Black Myth Investor Talks About Web3 Games: It’s Impossible to Make Good Games Without Passion

MiHoYo's Dawei commented on a WeChat Moments post, "I'll just say this: Daniel is the strongest investor in the Chinese gaming industry in the past five years, bar none."

The person who posted this WeChat Moments post is called Wu Dan (Daniel), and he was the first person to invest in "Black Myth: Wukong". Seven years ago, Hero Games, of which he was the president, invested 60 million in Game Science, accounting for 20% of the shares. Until Tencent acquired a stake in 2021, Hero Games was its only investor and the largest external shareholder.

What everyone doesn't know is that, in addition to the 60 million equity investment, Hero Games has invested at least 100 million more in the "Black Myth: Wukong" project. This 100 million also made Hero Games the only co-producer of "Black Myth: Wukong".

Daniel's circle of friends

In fact, from the perspective of investment, Kuro Games, which released Mingchao globally in the first half of the year, may be Daniel's more successful investment case. He has been increasing his stake since the first investment in 2017, and once held as much as 49%.

He is a strategist with unique vision and a true friend who accompanies the founder. When Game Science launched the project "Black Myth: Wukong", he immediately followed up with 100 million yuan and helped the Black Myth project team move to Hangzhou, finding a secluded work place in the mountains in Hangzhou. He even borrowed a car from his father in Hangzhou for the founder Feng Ji (Yocar) to use, so that he could travel in Hangzhou.

When Black Myth was launched, Daniel wrote in his circle of friends: Many people asked how they invested in Black Myth and Mingchao. "I can't really answer because the methodology is so simple that there is nothing to say (any more would be pretentious), that is: everything depends on people... as long as the right people are there. If there is really any methodology, it is actually the teachers who brought me into the investment industry, Teacher Xu, Teacher Wang, and Anna, who implanted some feelings and trust in people in my heart. Whenever I have some small achievements, I miss the old masters of Zhen Fund especially."

In 2012, Daniel, who was doing auditing at Deloitte, met Anna (Fang Aizhi, founding partner and CEO of Zhen Fund) at a dinner party.

Anna said, "After dinner, he said he wanted to come to ZhenFund and wanted to talk to me. I thought, we have no budget and we have to pay rent, why would this handsome guy come to us? But we are doing spreadsheets every day, we are short of a finance person, and we can afford the salary. OK, come and help us do some reports."

At that time, Daniel liked to wear shorts and slippers to work, was obsessed with playing games every day, and didn't write memos. Teacher Xu (Teacher Xu Xiaoping, founder of ZhenFund) said to Anna, then don't let him do those finances, just let him look at games, he can become the best game investor in China.

After one and a half years of joining, Daniel was promoted to the youngest vice president in the history of ZhenFund. During his three years at ZhenFund, he invested in "Super Heroes", "Crossfire", and "Vainglory", which once accounted for 70% of the successful mobile games of entrepreneurial teams in the entire market. Later, he transformed from an investor to an entrepreneur and founded Hero Games with Ying Shuling.

Last week, Daniel returned to ZhenFund and talked to us about the investment philosophy in the investment decisions of "Black Myth: Wukong" and "Mingchao". After so many years in the game industry, the key is still "starting from the people themselves".

The following is an excerpt from the interview.

Daniel (left), who loves cooking, makes breakfast at Airbnb

During the summer vacation of his freshman year, he studied in a hotel kitchen in Hangzhou

Teacher Wang (right) said,

"Daniel's scallion oil noodles are a must-eat for those who look at projects in the early stage of ZhenGe"

01"Apart from all commercial conditions, I think he will succeed"

Q: Back to that time, Yocar brought his old colleagues out of Tencent's "God of War". Is this a white horse project that everyone is vying for? Daniel: To be honest, they were a team that some people admired but some people didn’t (laughs). It was a team that received polarized evaluations. Looking back objectively, there should have been other companies that made offers at the time, but the valuation and payment speed were not as exciting as my offer. Of course, my decision-making speed and payment speed were definitely influenced by ZhenFeng. When I was at ZhenFeng, Mr. Xu pushed a reform called the one-page TS (Term Sheet, investment letter of intent), which had a profound impact on my investment style. Looking back now, many people say that the Black Myth team is very powerful and has made "God of War". But if you understand the game industry, "God of War" is a project that spent so much money back then, but the commercial return was not good enough. At that time, everyone only had one indicator to evaluate whether a game team was powerful, which was "whether it can make money and whether it has strong commercialization capabilities." This must have been questioned by many people. But at the same time, their content capabilities and production experience made many people excited.

Q: Why did Hero invest? DouZhengShen was very famous in the industry at that time, but Tencent and NetEase did not invest.

Daniel: I think it was a two-way choice. The two big companies did not invest, either because they were slow to make decisions, or because they did not want to invest, or because they could not give the valuation I gave. There are possibilities behind it.

I believe many people will think that this team has poor commercialization capabilities and is too idealistic. But in the end, it did not make money based on commercialization capabilities, but on idealism to a certain extent. Or what the founder said, pragmatic idealism.

But after the conversation, I was determined and resolute, and wanted to sign a contract with the team and pay the money immediately, in the second. Hero was not very famous at that time, and we were just a startup company, a bit like the status of ZhenFund as a new fund in its early days. But the training that ZhenFund gave me in the past made me know at that moment that I could only achieve what I wanted if I was fast enough, "ruthless" enough, and sincere enough.

Q: What was the reason for the "determined and resolute" decision to invest at that time?

Daniel:After talking with Yocar at that time, it was so rare. Such talent.

First of all, I was already working on heroes at that time. During the process, I would go deep into R&D. In-depth R&D would help me understand the "industrial level" capabilities, that is, how to make many people play a good enough coupling ability on a project, arrange the pipeline, and make the production capacity very efficient.

At that time, I had a superficial judgment, assuming that the game will go forward, the industrial level is the most important.The industrial level must be based on project experience. If you have not experienced a project with two or three hundred people, you will not have such industrial experience. It is very complicated, and there is an understanding of pipelines, understanding of tools, and so on.

There are very few people in China who have experience in such large projects. Tencent's "Douluo Dalu" and "Tian Ya Ming Yue Dao", NetEase's "Ni Shui Han", these are only three or four large MMO projects, very few. Such project experience is 100% scarce.

Secondly, my first impression after the chat was that he is a versatile person. The game industry has production backgrounds in technology, art, planning, and operation. To some extent, everyone has shortcomings. But Yocar really understands everything. He has a strong aesthetic sense, understands planning, and understands some technology.

Then he is also very knowledgeable. Talking to him feels like talking to a biologist. In theory, he can get a doctorate in biology. But at the same time, he is very humanistic. He can talk to you about mathematics, philosophy, creative expression, and the macro environment, just like Mr. Wang (Mr. Wang Qiang, co-founder of Zhen Fund), who reads all kinds of books.

I don't know what these things will eventually turn into. You wouldn't have imagined that all of his skills would eventually be realized in the product "Black Myth: Wukong". But I was attracted to him at that moment. He is a genius, a versatile person.

Q: What did you talk about when you first met? It is said that we talked for less than half an hour.

Daniel: The first time we met was in Shenzhen. Yocar told me about the history of the team and the ideas behind "Art of War: Red Tide". His way of chatting is very strategic, and you would not think he is a game producer. He would always start by saying, "Let me give you an example. Today there is "The Wandering Earth". What does this prove? What kind of market should China have in theory? A way of talking about things from macro to micro.

There was another interesting detail in the chat. The promotional videos of "God of War" and "The Hundred Generals" were of very high quality, like movies. I asked him why these videos were so well made? He said, "Do you know what I did in college?" I was addicted to watching commercials in my dorm room every day in college, and I watched hundreds of them.

He is such a person. What kind of person is Yocar? Look at his Moments, he recommends an animation every few days, a movie every few days, and a book every few days. He is always wandering in various content works. All his recommendations are described in rhyming limericks. If one day his Moments suddenly stop rhyming, there will be a lot of questions below, why don’t you rhyme today?

Q: In 2017, Hero invested 60 million, accounting for 20%. It was also very expensive money in that era.

Daniel: After all, this guy is a well-known person. At that time, I thought about it and decided to invest anyway. Such talents are too scarce, such teams are too scarce, and such project experience is too scarce.

In fact, when you suddenly encounter a 60 million project, you still have to grit your teeth. The deals I made at ZhenFeng were all in the millions. . . It's like being an angel investor all the time, and suddenly encountering an angel project but the amount of B round financing is at that time.

Q: In fact, when Hero invested, it was aiming at "Art of War: Red Tide", and the team had not yet started "Black Myth: Wukong". How did you decide to set up a stand-alone project? Why did you give another 100 million?

Daniel: Before the team officially started "Black Myth: Wukong" in 2018, they had made 3 products, from "Douluo Dalu", to "Hundred Generals", and then "Art of War: Red Tide". In short, it's about 12 years, three or four years for one product, or maybe even longer (the actual development time of Douluo Dalu is unknown).

In fact, the situation at that time was that after Red Tide was finished, the team was in a relatively confused state, and there was not much money in the account at that time. We chatted at the Xianggan Farm in Shenzhen. This place is delicious and recommended. I asked him what to do in the future?

After a careful discussion at that time, Yocar expressed his ideas. That is, what he said in the interview with Xinhua News Agency was actually a real and objective situation. How he viewed the stand-alone market, how he viewed this opportunity, and so on. For me, what impressed me most at that time was the state he showed. It is an ability to always reflect on oneself first, face difficulties or failures, and look inward for the reasons.

The general meaning is that he said: We must first understand ourselves. My team cannot make purely commercial games. We have our own aesthetic persistence and persistence in gameplay. Our love and experience of many purely commercial games are not enough, we should make products that impress ourselves more.

For me, since this team can't make commercial games and don't want to do it, I'd better try to make what I like.

In fact, I was mainly based on several judgments at that time, that is, several major assumptions for this matter to be established. 1) Assume that the stand-alone market really exists and there is such a big opportunity. 2) Assume that telling a good Chinese story will bring a big dividend of the times. 3) Assume that the team can really tell a good Chinese story and have the ability to produce a 3A-level game.

In this, 1) and 2) the film industry has already run ahead, verifying the establishment of such a big story.

And 3) is actually what I value most. That is, I deeply believe that this team has the ability to really tell a good Chinese story and the ability to produce a 3A game. I remember Yocar's original words at the time, "People must tie their careers to the rise of the country and nation in order to gain the greatest momentum. This is the simplest sentiment and the most basic rationality." This is his attitude towards this matter.

Their understanding and love of Chinese culture, as well as their ability to productize Chinese culture with their own aesthetic ability, reflected in their previous games also made me believe that although 3A game production is difficult, they have the ability to achieve it.

Telling Chinese stories well is a big proposition. Many people are fake, but he is real.

Q: What do people inside Hero think?

Daniel: Most of the company still opposed me. In fact, after Red Tide, there were still voices of opposition to this team inside the company, at least the team involved in the Red Tide project... Most of them left Hero...

And to a certain extent, investing in such a level of project is also competing for resources with the project team inside the company, after all, the company's money is a limited resource.

Q: But from your point of view, there are so many games in the world with better business models, and there are so many ways to make money. Even if he can make the first stand-alone game like The Wandering Earth, why not invest in other projects that can bring higher returns?

Daniel:To some extent, you just want him to succeed. For Yocar, I put aside all commercial conditions and I want him to succeed.

If he fails, I will not be reconciled for him. In fact, there is such an emotion. This is also what ZhenFeng’s humanities bring to me. I also want something of Chinese culture to come out in this form at some point in time. I also want to play such a game, and I have no doubt that this team can make it.

02"The most difficult thing is his character"

Q: Many people say that the success of Black Myth is a matter of time, place and people.

Daniel:His time is too critical. At that time, the starting point for our project was the popularity of "Wolf Warrior" and "The Wandering Earth". We judged that if there were works that broke through the ceiling of technology and quality, the pride of the Chinese people would definitely bring great commercial results.

The Journey to the West is a Chinese story. This team had worked on "God of War" and was a group of Journey to the West scholars. The term "Journey to the West scholars" was also a word taught to me by the team. When making an IP, the most time is actually spent on the world view and the setting of artistic monsters. For example, if I draw a monster today, what does it look like? It requires a lot of research. So in theory, if they keep making a game of the same style, they will get better and better.

At that time, the most sold single-player games in the Chinese market were 100,000 sets. We judged that "Black Myth: Wukong" was 10 million sets (only three days after its launch, the sales of Black Myth on all platforms exceeded 10 million).

The most difficult thing is that if you can really make "The Wandering Earth", that is the strength of the team. But we judged that he has the strength.

After that, it was a process of walking around, trying, and constantly enduring hardships, exploring the way in the no-man's land. When the first film was released, it had more than 50 million views on Station B, which was great.

Q: Have you ever thought about the worst outcome after the release?

Daniel: The worst is mediocre, and you sell, for example, one or two million copies.

What I am most worried about is that from the perspective of investors, if you sell 100,000 copies, it doesn't matter, you know that this market does not exist. If you sell one or two million copies, it's not going up or down, and the money is not enough to make the next game, and the performance is not enough to raise money to make the next one, you are stuck here. This is actually the most uncomfortable.

Q: What is the most critical quality of Yocar as a founder? Daniel: On the one hand, he is deeply patriotic, which is also mentioned above. Wanting to do this and being able to make this product well are inseparable from his deep love for the motherland. On the other hand, from my perspective, the most difficult qualities of a founder are not how good his R&D capabilities are, but his character. With overwhelming traffic coming in, many people will be arrogant. After the first video was released, it was played more than 50 million times, and many people began to come to him. He said to me, Daniel, help me block them all. We now have to block all external interference. At that time, they moved from Shenzhen to Hangzhou. Why? It was because of judgment. The character of the team is also very important. I can't be in Shenzhen today, work for a while, and then someone comes to poach you. Hangzhou is a quiet and suitable city. Secondly, seclusion in a mountain in Hangzhou is actually very "bitter". Once I went to Hangzhou to see him and took his car. He said that he could drive for three months with one tank of gas. Just imagine, I could finish a tank of gas in just a few days.

Game Science Hangzhou Studio

They always have a saying internally that completion is more important than excellence. This is also a sentence that Yocar constantly emphasizes to me every time I visit them.

In the process of making games, we must constantly do subtraction and have a sense of the boundaries of the project.Many times a project takes ten years to complete, or the budget is spent endlessly once it is completed. In fact, from a professional game perspective today, this game may still have many problems, and players also have many picky points. But we know very well that completion itself is a breakthrough.

There are 7 partners in the organizational structure of "Black Myth: Wukong". All interviews say that these 7 partners have suffered together. After so many years of suffering, they never dispersed. The huge amount of content in the end is the result of everyone working together.

He even leveraged all the abilities of the hero. Before the launch, dozens of people from the entire hero distribution team voluntarily lived in Hangzhou to accompany him in the launch. It is difficult to get a person to live in another city for a month or two, but "Black Myth: Wukong" has the ability to unite you. It makes you feel that you are fighting for an ideal and are part of this ideal, which is very exciting.

I also thought of a sentence that Mr. Xu said to the team that year, but I forgot what occasion it was. He said that he has invested in so many companies, and often those entrepreneurs who really did well are grateful to him.

Today, after playing the game "Black Myth: Wukong", players will see a long list. There are many people from the hero on the list, all of whom were helped by the hero team when he was making "Art of War: Red Tide". Some of these people were not effective in the launch of "Black Myth: Wukong". But he is grateful to these people. This may also be part of his character, which makes people very warm.

03"I focus on self-consistent talents"

Q: When you decide whether to invest in a game team, what questions will you ask?

Daniel:Yes, that's right, (he smiled and drank water tactically) When I was at ZhenFeng, I was also curious about what questions other investors would ask. The happiest thing at that time was to meet the big guys with Anna, and I also went to listen to what the big guys were talking about, which felt like a good way to absorb.

But when I really started to make heroes myself, I found that investors and teams valued two things. So I think it's not about what I will ask in the end, but that you have reached a certain level.

Your level must come from being with the founder and you understand what he is thinking. What he is thinking is what you should ask.When you don't understand what he is thinking, whatever you ask is wrong.

Because I am only in the game industry, I know too well the ideas of everyone in this industry. I am in charge of hero development, distribution, and investment. In theory, I am in charge of all directions covered by the game. When making investment decisions, this can really drive you a lot of things.

Q: What are the criteria for judging the ability of a game producer?

Daniel: The most important ability for a game producer is macro thinking. Whether it is a stand-alone or online game.

Games have many ways to play, systems, and values, which are nested and coupled with each other. You have to think about how to couple, whether my target users are large or small, and all the ideas, art, and technology will be extended around this center. The most perfect state is that I made a project planning proposal today and listed one, two, three, four, and five goals. After three years of work, I went back and saw that these goals have not changed. This is the most powerful thing, thinking very clearly at the beginning.

Most people will only stay at the first level, "I want to make something fun." But if he can't explain the user group and system structure clearly, it means that his thinking is incomplete and he can't make money. The most feared thing about games is that they are not clearly thought out and have to be reworked.

Then look at his game aesthetics. Game aesthetics will converge with the direction of the game he wants to make. Because his game aesthetics is the type of game he likes to play, and the experience of game types determines his tendency to make games to a certain extent. If you read Wang Shuo all day long, what you write is also in this style. To some extent, you think that soul games are niche, but their growth rate is fast enough to support your investment logic.

I invested in Kuro because I found that the producer of "Mingchao" is a genius. He was born in 1990 and his game production experience was very shallow at the time. But I found that his aesthetics and sense of picture are very suitable for making cool two-dimensional games.

If you understand this field, most of the two-dimensional games that were successfully verified at the time were Japanese celluloid. But the relatively hardcore style with a little bit of realism is also a big track in the two-dimensional world. No one was doing it at that time. Although this producer was very young and had never made a complete game, he was very familiar with this culture and was obsessed with it. More importantly, his way of thinking was also macro-complete and micro-amazing, so I invested very resolutely.

Q: What are the things that can be determined when you meet for the first time?

Daniel: To some extent, it is still process contact. In fact, I later felt that, for example, if you are talking about investment with someone today, I will suddenly kill to his company without him knowing, and say come down to smoke a cigarette or have a cup of tea. You have to chat inadvertently and in an informal setting. This way you can talk about more things.

Q: In the long-term process contact with the founder, what do you see as good and what is bad?

Daniel:What I really observe all the time is whether they focus on what they are good at and stick to it.

The first priority is to be very sure of the strategic level and not change it blindly.The biggest feature of the game industry is that a strategy will affect you for at least three years. Today, we have decided to make this game. Assuming that the cost is 1 billion yuan a year, and the strategic direction is changed in the second year, the 1 billion yuan will be burned in vain. During this process, we must remind ourselves not to change because of any situation and not to chase hot spots.

The second priority is to look at the organizational structure, which must be in line with your production factors. The second is to look at the relationship between the founder and the management. What are they happy about? What are they unhappy about? Many small things are hidden in the heart, and it will be bad if they are suppressed for a long time. I pay close attention to this kind of thing because it directly affects the stability of the organization.

Q: From the beginning of your game investment in ZhenFund to now for more than ten years, has your perspective on a game team changed?

Daniel:When I was at ZhenFeng, the thing I paid the most attention to was the talent of the team. Everything depends on people, so at that time I only thought about people.

Now I am focusing on self-consistent talent.This self-consistency is critical. It comes from many levels, such as your recognition of this matter, the coupling between you and the investors, and the organizational structure. For example, this project requires many people, so the management ability must keep up. Or around a thing to succeed, there must be several factors behind it. Break down the factors clearly and see if the person can handle it.

Q: For game producers, what is the last mile from good to great?

Daniel:The last mile is your ambition. The last mile is definitely not for money, but for your vision and your product ambition. The energy behind this is huge.

You must have such a strong ambition to succeed. Because the process is very hard, the game industry is the industry with the most overtime in the world. It is really always working overtime, always trying and failing, and always iterating in the no-man's land.

Q: How do you identify whether a person has such energy?

Daniel: Just the feeling of chatting with him. When he is nothing, who will he want to be? Give an example.

Q: What are your investment principles?

Daniel: It must be very early, which may be related to my stay in ZhenFeng.

The distribution rights of the first product must be given to me. Then continue to increase the bet, and deep fundraising is very important. Only when these three points are combined can you maximize your profits.

Q: Everyone says it is not good, only you think it is good VS everyone says it is good, do you prefer the former?

Daniel: One thing is very dialectical. Suppose you ask a lot of people, and everyone says it's not good, but you just think it's good. You can eat it to death.

What I worry about most is that everyone says it's good. You will think why this opportunity is for you? Why does this project belong to you? Once a strong competitive relationship is formed, I will definitely withdraw.

Basically, every investment I make, when I ask others, there are a lot of doubts, which makes me feel more secure. Of course, the premise is that I have had real experience, and I have confidence and logic in the investment decisions I make.

Q: It sounds like you only invest in dark horses. Is it feasible to invest in white horses in the game industry?

Daniel: There are not many completely white horses in the game industry.

Because if you are a white horse, it means that you must have very successful works. If you have very successful works, it means that you must have path dependence. If you have path dependence, it means that you must still be competing with the areas that traditional large companies are good at.

What does it mean for an industry to develop to maturity? It means that for all the things you want to roll, the big companies will spend 10,000 times more time or resources to roll with you.

Q: You left VC and entered the industry. What advice would you give to pure VC institutional investors now?

Daniel: Investment is a process of getting rid of ego. You must be a blank sheet of paper to truly understand others. My advantage is that I am naturally a blank sheet of paper. This is my personality.

Sometimes you have thought about a direction a hundred times and it is unreliable. It may be that the direction he is thinking at the moment is unreliable, but the person is reliable. You must avoid misjudging because of ego.

There are three angles to look at people. You can look up at people, look down at people, and look at people at eye level. I personally prefer to always look at people at eye level at the beginning. If you slowly start to look up at this person, it may be time for you to increase your investment.

Q: You said that you don’t have much time to play games now, and you only play a little as a pastime. When you use yourself as a ruler to measure the team, how do you keep the ruler sharp?

Daniel: The ruler to be refined is not the ruler for the product, but the ruler for the people. Once this ruler is formed, it is formed. I rarely spend time refining this ruler now.

The premise of product aesthetics is people’s aesthetics. For people, you still need to understand many dimensions.

04"The investment opportunities of games in the next era will be judged in two or three years"

Q: What did the biggest hits do right in the game industry over the years?

Daniel: I think the biggest hits are because you did something that others can't do. This was the case with Genshin Impact, and it is the same with Black Myth: Wukong today.

Because the game industry is not rocket science (making rockets), it can be done in many years. The difficulty lies in whether you have the courage and patience to do it.

Q: Can the investment success of Black Myth: Wukong be replicated?

Daniel:I think it is not replicable.The main creative team is also difficult to replicate. This team can do it, but others cannot. The game industry is very talent-intensive, just like directors.

From my personal judgment, it is difficult for today's younger developers to make this kind of stand-alone game. Why?

Games like Black Myth require a high level of accumulation in the humanities of a person as a whole. Relatively older developers have experienced more changes in the times, more things in life, and more accumulation. The growth environment of the younger generation is relatively smooth and happy, and they cannot make such a heavy game. Looking forward, in another ten years, the young generation inspired by Black Myth: Wukong today may only be fifteen or sixteen years old, and they will say they want to make something like this. That’s possible.

The next era of game investment opportunities can only be judged after two or three years. At present, I basically don’t invest in any of them.

Q: You don’t invest in (external game startups) now, so what are you doing?

Daniel: I am now very focused on making Hero Games. I have been working on my own projects, and now I have more than 2,000 people.

Because you have a lot of positive feedback in your investment, you will want to have a work that you made yourself. Of course, this is also related to objective laws. The stage that Hero Games is going through may be the same as the stage that the Black Myth team went through when they were making Douzaishen. The law that the game industry cannot escape is that it needs accumulation and precipitation. I will now spend more time to let the Hero team accumulate and precipitate on the right things.

Q: What are you waiting for in the next two or three years?

Daniel:AIGC will become a big variable in two or three years, and by then it should bring about a new round of changes in investment ideas.But AIGC has not really taken shape at the moment. It has improved efficiency to a certain extent, but it is not enough.

Q: When we see a new technology emerge, there is often a trend of "technology + games", such as Web3 games and AI games, but in the end it seems difficult to come out.

Daniel:I thinkit is always games plus something else.

Anytime. I just said that you should pay attention to the team and don't be deceived by some new directions. I have seen a lot of game industry entrepreneurs doing Web3 after Web3 came out, and I would never invest in those people. First of all, they don't love games, so how can they make good games? It's a very simple truth.

Many people asked me if I should make a Vision Pro game? I said we don't need to make a Vision Pro game, because the ability we are working hard to train every day is the production capacity of content production. On the one hand, it is quality, and on the other hand, it is efficiency.

Assuming that Vision Pro is really popular, relying on my quality and efficiency itself, I can provide the best content. It's not that if you do it early, you can provide good enough content. It's two logics. Like in the early years, everyone said that they wanted to invest in a mobile game company and subvert Tencent in the future. No. In the end, Tencent crushed the market because its production quality and efficiency are there, but the market is mature.

What you need to grasp is what the big companies can't do. Either the big companies cannot attract such talents, for example, the ACG talents do not like to work in the big companies, or the big companies do not have the organizational efficiency to do the things, in fact, you only need to focus on these.

05"You are painful enough, but you have to give everyone hope"

Teacher Wang: When we were in ZhenFeng, we thought you were a person of temperament, a very gentle and shining child. But it was such a person who later went to Yingxiong and now manages more than 2,000 people and has become a top position in charge. From entering ZhenFeng as a game investor to founding a company and becoming a CEO, what is your biggest growth?

Daniel:The biggest growth is actually enough pain.

I used to be a very easy-going person. When I had a meeting, I would cross my legs, and the team would not feel pressured. Now I am not in this state. I will force myself to try not to laugh.

You will realize that many things have to be done cruelly. When the company was transformed, I fired hundreds of people right away. During that period, I turned off my phone. The pain was that someone's wife would text you and ask, "My child is only a few years old, why do you treat me like this?"

After the transformation, you will slowly find some feelings. You can only fire one person at a time. You can't fire some today, some tomorrow, and some the day after tomorrow. This will cause the morale of the entire company to continue to decline. After one cut, the people who stay will know that it will not be me.

In the entire company management process, you finally find that the most difficult thing is actually to find your own weaknesses, or in other words, the most difficult thing is always how to understand yourself better and how to work with yourself. For example, although I am relatively strict on the surface today, I am not a person who can push the team in my heart, so I will leave it to people who can push.

Suppose I am a Liu Bei in this company, and the people who cooperate with me must be people like Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun who whip people. Counsellors don't work with me at all. You must be a general. In addition, because I am not a strict person, I will not crack the whip, which means that the person who has a long-term cooperation with me and goes a long way must have a strong self-motivation. I don't like to spend too much time teaching and leading people.

In the past few years, I have experienced a big cycle transition in Hero. A big internal adjustment and adjustment of thinking mode. For me, I must first determine the specific direction, and then adjust the thinking mode, let a small number of people get rich first, and then use a small number of people to roll up the rest of the people. Slowly form this feeling and positive and positive roll within the company. My investment, for me, is to let a small number of people get rich first to drive the roll of the internal team. It is a benchmark. Of course, these benchmarks are now very large, and may be benchmarks for the industry. . .

I now write an internal letter to the company every year. I don't go out during the Spring Festival. I stay at home to write internal letters. Slowly, I will feel the changes in my thinking.

In fact, this is also what I learned at Zhenge. Didn't Teacher Xu write letters before? The power of words is far greater than the power of the mouth. After writing more, I found that I am pretty good, and I can really write.

In 2017, I wrote about why we cannot be a publisher today and why we need to transform. In 2018, I wrote about why we want to make certain types of games and how we do it. In 2019, I wrote about how our organization can transform from a small team to an industrialized management team. In 2020, I wrote about what we need to pay attention to during the transformation process, as well as changes in the external world, and so on. I keep writing every year.

Why are big companies so easy to manage? Everyone in Honor of Kings works overtime every day? No one in the gaming industry can compete with big companies, because it has a clear effect of the rich first driving the rich later. A project team makes so much money, and everyone in Tencent knows it, so everyone works as hard as he does.

Startup teams don’t have this ability, because if you don’t have a rich first, you have to create one yourself. For me, I rely on investment and the power of the ecosystem. In fact, to a certain extent, Tencent may be the same. They also did well by relying on investment. The four little dragons, League of Legends, dnf, and CrossFire were all invested. Then they led the internal R&D transformation and achieved the current hegemony. In fact, when I first started making heroes, I studied a lot of their strategies and ideas.

You have to go down layer by layer, and first of all, you can't be impatient. You have to find the law of development of this thing, and you have to be very patient. You have to observe them, accompany them, and develop in this way.

Q: What impact will "Black Myth: Wukong" have on heroes in the future?

Daniel: No impact. We have refined a strong distribution capability in the process. As a co-producer, we are responsible for a lot of distribution work. For example, how to choose KOLs and KOCs? How to do cross-industry linkage? After doing these, we actually have a strong experience improvement.

I learned a lot in this process. For example, we now have a set of algorithms for the management of the entire KOL, and have formed our own set of algorithms. Based on the logic behind the number of views and the number of people, we can accurately calculate which KOLs have the best live broadcast sales effect, which is actually very helpful for all our future games. You have to go through the online release of such a game product and try it out before you can test it out and polish your algorithm.

Q: What is your way of self-growth? Some people read books, some people think, and some people chat.

Daniel: My way is to find more people to chat with, and try every way to chat with the most powerful people. Of course, I also love reading.

Q: What is your greatest talent?

Daniel: I think my greatest talent is shamelessness.

Let me tell you a story. No one knows this story, and I am telling it for the first time today. When I first came to ZhenFeng, my business card was an analyst. But at that time, the game industry had already taken off, and my difficulty was that I had to meet the big bosses in the industry and sell games to them. So I printed a business card myself, called ZhenFeng Partner. I still have this business card, haha. You still have to figure it out yourself.

For example, when I first met Anna, I took the initiative to ask if she could recruit me. I shamelessly sold myself to Anna.

Teacher Wang: I know about the business card. Do you know why? Once you took me to Shanghai to meet an international student, you showed me this business card. I told you to use it quietly, haha. Teacher Xu didn’t know either.

Anna: ? (Looking shocked, he turned to everyone and said) Don’t learn bad things from me!

Daniel: Yes, I met Zhou Yahui in this way. So you still have to think of some tricks yourself. This is difficult to teach in person. Haha.

Teacher Wang: Daniel himself is also an example of ZhenFeng’s investment philosophy. So Anna, how did you judge when you brought Daniel in?

Anna: I always joke, because his salary is cheap.

But it was definitely not because of this. First of all, I really think that at that time, if anyone really wanted to join ZhenFeng, I would be willing. Until now, all of us still have only ZhenFeng in our eyes, and we will definitely not apply for other jobs. If you say you want to make money, then you can go to a big organization. You must be passionate about this thing, and love angel investment.

Daniel played games all the time after he came to ZhenFeng, and he didn't write memos. Teacher Xu asked Daniel to invest in games. It was from Teacher Xu that I learned to judge people and to follow their talents to find the shining points of each person. People should never do things they don't want to do.

Teacher Xu really changed Daniel's direction. What I regret is that he was poached by Lao Ying to do what he is really good at: starting a game company.

(Daniel then continued to share unpublished content for two hours)

In 2012, ZhenFund, which had just been established for two years, held a team building in California, USA

Daniel was in the C position