I was an assassin in Egypt, a witcher in another world, a dragon hunter, a knight, everything. Now I finally see a glimmer of hope that I can go back to the other world of my country to be a monkey brother.
This summer, a "monkey" was born, which is the first domestic triple-A game "Black Myth: Wukong".
It is this game that is "out of the circle", and what is "out of the circle" is Chinese stories, architecture, cultural and museum monuments, and folk music...... The game highly restores cultural elements such as ancient Chinese architecture, which not only brings fire to traditional tourist attractions such as Xiaoxitian in Xi County, but also triggers a wave of "Westward Journey Fever" overseas, opening a new window for players around the world to understand Chinese culture.
At the project base in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, a reporter from the main station talked to Feng Ji, the producer of "Black Myth: Wukong".
From indulging in the game to understanding the game
The story of "Black Myth: Wukong" originates from the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West". In the game, players play the role of "Destiny Man", in order to explore the truth of the legends of the past, embark on a journey to the west full of fantasy and legends. In reality, Feng Ji has also experienced a journey of walking on thin ice.
Feng Ji's childhood coincided with the popularity of arcade games, and his parents' attitude towards his enthusiasm for games was that as long as his grades did not collapse, he would not be disciplined. In 2000, 18-year-old Feng Ji was admitted to Huazhong University of Science and Technology and chose to major in biomedical engineering.
Soon, Feng Ji realized that he was not suitable to continue his career in biomedical engineering. But as graduation approached, among the two paths of finding a job and going to graduate school, Feng Ji still chose to take the graduate school entrance examination. "Actually, I was confused at that time, and I felt as if I should still follow the crowd and go to graduate school."
He rented a house outside the city, which was in the era of online games, and he was rarely used because he spent most of his time in Internet cafes.
While indulging in games, Feng Ji also had a sense of crisis: "At that time, I felt that I couldn't just be addicted, maybe I could learn something, or make a little record. Is it possible for me to try to understand it from engineering, or from another perspective? These notes make Feng Ji no longer just a player, he is trying to understand the underlying logic of the game.
After "running out of ammunition", Feng Ji decided to "give yourself a week to try it in the game industry". Within a week, he was offered by two game companies.
In 2005, Feng Ji officially joined the game company as a game planner and embarked on the road of game development.
The game was murdered?
Then take the road of "westward travel".
Two years after entering the game industry, in 2007, Feng Ji published a 10,000-word essay on the Internet "Who Murdered Our Game".
He used fierce rhetoric, calling capital a "dark force", describing himself as "a junior who has not yet been swallowed up by darkness with all his conscience", and ending the article with "the road is still very long, the wind is still very evil, and the demonic spirit is soaring into the sky", expressing his disappointment with the industry throughout the article.
In Feng Ji's imagination, game planning should focus on how to impress players with gameplay and story, but in fact, a considerable part of the work is to discuss how a game can have a higher turnover and higher payment rate.
Feng Ji: There is a saying that "when you have a sharp weapon, you will kill yourself". Games are very sharp things, and they really need to be reminded, especially if you are a game designer or your peers, it is easy to fall into them.
For many people to use the relatively negative word "addiction" to describe games, Feng Ji admits that games are indeed more addictive than reading books and watching movies. If a game induces players strongly, deliberately, and constantly, it may lead to some thoughts that they want to play after playing.
Feng Ji: The addictive nature of games can be harmful to immature users. Make a game, if you are willing to recommend it to your children, friends, and relatives to play, so that they can play with confidence, this is a reasonable degree.
After resigning from his first game company, Feng Ji joined Tencent and became the main project planner of the Journey to the West-themed game "God of War".
Although the previous rounds of testing of "God of War" have broken many records of Tencent's self-developed products, due to the high cost, it has inevitably embarked on the "krypton" route. (The so-called "krypton gold" refers to the actual purchase of virtual items or services by players in the game to obtain some advantages in the game or enhance the game experience.) ）
In the end, the plot of "God of War" stopped at the chapter of Lady Bones. Therefore, many old players commented, "There is no Journey to the West after the white bones".
In 2014, Feng Ji resigned from Tencent with 6 other "unwilling" old colleagues of "God of War", founded Game Science, and continued the unfinished road of "learning from the West". "The reason why it's called science is because we think it's knowable, logical, and even inherently it should be learnable."
The spirit monkey became a god
"Westward Journey" is to be continued
At the beginning of the company's establishment, mobile games exploded, and in order to gain a firm foothold, Game Science has launched two mobile games. After collecting enough funds, in 2018, Feng Ji resolutely gave up the mobile game and turned to make the large-scale single-player game of their dreams, which is now "Black Myth: Wukong".
Compared with online games, the development of large-scale stand-alone games has higher requirements in terms of funds, content, and technology. A high investment means more risk in terms of return on money.
Feng Ji: Many people think that China's games are temporarily inferior to overseas games because our technology is not as good as theirs. Some people think that we don't have such an industry precipitation, or that our users can't appreciate those things. I didn't really accept that at the time, I thought that games were a category in the industry.
In order to produce "Black Myth: Wukong", the company built its own scanning team, and in three or four years, traveled to more than 100 places across the country to scan China's ancient buildings and different landforms. A lot of real scenes and physical objects are put into the game as scanned assets to present in a reasonable way.
And this approach, which later proved to be a strong cultural color for the game, made it step out of the gaming circle and form an interaction between the virtual world and the real world.
On August 20, 2020, the first 13-minute trailer of "Black Myth: Wukong" came out, which detonated the game circle in one fell swoop and ignited players' expectations for large-scale domestic triple-A stand-alone games.
On August 20, 2024, Black Myth: Wukong was officially launched globally, and the number of online players quickly exceeded one million on the first day, and it has continued to reach the top of the charts on multiple game platforms since then. Feng Ji successfully fulfilled their promise to players at the end of the first trailer: "Journey to the West after the bones".
The birth process of "Black Myth: Wukong" is the legend of a spirit monkey who became a god after a catastrophe, and it is also the story of a group of Chinese gamers who found their original intention after following the trend.
"I don't think it's necessary to think narrowly that Chinese stories are just Chinese traditions, stories from ancient China, but stories told by Chinese. It's a big self-confidence. For Feng Ji, the moment the game is launched means that the first story of the black myth has ended, and there are more tasks waiting for him to clear the customs in the future.
▌Source of this article: CCTV News WeChat public account