Black Myth: Wukong dominated the screen for a day

"Black Myth: Wukong" exploded the entire network as soon as it was launched, with sales exceeding one million on the first day, total sales exceeding 4.5 million copies, and sales reaching 1.5 billion. This game not only made the dream of domestic 3A games come true, but also inspired widespread cultural resonance and market enthusiasm with its excellent quality and profound cultural heritage, becoming a phenomenal event in the gaming industry.

At 10 o'clock this morning, the much anticipated "Black Myth: Wukong" finally came out and was unveiled and put online for testing.

The results are gratifying. Before the launch, Black Myth: Wukong had sold 1.2 million copies in pre-sale period, with a pre-sale amount of 400 million. Less than an hour after the official release, it topped the Steam charts, with more than 990,000 online users, and then surpassed the records of Cyberpunk 2077 and AlphaDragon Ring, achieving a good result of 1.5 million concurrent online users.

Players joked that, based on the 100,000 active Heavenly Soldiers and Heavenly Generals, each person would have to be assigned 10 monkeys on average to quell the chaos in Heavenly Palace. And the most rare thing is that today is a working day. Regardless of whether you are a gamer or not, Black Myth: Wukong dominated the screen for a day.

2024 is indeed a slow year for gaming. In this year lacking blockbusters, the gaming industry has finally ushered in a thorough carnival.

1. The elder brother who always leads the way

kk first tries to break down the emotional basis of this carnival.

"Black Wukong Myth", which has won the praise of players, has a rare title: the first domestic 3A game. At this point, the long-cherished dream of domestic 3A game by players in the stand-alone area has finally come true.

In fact, netizens who don’t play games can also understand this matter easily. They can simply replace the 3A game context of "Black Myth: Wukong" with the sluggish Chinese animated films before the "return" of "The Monkey King: Hero is Back".

Perhaps everyone still remembers the Chinese animation "Tap Water" back then, but compared to the tickets that cost dozens of yuan each, the sentimental tickets for "Black Myth: Wukong" are more expensive: the basic version is priced at 298 yuan, and the physical collector's edition is priced at 1998 yuan.

Interestingly, the Journey to the West IP, which symbolizes overcoming difficulties and achieving success, and the Monkey King/Wukong always seem to be paving the way for cultural output.

So, what is a 3A game? In fact, there is no clear definition in the gamer circle. People are just used to classifying those well-made independent games that are bought out. The three A's of 3A can refer to the development cost - a lot of money, a lot of resources, and a lot of time. Of course, there are also players who think that 3A games are simply a kind of game evaluation, representing high cost, high quality, and high volume.

To put it more simply, it is standing at the top of the game contempt chain. The basis of this emotional carnival is that for so many years, there has been no domestic or national product at the top of the game contempt chain, which allows players to find cultural confidence while enjoying excellent game products from other countries.

The influence of an excellent 3A masterpiece on the world is similar to the cultural benefits brought by a well-known movie. Take "Black Myth: Wukong" as an example. While waiting for the release of the game, some foreigners even discussed the level of Sun Wukong's combat power in the world.

It is true that "Journey to the West" is a representative of my country's excellent traditional culture, but for foreigners, there are original texts that are too difficult to understand and cultural barriers. If such culture is to be exported, it still needs some more trendy coats.

Movies can do it, and so can games.

However, the threshold for 3A games is much higher than that for mobile games, not because of the content, but mainly because of the hardware. It is understood that the pre-download of "Black Myth: Wukong" through the Steam platform has reached 118G, and there is a certain threshold for gaming laptops, not to mention the 4070 graphics card. In the first 20 minutes of the launch, kk, who was anxiously looking for the first wave of word-of-mouth feedback, received a very consistent response - don't worry, I'm still adjusting the parameters.

The first wave of players who couldn't wait to adjust the parameters were disappointed that the details of the images rendered by Unreal 5 were not as fine as they had imagined. Reflecting on themselves, it could be a problem with the parameter settings or the graphics card.

Just like the 81 difficulties that players joke about, it is indeed a bit difficult to meet the first BOSS in Black Myth: Wukong. With the surge in the number of online users and the dominance of the live broadcast platform, the first wave of word-of-mouth has finally been released one after another.

To sum up, it is mainly "stable". Although there are game bugs, lack of freedom in exploration and problems with the feel, but in general, the expected graphics, beautiful scenes, addictive difficulty and excellent music are worthy of praise.

II. The Crown and the Mire

But just like the other side of the coin, closely following the positive reviews of Black Myth: Wukong is the controversy outside the game that has almost nothing to do with the game.

Whenever new promotional materials are released, Black Myth: Wukong always receives positive reviews from fans, but it is also followed by several controversies. Among them, the most famous and most frequently mentioned one is about women.

A few years ago, the founder of Game Science made comments on Weibo that were considered disrespectful to women. After repeated fermentation by netizens, it was finally agreed that Black Myth: Wukong did not need female players, which caused controversy in public opinion. Before the game was released, the gaming media IGN believed that the elements in the game were not diverse enough and there were suspicions of discrimination against women and race, which once again aggravated the suspicion of "insulting women" in Black Myth: Wukong.

It is not a good thing for a cultural work to have too many off-field factors. This endless Internet war that cannot reach a consensus has long been completely reduced to a tug-of-war between two political correctnesses. The two sides are: female players who feel offended and disrespected, and fans who are immersed in patriotic feelings and refuse to accept any negative voices.

This atmosphere of confrontation has even become a habitual thinking pattern. On the 19th, Luckin Coffee's joint venture went on sale with great fanfare, and it was reported that Luckin Coffee's CFO acknowledged "male purchasing power" in his circle of friends. It seems that it has become a consensus that "Black Myth: Wukong" does not need female players.

A more rational perspective is: Yes, we have indeed achieved the progress of domestic 3A games from scratch, but for Game Science, this does not mean a victory. In addition to the publicly known 400 million yuan cost, the unspoken but visible, grand joint names, and the grand marketing and publicity on the eve of the server launch are also cost pressures that need to be borne.

Publicly known data is that Black Myth: Wukong needs to sell 3 million copies to recover the development costs.

For Game Science, "Black Myth: Wukong" is merely the clarion call for the official launch of its commercial empire. So, is it really beneficial in the long run to ignore the topic of women?

Another data is that the more well-known "Alpha Centaur" has successfully sold 25 million copies, and the commercial value it created worldwide has reached 7.1 billion, which can be compared with any of our Spring Festival box office champions, and this data will continue to be refreshed. This is the commercial charm of 3A masterpieces.

Just like the development cycle of Black Myth: Wukong, the development of 3A games is a long tug-of-war, and even if the game is launched, this long march does not mean the end. For those 3A fans, yes, Black Myth: Wukong has successfully reached the other side after a long cycle, just like the dawn of hope, but don’t forget that before the next sunrise, there may still be a long night to wait.

Chinese comics seem to have already walked these paths, but after Monkey King and Nezha, we still haven't waited for the moment to raise our arms and shout with pride again. So what kind of flowers will domestic 3A games, which also require originality, bloom on this road? This is what is most worth looking forward to in the future.