duration of game cutscene last more than 3 and half hours, there were 6 chapters in total, plus the Official and hidden ending. At end of each chapter, there was anime produced, each with quality that can be standard alone, almost reminded me of Anime Matrix series, each has their own storyline and art design. Link here
Game Science has partnered with hardware provider, investor Tencent has offered 5% equity investment, after its launch, coffee chain such as Luckin Coffee, publishers and Didi travel have partnered. The company also heavily leverage Technology to integrate the breathtaking scenery from reality to the game play.
Check out this one minute video to experience the game scenery design and 3D capture from reality in Shanxi Province.
Nvidia GPU has also partnered with Black Myth by releasing eight Black Myth: Wukong custom graphics cards should be more than enough to enjoy the new game at high-quality settings and high resolutions.
4. Build resilience, learn from mistakes
“If you want to hear the truth, Game Science’s success today is built upon its four failures in a row,” the Daniel Wu, Hero Game founder, who worked with Game Science co-founder Feng Ji to get Black Myth: Wukong made. “Wukong proves not only that we have top-notch game-making capabilities, but also we can tell a good story with Chinese elements.”
Despite such as massive success, Game Science struggled for years in the lead up to the launch of Black Myth: Wukong. The studio made three mobile titles, none of which became hits. However, Wu didn’t lose his faith in the team and its co-founder Feng Ji.
“We were two drowning rats,” he told Bloomberg. “Neither of us was afraid of failure, and [Feng] already knew his next step. The only thing is that he needed me to place even bigger bet.”
5. break the boundary of collaboration
During the development of the game, Game Science worked with several top 2D animation teams in China to create six animated shorts for each chapter ending of Black Myth Wukong.
What's next?
Analysts at Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research are upbeat about the potential of Black Myth: Wukong, a hot title broke the Steam record of player numbers on debut.
“We view this as a significant inflection for China PC/console game industry, as it is?the first time a Chinese developer has seen such strong adoption and PCCU ranking”
If the capital market continues to invest, we can expect to see more high-quality mainland single-console game productions that achieve strong sales both locally and internationally.
Source:
Game Science, IGN, ourchinastory, Bloomberg
Data Engineer | AWS | Linux | Kotlin | Python | Docker
6 个月Kudos to Black Myth Wukon and Space Marine 2 for their customer centric product. This is what the industry needs and not more Ubisoft garbage.
研发团队负责人, PMP, 认证敏捷专家
6 个月The myth behind the success story from CEO of Game Science: keep your passion, don’t forget your original Intension and stick to it.