Text/Great Entertainer

miHoYo has never lacked topics, and even if the game itself is not shocking, this company can still put itself in the center of public opinion.

Recently, Cai Haoyu, the co-founder of miHoYo, published some "violent theories" on LinkedIn about the application of AI in the game industry, which successfully sparked widespread discussion.

Cai Haoyu believes that AI-generated content (AIGC) technology will bring structural changes to the game industry, which may fundamentally change the game development process in the future. He predicts that with the increasing maturity of AI painting, AI writing and other technologies, the graphics, plots, and even character dialogues in games in the future may be completed by AI.

Cai Haoyu made a statement on LinkedIn about AIGC and the gaming industry

If that's the norm, it's time to make a big statement, as he suggests that the future of the gaming industry may only need the "top 0.0001% – the most insightful geniuses" and amateurs, while casual and professional game developers may need to consider switching careers.

Admittedly, any current discussion of AIGC is naturally divided into two factions – one that believes that AI will disrupt everything, and the other that still has faith in humanity. And the timing of Cai Haoyu's "violent theory" is more subtle, because the hot search of "there is not much time left for miHoYo" around that time has long been entrenched in the Weibo hot search list.

In fact, miHoYo, which has always been prosperous in the past period of time, is indeed not doing well, and the revenue curve of the new work "Jeopardy Zero" is obviously not as good as the previous two two-dimensional masterpieces, and the unparalleled sales of "Black Myth: Wukong" are quite embarrassing to many krypton mobile game giants.

The interface of Black Myth: Wukong

Cai Haoyu's remarks at this time are not so much aimed at the entire game industry, but rather a knock on the current miHoYo - the two-dimensional game art involution and numerical setting brought up by miHoYo are precisely the parts that are most likely to be replaced by AI, but the part closely related to the gameplay itself has never been miHoYo's strong point.

However, Cai Haoyu, the "most insightful genius", chose to go to a foreign country to explore the direction of AIGC after leading miHoYo to stand out from the crowd.

01

AIGC revolutionizes the game industry,

The second tour industry may become the biggest victim

AIGC technology has set off a wave of innovation in the gaming industry in recent years. AI painting tools such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are accelerating the application of AIGC in the field of game art with their excellent image generation effects and high creative efficiency.

According to statistics from relevant institutions, using AI tools such as Midjourney, the speed of game concept design can be increased by 3-5 times, and the cost can be reduced by more than 50%.

For indie game developers and small and medium-sized game studios, AIGC has undoubtedly greatly lowered the artistic threshold for game production, enabling them to produce more beautiful game graphics at a lower cost.

Not to mention that there are also "Black Myth: Wukong", which relies on the use of a large number of high-precision scanning of real buildings into the game, which makes the art types that traditional games such as art and landscaping are highly dependent on lose their original value.

AIGC has also shown great potential in other aspects of game development, such as program development, game testing, numerical design, etc.

For example, code generation tools based on large language models such as GPT have been able to automatically generate game scripts and code snippets based on simple text descriptions, greatly improving the level of automation in game development. In the field of game testing, AI technology is also used to automatically generate test cases and intelligently analyze bugs, helping game companies save a lot of labor costs. EA, a major game manufacturer, has used AI tools to optimize the player ability value matching of the "FIFA" series of games, which has greatly improved the game balance.

FIFA 23 game interface

It is foreseeable that as AIGC technology continues to mature, it will fundamentally reshape the process and team structure of game development. The traditional game development model relies on a large number of manpower investment in art, programming, testing and other positions, but in the AIGC era, a small but highly capable team, combined with advanced AI tools, may be able to achieve development tasks that once required hundreds of people to complete. This means that there will be significant changes in the talent needs and the way teams are formed in the gaming industry.

For a company like miHoYo that is known for its high-quality two-dimensional art, the impact of AIGC technology may be particularly severe. After all, game art is exactly what AIGC is best at, and with the continuous iteration of AI painting and other technologies, miHoYo's advantages in art creation may be gradually weakened.

More importantly, the two-dimensional game market is almost saturated, which brings challenges to the long-term development of miHoYo. According to the "2023 China Game Industry Report", the actual sales revenue of the ACG mobile game market in 2023 will be 36.77 billion yuan, while the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market in the same period will be 302.964 billion yuan.

Although ACG games have a relatively stable player base, their market ceiling effect is obvious, which is difficult to support the long-term growth of miHoYo. If we can't adjust our strategy in time and expand into new game areas, miHoYo will probably become one of the biggest victims of this AIGC revolution.

Of course, miHoYo has been actively seeking changes in the past year, trying to stabilize its revenue base by improving the player experience.

For example, version 2.5 of "Crashing Iron" provides players with a more relaxed and enjoyable game process by introducing a "casual mode", optimizing the gacha mechanism, and improving the game system.

Crashing Iron 2.5 launches "Casual Mode"

The just-updated version of "Genshin Impact" 5.0 not only brings the sixth country "Nata", but also tries to further enrich its open-world gameplay with new designs such as "Nataron" and "Phlogiston", and more importantly, this version of "Genshin Impact" also gives a lot of ways to reduce the "liver" - whether it is a new gacha mechanism "Capturing the Light" that improves the shipment rate of UP characters, or a weapon pool with a large guarantee to 2 rounds and an optimized relic, all kinds of optimizations are trying to reduce the burden on players in an all-round way.

However, under the onslaught of all kinds of new games, these efforts may not be enough.

In the face of increasingly fierce competition in the industry, miHoYo needs to make greater breakthroughs in gameplay innovation in order to continue to remain competitive. Now, the success of "Black Myth: Wukong" has made leading game companies, including Tencent and NetEase, rethink the possibilities beyond mobile games, which is obviously a more pressing issue than AI for miHoYo.

02

Explore diversified tracks,

miHoYo's transformation is imperative

In the face of the challenges of AIGC technology and the bottleneck of its own type of development, miHoYo obviously has no way back.

First of all, instead of passively resisting the impact of AIGC, it is better to actively embrace this technological trend, combine AIGC with its own traditional advantages in art creation, and explore a characteristic development path.

Specifically, miHoYo is also actively developing AIGC tools and processes that are suitable for its own business characteristics. It has been reported that miHoYo has also set up an internal "inverse entropy" team to study AI technology, trying to improve creative efficiency through AI tools, and at the same time give full play to the unique perception of game creators in creative planning and style shaping.

miHoYo's virtual idol Lu Ming

Secondly, what miHoYo needs more is to get out of the comfort zone of two-dimensional games and bravely expand more diversified game categories.

At present, genres such as open-world ARPGs and buyout triple-A masterpieces not only have a broad market space, but also represent the development direction of the game industry. Although "Jeopardy Zero" continues the two-dimensional art style that miHoYo is good at, it has not made a big breakthrough in gameplay, and on the first day of its launch, topics related to "Jeopardy Zero" is boring" rushed to the hot search on Weibo.

It can be said that miHoYo still has great room for growth in terms of gameplay innovation and gameplay design breakthroughs, and this part is precisely the part that cannot be replaced by AI, and it needs creative and experienced game producers to give full play to their creativity.

It can even be said that these two aspects themselves are also the shortcomings of domestic games.

In fact, even the now acclaimed and popular "Black Myth: Wukong", aside from its extreme picture performance and art style that reflects traditional culture, it really has to fall on gameplay and level design and other gameplay, it still has a significant gap with the top international triple-A masterpieces, and the map air wall that has been criticized a lot by players is largely caused by the lack of map design.

Not to mention Nintendo's works, which have always been known for their gameplay, even the closest action ARPGs such as "Wolf" and "Elden Ring", both for the box garden design and level flow planning, there are too immature parts.

Elden Ring game interface

At present, the competition in the gaming industry is becoming increasingly fierce, and players are demanding more and more quality and innovation in games. Polishing high-quality products and bringing forth the new has become the key to the survival and development of game companies.

For miHoYo, in addition to continuing its advantages in two-dimensional art, it also needs to make breakthroughs in other game genres and design more novel and interesting game systems and mechanisms to bring players a refreshing experience.

A diversified game matrix can be said to be the only way for the current game manufacturers, and NetEase Games can be said to be a leader in this regard.

"Egg Boy Party", "The Fifth Personality", "Naraka: Infinite", "After Tomorrow", and then to the next "Sixteen Voices of Yanyun", which will be launched next, all kinds of types and platforms, you have to try it again. So far, although not every success has been successful, there have been many breakthroughs.

In the list of approved game versions in July, miHoYo's new simulation management work "Star Valley", which was leaked last year, is among them, although there are not too many actual demonstrations or official information revealed, but according to rumors, this new work will get rid of the two-dimensional art style, perhaps this is the first step for miHoYo to really get out of the comfort zone.

The game interface of "Star Cloth Valley" is transmitted on the Internet

The rise of AIGC technology and the pursuit of diverse game genres by players have brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges to the game industry. For a game company like miHoYo, following technology trends and actively embracing change is an inevitable choice to achieve sustainable development.

From investing in nuclear fusion, AI, metaverse and many other fields, miHoYo's investment in the field of cutting-edge technology is not small, and even the founder Cai Haoyu has now personally established a vertical AI startup company Anuttacon. Apparently unwilling to see the company that it had brought to such heights sink in.

After all, if you want to really achieve Cai Haoyu's vision of "creating a virtual world in which 1 billion people are willing to live in 2030", it is not enough to let players continue to make kryptonite, as the "God of Games" Shigeru Miyamoto said The difference between games and novels and movies is - a sense of participation, how to let more players participate in the game instead of "working" for the game, It is a question that miHoYo has to rethink next.

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