We Are All on the Journey to Retrieve the Scriptures | Seeing Vitality

After Genshin Impact, it's been a long time since we've seen a game with this kind of impact. The success and acclaim for Black Myth: Wukong today is the fruit; we believe the people behind it are the cause. So we got curious and dug through the team's public interviews and Weibo posts, hoping to find the "scripture" of their vitality in these words and conversations. We've organized some of what we found to share with you. All information comes from public sources — let us know if anything's off. Enjoy.

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now

It's 2020 — why would any startup still want to make a AAA game? Four years ago, after seeing the Black Myth: Wukong demo, some gamers were asking exactly that.

Because AAA represents the highest standard of game production. "AAA" means a game developed with a lot of resources, a lot of time, and a lot of money. It demands a massive world and rich content — the difficulty is comparable to a "journey to the West" in gaming circles.

To answer that question, you have to start with the team. Before founding Game Science, Yocar, Yang Qi, and others had worked on Tencent's 2010 Asura project, an online game based on Jin Hezai's novel Wukong. In 2014, Yocar left Tencent and founded "Shenzhen Game Science Interactive Technology Co., Ltd." in Shenzhen.

Game Science's first project was War of the Hundred Generals, launched in 2015 in partnership with NetEase. Yocar later described it as "a reskin of the Soul Clash card-battle formula."

On February 25, 2018, Yocar flew back to Shenzhen from Shanghai. That day, he pulled out the business plan they'd written for their 2016 fundraising round and was struck to discover that a full third of it had been devoted to the company's future plans for single-player games.

That same evening, he called a meeting with colleagues and made the call: they would commit to a single-player action game. The project's codename was "B1" — short for "Black Myth One," meaning the first entry in the Black Myth series. This would become Black Myth: Wukong, initially developed by a team of just seven people.

As for why they were so determined to make a single-player game in 2018, Yang Qi put it this way: human creative energy is finite. If they didn't make something worthwhile then, they might never get another chance.

After committing to Black Myth: Wukong, he expressed something similar at the "Re-recognizing Games" art exhibition hosted by the Central Academy of Fine Arts that year: "Our team's average age is 32. Some of us already have age spots, forehead wrinkles, hair going white. We're so outdated, so behind the times... I'm going into seclusion for five years to make a single-player game. Whether this game will be popular, whether people will call it a dinosaur — I can't worry about that anymore."

On June 8, 2024, the day pre-orders opened, Yocar wrote on Weibo:

Throughout Black Myth: Wukong's development, most decisions I made could be boiled down to two words: "Let's try."

Try features that others nailed a decade ago, but we still couldn't figure out.

Try ideas that we'd talk about for hours, thrilled out of our minds, only to find the actual build excruciatingly awkward.

Try everything that looked beautiful — born of overconfidence or impulse — where we poured in time, crashed into walls, and bled.

Black Monkey might have been too lucky. From the moment it went public, it was nothing but challenges, and naturally no shortage of regrets where our reach exceeded our grasp.

When I finished the script for the first trailer, I had no idea how to turn that video into a playable level.

When we completed the first internally testable level, I had no idea what it would cost to make the entire story into levels like that.

Even with a seemingly complete story, I still didn't know what it meant to make it stable, smooth, adapted to different hardware, software platforms, and a dozen languages, then release a physical edition with a disc.

Not knowing — that's the good part.

If you've chosen to dance in uncharted territory, embrace the fear and anxiety that uncertainty brings. Because behind that fear and anxiety, there's the surprise of satisfying curiosity, the exhilaration of knowing yourself.

In this unknown fog, our only guide is to keep asking ourselves, asking everyone on the team —

Is what we're doing right now something we, as users, truly understand, approve of, and love?

Is the challenge we're facing something anyone else in the world has done? And if no one has, can we?

If the answer to both is yes, then of course it's worth a try.

In Game Science's tenth year, when we decided to self-publish for the first time, set our own price for the first time, launch on console for the first time, make a physical edition for the first time, market globally for the first time... it was based on this same back-and-forth.

Let's try. It's not like we'll die.

— Quoted from Yocar's Weibo

Because we believed, we saw

In a 2024 interview with Xinhua, Yocar said, "Eight years ago, we were firmly convinced that China's single-player market would exist and would be huge. Look at other entertainment markets — film is the most obvious example. Pull the data from recent years and you can see the top 10 box office films are quietly shifting. Well-crafted Chinese films are rapidly climbing that list. We were also seeing phenomenon-level products emerging even then." In fact, the Game Science team found in 2016 that the US single-player market was roughly $10 billion, Japan's was a bit over $5 billion, while China's was less than $100 million. They believed that within 10-15 years, China's market would reach Japan's scale or even surpass it.

Some people believe because they've seen; others see because they believed.

Three months before Black Myth: Wukong's release, Yocar wrote:

These past few years, I've lived almost every day in this state of constant shock — on one side, feeling like the reputation and expectations built on luck would collapse if we couldn't deliver; on the other, being moved and often genuinely surprised by the concrete progress my colleagues were making.

Silicon Valley has a saying: fake it until you make it.

I prefer a line from Journey to the West: "Nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind to it."

To me, this doesn't mean that with determination, any difficulty can be conquered.

Rather, with a mind willing to face difficulty head-on, difficulty becomes less terrifying — and life becomes more grounded.

— Quoted from Yocar's Weibo

As for the key to overcoming difficulty, Wu Cheng'en had already provided the answer before writing the 81 tribulations of Journey to the West. In Chapter 2, Wukong says, "This is hard! So hard!" The Patriarch replies, "Nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind to it." Wukong, hearing this, bows in gratitude.

Done is better than perfect

"Actually, I think the final month was the most painful — but not because the product's completeness was so low. On the contrary, it had already reached a pretty decent standard. What happens then? Some colleagues feel this or that still isn't enough, and at that point you have no choice but to subtract." Yocar acknowledged the dilemma the team faced. The phrase they most dreaded hearing was "it used to be fine," because that meant it was a new problem — and those are the most dangerous kind.

But at the same time, he believed even more firmly that for a first attempt at a buy-to-play single-player game, done is better than perfect.

Startup teams don't just need passion and idealism, charging ahead regardless of consequences. Every founder should be a pragmatic idealist.

"There's a saying that what ultimately pains you isn't the mountain far away, but the sand in your shoe. The sand is endless, but if you want to reach that mountain, you have to endure the process. You recognize this, and that's great — isn't that exactly what you're supposed to recognize?" Yocar said.

Focus is close to happiness; earnestness is redemption.

Life is far harder than any game. Don't be intimidated by those blustering demon kings.

The little monkey will grow. So will you.

— Quoted from Yocar's Weibo

Some 600 years ago, Wu Cheng'en wrote in Journey to the West, China's first romantic chaptered novel of gods and demons: "With sincere resolve to see your true nature, every moment you turn your gaze within, that is the Spirit Mountain." Now, Black Myth: Wukong, with Sun Wukong as its protagonist, embarks on the "journey to the West" once more. Its producer Yocar said in an interview, "Setting out on the journey is more important than reaching the Spirit Mountain."

As you experience the fantastical journey from the Eastern Tang as the "Destined One," we hope you can find your original aspiration and grow along the way.

Celebrating vitality.

Finally, we welcome you to engage with us. Oasis Capital will select 2 readers from the comments to each receive a deluxe edition of Black Myth: Wukong.

References:

1. Exclusive Interview with Black Myth: Wukong Producer Yocar | "Setting Out on the Journey Is More Important Than Reaching the Spirit Mountain," Xinhua https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Gi421a74W/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=1a093d221b29fecab88c39d72178d924
2. Game Science Founder Yocar, The Man Behind Black Myth: Wukong, CEO Letters https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/iGL26ggfwGfom4XYETfTAQ
3. A Monkey by West Lake Faces His Destiny Today | Black Myth: Wukong Special Edition ①, City Express Orange Interactive
4. Yocar's Weibo, https://weibo.com/n/Yocar-冯骥
5. Yang Qi's Weibo, https://weibo.com/yangqi917
6. Journey to the West, Wu Cheng'en

"Seeing Vitality" is a regular column from Oasis Capital. In this column, we share stories of vitality that we've encountered, hoping these shares bring you some inspiration and momentum — letting vitality flow.