Some time ago, former Giant CEO Wu Meng's entrepreneurial project was exposed, and he established metaverse game developer MiAO (Shanghai Miaowei Technology Co., Ltd., hereinafter referred to as Miaoworld) in July 2022. Last year, Myo World completed a $100 million angel round of financing, with offices in Emerald Hill Road (headquarters) in Singapore and Xuhui District in Shanghai.
Based on the information of all parties, there are many important personnel of the Giant Network who followed Wu Meng to start a business.
According to the official introduction of Miao World, the founding team has an average of 15+ years of experience in the game and Internet industry, and has led a product with a daily activity of 25 million and a monthly activity of 100 million in the past - this should refer to the "Ball Battle" produced by Wu Meng under the leadership of Giant Network, with a cumulative number of users of more than 600 million, and the highest daily activity once reached 29 million.
In addition to Wu Meng, many high-level officials of Miao World are also related to "Ball Wars". For example, Li Dengming, general manager and technical director, and Li Zhilei, supervisor and head of R&D, respectively, served as the technical leader and planning leader of "Ball Operation". Game New Knowledge also learned that Li Shuang, the current art director of Miaoworld, was once the head of art in "Ball Wars".
In addition, Cui Hailong, the former head of operations of "Ball Wars", and Yuan Yanbo, the former producer of "Hey Hey Voice" (a game social APP owned by Giant Network), also appeared in the list of "main personnel" of Miaoworld, whose personal LinkedIn homepage shows that he is the co-founder of Miaoworld.
Public information shows that their time to join Miao World is basically concentrated in the first half of 2022.
In fact, as early as last year, after Wu Meng resigned as the co-CEO of Giant Network, some insiders told Game News that Wu Meng was suspected of leading the team to develop an avatar NFT project in Singapore - PLUR (Caesar Ape). PLUR, whose full name is "Peace Love Unity Respec", is said to be inspired by hip-hop culture and was founded to help a friend who was cheated out of 85 ether (a digital token) and lost his life to regain confidence.
PLUR project
The project was publicly offered in the first half of 2022, with a total of 8,585 ether issued, originally priced at 0.1 ETH (current exchange rate 1 ETH ≈ 12,151 RMB), but due to the bear market in the currency circle, the sale plan was forced to adjust to free minting. The publicity mainly focuses on overseas social platforms such as Twitter and Discord, mainly in lotteries, and also finds many Chinese and foreign KOLs to cooperate in promotion.
PLUR has many connections to the wonderful world.
PLUR's official website (plur.io) claims that the team "has been focusing on games in the past" and has rich experience in the field of F2P games, "serving hundreds of millions of users". Members come from all over the world, including China. Among them, the founder is named "ejan.eth" (or code name), who has worked as a producer of social platforms and social games, and has achieved excellent results; There is also a veteran named "Pictor" on the team, who is responsible for game art design and has won several industry awards.
PLUR team
The "Ball Wars" users participated in by the founding team of Miao World reached hundreds of millions. As a free-to-play iOS (casual competitive) game, the secret to its long-term operation lies in its strong social attributes. Coincidentally, the game news learned that Yuan Yanbo, who has done social apps, is called ejan, and Li Shuang, who is in charge of art, is called Pictor.
Miao World is currently working on an open-world voxel game featuring multiplayer gameplay for players around the world. Combined with recruitment needs, it can be speculated that the positioning of this product is similar to the sandbox game "Minecraft". According to the description of the official website, the team aims to "create a virtual world that makes one billion users feel good" through "game + social".
MiAO recruitment positions
Image of MiAO official website
In fact, the PLUR team also makes games. According to reports, the team size is 50 ~ 100 people, the core team focusing on NFT is about 10 people, and game developers account for the majority.
The first game was exposed last year with the NFT release. At that time, the official said that an encrypted Easter egg was set up in each NFT avatar, calling on netizens to participate in decryption. THE MYSTERY IS REVEALED BY A WEB ADDRESS "tmr.world" - THIS IS ACTUALLY THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF PRUR'S FIRST SPIN-OFF GAME, TMR WORLD.
TMR WORLD is also a voxelized metaverse social game. THE SO-CALLED EASTER EGG MEANS THAT EACH NFT HOLDER WILL GET A LAND COORDINATE, WHICH CORRESPONDS TO A PIECE OF LAND IN "TMR WORLD", THAT IS, A VIRTUAL ASSET IN THE METAVERSE GAME (NFT IS EQUIVALENT TO A UNIQUE "ELECTRONIC NOTE" TO PROVE THAT THE DIGITAL LAND BELONGS TO YOU OR YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE IT).
《TMR WORLD》
In May last year, a PLUR member responded to netizens that "TMR WORLD" will carry out separate brand promotion, including a separate LOGO, a separate official website, a separate Twitter, and a separate marketing system, and will eventually form a "strong alliance, 1+1>2" effect with PLUR. At that time, he also said that the game had been developed for more than 2 years, and the engine development took more than a year after preparing in advance.
NFT ELEMENTS ASIDE, TMR WORLD'S POSITIONING ALSO OVERLAPS WITH MYSTERIOUS WORLD'S PRODUCTS. As shown in the table below, both games place great emphasis on social, open world, metaverse/virtual world, and UGC (user-generated content), and their mission is highly aligned - to create a "virtual world that connects billions of people".
In addition, the official has also mentioned that "TMR WORLD" is a "sandbox game similar to "Minecraft", and the development schedule also uses "Minecraft", "Roblox" and "Sandbox" as examples to demonstrate that "it takes at least 3 to 5 years for a product like this to go online".
《TMR WORLD》
IT IS UNDERSTOOD THAT TMR WORLD WAS ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED TO ANNOUNCE DETAILED PLANS AT THE END OF LAST YEAR. However, in November 2022, PLUR issued an official announcement, saying that due to the cold winter of the crypto market, the frequent black swan events in the Web 3 industry, and the cold development of the industry's ecological development, the team's development was hit hard and greatly challenged, and it decided to temporarily shelve the TMR game's plan in Web 3.
There are two reasons for this. First, in terms of technology, the team found that the research and development of TMR projects was more difficult than expected, and the existing on-chain technology could not meet the demand, and it was difficult to break through in the short term; The other is in terms of funds, the development cost of TMR is tens or even hundreds of times that of PLUR (NFT project). The official said that "it is very risky to invest in such a bear market". Based on these two unsolvable problems, the TMR project team decided to temporarily suspend the research and development work, but will continue to actively explore.
In order to seek better development, the PLUR project will also be separated from the original game company project team to establish a new subject; In the future, as an independent development brand, we will continue to explore new cooperation plans with the original company's team.
Interestingly, Wu Meng's newly established Miaowei World has received more than 100 million yuan of investment from Sequoia, Gaorong, Monolith and other institutions. And that happened last November.