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Black Myth: Wukong
The success of Black Myth: Wukong is hard to overlook. In just one day, it became the most-played single-player game with over 2.2 million concurrent players, and yes, this number has increased to 2.4 million now. It has made itself a qualified AAA title, which, however, comes from a game company that, at this moment, has less than 150 employees. Four years ago, when the game shocked the world with its very first gameplay trailer, there were “only 20 or so people”.
That is according to PC Gamer, who had an interview with an employee from the developer Game Science. The release date of Black Myth: Wukong is August 20, which is exactly a date from four years ago when the very first official gameplay trailer was out. Below is what the game looked like back then:
The comment section of this video is filled with surprises and expectations from players who commented 4 years ago after watching this showcase of combat, animation, and voice-over. We can also see quite some commenters from 2024, who respected the developers for keeping their promises and making the real game the same or even higher quality than the demo. And this is what Game Science has been striving for in the past four years.
"One of the things we value is a promise to our game fans. We tried to keep true to what it looked like in 2020, but did a lot of optimization based on that.
We needed to hire more people, but at the time there were not a lot of people who were developing PC/console games [in China], so we opted to release the trailer so that people could get a good sense of the quality of the game and attract interest from like-minded folks."
Black Myth: Wukong
Game Science has announced that the game has sold 10 million copies in just four days since its launch, and the game boasts a 96% positive review on Steam, which, in my opinion, is reasonably crazy.
It’s quite reasonable, considering the population of China, how this story is based on a known-to-all IP for the Chinese and other Southeast Asian audiences, the stunning graphics and brilliant combat of the demo, players’ expectation of this “first AAA video game by a Chinese developer,” to name a few. If we look at how the developers managed to present this high-expected game to live up to players’ expectations and go beyond, that experience is one that is really crazy.
Black Myth: Wukong
If you are interested in learning more about Game Science’s journey, feel free to check out the interview by PC Gamer here. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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