（IC photo/图）
"Meet in the other world and enjoy the delicious food!"
On March 13, 2021, in KFC on the second floor of Guangzhou Mayflower Commercial Plaza, a boy shouted a "secret number" to the clerk and won a limited number of linkage badges for two game characters. After that, he picked up his own set meal to squeeze out the crowd, and the outside of the store was still leaking.
This seemingly nonsensical event, which KFC cooperated with the game "Original God", attracted a large number of gamers. Many players uploaded videos of the "pomp and circumstance" of the time, and some even set up tents outside the store early one morning.
Because the enthusiasm of players is too high, considering the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, the official has to cancel activities in some areas. Although offline activities were unexpectedly stopped, the "secret code" set off a wave of terrier-making carnival on the Internet, making "Original God" enter the public eye.
"Original God" is an open-world action role-playing game developed by Shanghai Mihayou Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Mihayou), which was launched in September 2020.
A month later, the game not only topped the best-seller list in The Apple App Store in China, surpassing the "national game" "Glory of the King", but also won the championship in more than ten countries and regions such as the United States, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.
According to a report by Sensor Tower, a mobile application data analytics platform, as of March 23, 2021, Original God has accumulated more than $1 billion in mobile alone, becoming the fastest game in Apple and Google's app store to achieve $1 billion in revenue.
Cai Haoyu, CEO of Mihayou, who rarely appears, revealed in a public speech that in 2020, Mihayou's revenue has exceeded 5 billion yuan (net income is non-flowing), doubling its revenue year-on-year.
Companies such as Tencent and ByteDance are frantically "throwing money" at the game market. According to the "Late Post" report, in the second half of 2020, Tencent proposed investment to Mihayou, no matter what conditions Mihayou opened, as long as it can be invested, but Mihayou has never relaxed.
The game market, which has long been controlled by tencent, NetEase and other big manufacturers, has been bustling for a long time.
<h3>Catch the Quadratic Express</h3>
In 2012, MihaYou was co-founded by three alumni of the Department of Computer Science at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The current shareholding structure is that the major shareholder Cai Haoyu holds 41% of the shares, Liu Wei holds 22.595%, Luo Yuhao holds 21.405%, and an investment institution holds 15%.
In an interview with Global People Magazine, Liu Wei said that the company's start-up capital provided an interest-free loan of 100,000 yuan for the Shanghai Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Center and a 50-square-meter office that can be used free of charge for half a year.
At that time, China's game market was still in the "wild" era, the growth rate of game users was rapid, and various game companies wanted to enter the market for gold, and the quality of games was uneven.
All three liked the two-dimensional culture, so the first product "fly me to the moon" was born. The mobile game did not achieve the expected returns, but at the end of that year, Mihayou received 1 million angel investment, which is the only investment that Mihayou has accepted so far.
The second dimension is a term for the virtual world in ACG culture, ACG is an Anime (Japanese anime), Comic (manga), and Game (game). Most of the two-dimensional audience is a fan of games and anime.
"At that time, many people in MihaYou were 'two-dimensional deep poisoning'", an early employee of Mihayou recalled to the Southern Weekend reporter that Mihayou began to be a company for two-dimensional core users or even pure Japanese style, and did not want to tap "the majority of non-core users".
From 2012 to 2020, Mihayou has successively launched the two-dimensional style role-playing action mobile game "Crash Academy", "Crash Academy 2", "Crash Academy 3" and the female mobile game "Undetermined Event Book" to implement the two-dimensional style to the end.
Among them, "Crash Academy 2" launched in March 2014 was loved by players. Its prospectus disclosed in 2017 shows that Mihayou's revenue for that year exceeded 100 million yuan, and the team was only 7 people.
Around 2015, China's animation industry ushered in an outbreak, and domestic animation films such as "The Return of the Great Sage of Journey to the West" and "Big Fish and Begonias" were released one after another, gaining good reputation. The Japanese animated film "Your Name" has once again ignited the enthusiasm of fans of the second dimension.
According to the report of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, from 2015 to 2019, the number of pan-quadratic users in China rose from 220 million to 390 million, and the group grew rapidly.
Animation, which is a representative industry of the second dimension, has also received strong support from national policies. The Ministry of Culture's "13th Five-Year Plan for Cultural Development and Reform" released in 2017 includes "accelerating the development of emerging cultural industries such as animation, games, creative design, and online culture".
"Mihayou is a R&D company," Huang Shi, an associate professor in the Department of Game Design at the School of Animation at the Communication University of China, told Southern Weekend, adding that its technology is at the forefront of the industry in many aspects.
B station UP master and independent game producer "Idiot Mao" still can't forget the shock he felt when he first played "Crash Academy 3", "It turns out that this kind of technical game can also be made on the mobile phone.". Although the blockbuster game of that year was the two-dimensional mobile game "Yin and Yang Division" developed by NetEase.
"From Crash Academy 2 to Crash Academy 3, Miha you suddenly changed from a small manufacturer making games to a big manufacturer with top 3D technology." "Idiot Mao" Southern Weekend reporter analyzed that the number of character modeling surfaces of "Crash Academy 3" is about 4 times that of "Yin and Yang Division". In terms of cartoon rendering performance, Miha You almost achieved the first mobile game technology at that time.
In the view of a big manufacturer game worker, at the level of research and development, the big factory may be able to reach 80 points per indicator, and a company like Mihayou will achieve 100 points on one indicator, but in the end, the overall score of the big factory will be higher.
In March 2017, relying on the success of the "Crash" series, Mihayou submitted an IPO application to the Securities and Futures Commission, hoping to be listed on the A-share main board. However, in the initial offering opinion, the CSRC questioned Mihayou's excessive reliance on a single IP. After waiting for 3 years, Mihayou voluntarily withdrew the listing application materials in September 2020.
<h3>"A big gamble"</h3>
"Original God" has won apple app store iPhone game of the year, Google Play game of the year, golden joystick awards (Golden Joystick Awards) best game of the year second place, and TGA (The Game Awards) mobile game of the year nominations. Among them, the Golden Joystick Award and TGA are important honors in the global game industry.
However, "Original God" caused negative controversy before it was launched.
In June 2019, "Original God" released a promotional video. Many players have questioned the plagiarism of the original god, in their view, the scenes and battle scenes presented in the promotional film are very similar to the "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" (hereinafter referred to as "Zelda") produced by Nintendo of Japan.
Later, at the 2019 ChinaJoy (China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Exhibition), there were "Zelda" players holding up Switch protests and Sony players angrily smashing PS4 to vent their anger.
The "Original God" that has not yet been launched is so "out of the circle", the B station UP master "tossed No. 5" so curious, "just because so many people scolded it, I have to experience it myself."
In the view of "Toss No. 5", the biggest attraction of "Original God" is the "new IP" and the open-world gameplay that is rarely seen in mobile games. Unlike Glory of Kings and Yin and Yang Division, both games are based on existing IP.
In March 2020, Liu Wei, co-founder of Mihayou, revealed that "the investment in the research and development of "Original God" has reached 100 million US dollars". Cai Haoyu also said in a public speech that the size of the company in 2020 increased by 1,000 people compared with 2019, reaching 2,400 people, and the "Original God" team alone had 700 people.
Analysys analyst Liao Xuhua told Southern Weekend that Mihayou is willing to invest 100 million US dollars in research and development costs for the completely original IP "Original God", which is difficult to achieve under the large company system, "for Mihayou, this is also a big gamble."
Liao Xuhua believes that using technological advantages to innovate products is a major feature of Mihayou. In essence, the three generations of "Crash" products share one IP, but they are three different ways to play. Proto-God's exploration of the open world is also a continuation of this feature of Miha's tour.
"I don't stare at a way to play all the time", "Idiot Mao" also said, "Many big companies will not do this for stability."
<h3>The game Krypton gold, pay for love</h3>
At present, player kryptonite (game term, pay fees) is the main profit model of Mihayou, and some games with equally strong global influence do not earn as much revenue as Original God.
"Like Chicken Eater and Glory of Kings, they will have more players who don't pay." Liao Xuhua said, "The essence of Krypton gold is that players spend money to buy a better gaming experience. ”
For games like "Original God", the experience of Krypton gold games will be much better than when there is zero payment, otherwise it will require a lot of time and effort. For example, spending money on in-game "rough" allows players to quickly obtain the characters, weapons, and various materials needed to develop their characters.
"Original God" divides the krypton gold file into 6 yuan, 30 yuan, 98 yuan, 198 yuan, 328 yuan and 648 yuan, and the player can get double the number of "rough stones" for the first recharge. In addition, Mihayou also launched a "small monthly card" priced at 30 yuan, and players can accumulate 3,000 "rough stones" in 30 days.
Like other Krypton games, Rough Stone's draw mechanic allows the player to draw single-handedly or multiple times (usually ten times). The game features a "secondary guarantee" mechanic in the draw.
The growing desire to explore the game has led many players to willingly open their wallets.
Liu Xiao, a player who is still a student, will spend 30 yuan every month to buy the "Little Moon Card" of "Original God". He calls himself a "micro-krypton player", the game mentality is more "Buddha", and the sense of competition is not very large.
In order to get better characters and weapons, "Toss No. 5" accumulated more than 100,000 yuan for the game, and produced 13 videos related to the theme of "Original God". "Toss 5" has no cooperative relationship with Mihayou, and he says that his actions are "generating electricity with love".
Among the three founders, Liu Wei took on most of the communication with players, and he served as a customer service staff in the early days of Miha Tour. "Original God" made a character called "Dawei Qiu" in the game, so that players can interact with it.
"More pursuit of spiritual pleasure", Liu Wei once described the two-dimensional users, "they are different from other users of a feature, that is, they will pay for love."
<h3>A new gaming market? </h3>
In September 2020, when "Original God" was in public beta, MihaYou bypassed Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other app stores, and only chose B station as the Android channel for the game to be launched.
Liao Xuhua explained that "Original God" is not the first product to do so, and the division contradiction between game developers and Android channels has always existed. The share ratio of The Android app store in China is high, mostly 50:50. NetEase CEO Ding Lei once bluntly said in a conference call that China's Android share is the most expensive in the world.
But the big factories that want to target a wider audience will still be inseparable from the Android channel controlled by these mobile phone manufacturers for a while and a half. The Miha tour, which is mainly aimed at two-dimensional players, is a hit with the B station, which only accounts for 30% of the shares.
In 2014, Station B was struggling with how to monetize from the bullet screen website, coinciding with Mihayou's launch of "Crash Academy 2" and was trying new Android channels. The two are working together on this.
In a public speech in 2014, Cai Haoyu revealed, "Station B accounts for more than 50% of Miha's Android revenue... Without Station B, there would be no current Crash Academy 2." Since then, Station B has become one of the most valued partners of Miha Tour.
The same B station in Shanghai also relies on the rise of secondary users.
In 2018, "Idiot Mao" produced and uploaded three issues of the "Miha Tour Fortune History" series of videos, and the audience reacted strongly, "directly exploded, and rose to 100,000 fans in one breath". Previously, "Idiot Mao" accumulated more than 10,000 fans for sharing game science videos.
Although I have not cooperated with Mihayou, "Toss No. 5" found that many of the videos with high traffic of "Original God" were made by UP masters with small fans. On the one hand, this shows that station B may give the traffic of "Original God" tilt; on the other hand, it also shows the deep foundation of secondary users in station B. He said unabashedly that his own video on the theme of "Original God" also had the reason for watching the super high traffic of "Original God".
Games are one of the core businesses of Station B. Station B's 2020 financial report shows that Station B's annual mobile game revenue increased to 4.8 billion yuan, an increase of 34% year-on-year, accounting for 29% of all revenue.
According to the 2020 China Game Industry Report, Tencent and NetEase's share of the game market totaled about 51% in 2020, and the market share of these two companies has increased by less than 1% in the past three years.
According to the game industry media Game New Knowledge, in the same period, mihayou, Lilith, Heartbeat Network and Paper Network, four new online game companies accounted for a total of 7.79% of the market share.
Although Tencent still firmly occupies the first seat in the Chinese game market, it is inevitable that there will be pressure in the face of new players pouring into the track.
According to the Niko Partners report, Tencent invested in 31 game companies in 2020. Niko Partners is a game market research firm focused on Asia. In the new year, Tencent's "buy, buy, buy" momentum is even stronger, southern weekend reporters according to enterprise investigation statistics, as of March 26, Tencent has invested in 28 game companies.
"We also have a lot of friends who are players of "Original God," a staff member of the Paper Network told Southern Weekend reporters, "Now it is indeed the market that is hot."
He believes that the emergence of new game players means that the level of Chinese game production has increased significantly, such as technical ability (industrialization ability) and creative ability (artistic ability), and also means that the game market is larger, stronger and more detailed.
Southern Weekend reporters contacted Miha you, who declined the interview on the grounds that he had always been relatively low-key.
(At the request of the interviewee, Liu Xiao is a pseudonym)
Southern Weekend reporter Shi Xuan