Text | Vaish
On May 17, "Genshin" officially announced the linkage cooperation with WeChat, as long as you search for "Genshin" in the WeChat game circle, you can see that Liyue characters Yaoyao and Qiqi appeared to invite users to "take friends and go together", once the event was launched, the WeChat page was crowded by the influx of players, everyone exclaimed that even WeChat was "bombed", maybe it was wrong to blame Pizza Hut before...
Perhaps some countersense lies in the fact that this is not even the first time Mihayou has gone to join hands with Tencent, as one of the most valuable resources in the WeChat ecosystem, the game circle opened the "Genshin" community for the first time in August last year, and has organized many activities such as check-in sharing and welfare broadcasting, and 2.5 million users have settled in so far.
It can be seen that the whole process between Mihayou and Tencent from tentative contact to full cooperation is gradual, and according to this trend, the future gameplay will only be more diverse.
In the hot search list a few days ago, the Genshin 3.6 version incentive plan and Tencent's own 2023 annual game conference have topped the top, and the relationship between the two companies is not as simple and deep, but it is by no means as tense as rumors.
So the question is, since the fact of two-way cooperation has been laid out more than once, why has the pull between Mihayou and Tencent become an annual topic on the Chinese Internet and has been repeatedly consumed for several years?
This may be the most serious "Mandela effect" in China's online game industry and even business history.
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First of all, in the conclusion of most "brave people holding swords to threaten dragons", Mihayou is being forced to play another Mihayou, and Tencent is also forced to play another Tencent, and there is only a struggle between them to the death, and there is no possibility of mutually beneficial coexistence.
Therefore, "rice mills must win, Tencent panic" will appear in the title for a long time, and the media chasing traffic is happy to build an ancient Greek imagination, even if it is not Mihayou, any emerging game company has been given a mission similar to the murder of the father.
After all, the game industry in recent years has indeed been somewhat lackluster, there are too many companies lying on the merit book to eat the old book, and the demand of players for boutique production is always hungry, so relying on competition to force a certain expectation of innovation has become the inner activity of the mainstream group.
So a voice came from mid-air: "Boring, I want to see blood flowing like a river."
If we cut out the irrelevant details, what really constitutes the narrative skeleton of the entire public opinion field is the product of watching the play and seeing it in person, eager to witness the giant crashing to the ground, it is a suitable pastime, but it may not have half a relationship with the truth.
More precisely, elevating Mihayou's status is out of spiritual confrontation with Tencent, and killing its competitors because of malice towards Tencent, which is a highly toxic trap for Mihayou and any cutting-edge manufacturer.
But where there are so many plays in this world, not all of them are added.
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In fact, it is not so much that Mihayou and Tencent have a competitive relationship, but that the object of this competition is several major studios under Tencent Interactive Entertainment Business Group, but Tencent is not a game company, its most important social business is dominated by open platforms, Mihayou's game products and player communities, is its worthy target.
Just like for a long time, Apple has been fiercely competing with Samsung in the mobile phone market, while writing checks to Samsung and placing screen orders, in the complex industrial chain, competition and cooperation can be completely parallel.
The situation in the game industry is even more inclusive, few people will use two mobile phones at the same time, but there are many players who play multiple games at the same time, and there are not a few users who go to open a few "King Glory" after brushing the daily life of "Genshin", because the user's choice is never the only one, so the competition between manufacturers is difficult to form a zero-sum game, and the benefits of making the cake bigger are far higher than tripping each other.
In fact, Tencent and Mihayou in the production of the industrial system, is completely different, Mihayou - or most game companies - does not have Tencent's resource limit, so can only challenge the ceiling, "Genshin" is the result of all in, the newly launched "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" also once again verified Mihayou's slow work strategy, it is difficult to open up hundreds of product lines like Tencent, must do a good job of each game step by step.
Liu Wei, president of Mihayou, made a speech at the annual conference of the Chinese game industry at the end of 2019, saying that the company has only made 3 games in the 9 years since its establishment, because of the concept of craftsmanship, only original and boutique, but Mihayou does not want to always make such a small and beautiful product, in the field of secondary elements to do a small workshop, all the initial investment and accumulation, is to achieve the ideal industrial production.
Considering that when he said this, "Genshin" had already begun to test on a small scale, and Big Viagra sincerely handed over the company's future development route, saying that the times create heroes, and it is the most difficult to accurately stand on the side of the times and the situation.
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Just like the "Elden Law Ring" since it went on sale, Miyazaki Hidetaka's butt has been glued to the altar and can't get down, the great success of "Genshin" has also put Miha on the top of an unprecedented mountain, and perhaps only those who are in it can know the taste of the cold in the heights.
In the Spring Festival of 2021, ClubHouse has just become a new favorite of social networking, and a voice room called "Shanghai Game Circle Bosses Conspire How to Teach Big Viagra to Be a Man" existed like a shooting star for half a night, and also briefly broke the public perception of the game industry.
The bosses of game companies (businesses) such as Mihayou, Lilith, Tencent, Xindong, Giant, and Mu Pu talked and laughed in those few hours with the theme of how to surpass Mihayou, and each exchanged a lot of views on products and markets, which once again proved that in addition to the harmonious relationship between the big guys "looking up and not looking down", it is also very rare to reveal some collective consensus.
For example, everyone believes that the rapid development of the game industry is due to multiple factors such as economic prosperity and cultural rise, and it is commendable that they seized the opportunity, but it is more fortunate to have just caught up with this wave of era dividends.
However, almost all bosses, including the big Viagra, have talked about anxiety, it is as the upstart has received the reshuffle reward, so they are also worried about whether this uncertainty will leave them behind in the future, behind every appearance of spirit, there is a soul walking on thin ice.
As Bill Gates said early on, Microsoft is only 18 months away from bankruptcy, which is really not humble.
Only by truly understanding the situation of game companies in the midst of change can they realize that their heart disease will never be an overnight struggle, and in the face of a light-year space expedition, it is pointless to calculate who will grab whose track.
Listen to what Cai Haoyu (founder of Mihayou) said in ClubHouse: "Our philosophy has not changed, we want to do virtual world, collapse God Domain, and do intubation at the back of the head."
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Of course, before the arrival of the "Mihayou universe", the most important thing for Mihayou on the eve of the long eve was still development, which was the fundamental reason for its intersection with Tencent.
According to the statistics of the report of the Game Working Committee of the China Phonological Association, in the past year, the actual sales revenue of the Chinese game market fell by 10.33% year-on-year, contrary to the previous situation in which the overall growth rate of mobile games was dragged down by mobile games/page games, and the sales revenue of mobile games fell by 14.4% year-on-year, even worse than the broader market.
The stock era when the dividend peaked was so quietly rolled over.
Find an increment in the stock, in the popular network black language, is to break the circle, although the "original god" is popular all over the world, but the world is uneven, there are always places where it cannot radiate, as the only product in China that has exceeded the order of 1 billion MAU, WeChat is the most fat place among the water plants.
No matter how much the suspicion between Mihayou and Tencent is arranged, it will not prevent the two companies from reaching a consensus on common interests.
In fact, Tencent and ByteDance in the main battlefield are even more inseparable, but many of Tencent's product lines are also Douyin's large buyers, business flexibility is such that, management scientist Kenneth Price proposed the "Co-Opetition Theory", which means that competing companies will also cooperate at the value chain level to get out of the isolated ecosystem.
There is no doubt that for WeChat, in the business of traffic monetization, Mihayou is a fairly high-quality customer, all say that "Genshin" as a single-player game actually has PVP (multiplayer battle mode), but this PVP system is built in major communities, kitchen power party, plot party, intensity party have endless topics, this high saturation of the discussion itself also constitutes the attraction of Mihayou production games.
Just like the history of AppTreasure's re-launch of the "Genshin" official uniform, Tencent does not want to miss the game feast of Mihayou, and Mihayou also needs to broaden the boundaries of the two-dimensional category and shine the light into the social entrance of 1 billion people, it is said that the resources given by WeChat are "very rich", and it will also become a reference case for cooperation between Tencent and external game peers.
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This result may disappoint the voice of Archfire, but the value of having friends is much higher than creating enemies, whether it is Mihayou or Tencent, they know this well.
It can only be said that the pattern is open, see the mountain or the mountain, this mountain is not the other mountain.
Mihayou has gone through 10 years of chasing the sun by his father, and the huge fireball hanging in the sky can have many faces, such as becoming a Disney-style company that can export culture and business around the world, or turning the update of game content into a literary and artistic work of the cyber era, but it is impossible to grow into the appearance of Tencent.