As Black Myth: Wukong became a global hit, images of a character resembling Neo’s CEO were widely circulated, giving Neo an unexpected exposure.
One of the most discussed topics in China this week was the global success of Black Myth: Wukong, a video game developed by a local team.
The huge success of the game has attracted many companies and local government tourism authorities
Electric vehicle (EV) maker NIO (NYSE: NIO ) had no intention of capitalizing on the sport’s popularity, but it turned out to be a big winner.
On August 20, Black Myth: Wukong was officially opened to users, and the concept of a character in the game who looked exactly like Neo founder, president and CEO William Li began to circulate widely.
Subsequently, images of the character Elder Jinji with Li’s profile photo began to circulate, and a line from the game was adapted to relate to Neo.
On August 20, Neo hosted the Power Up 2024 event, unveiling plans to build charging and battery swap facilities.
Li was focused on the Neo event at the time, trying to attract more partners to build EV infrastructure with the company, and didn’t seem to have heard of the game.
During the live video stream on the evening of August 20, Li was asked several times about the gameplay of the game and Neo’s vehicles. At that time, he also asked the team members what the game was and who the producers were.
Black Myth: Wukong continues to gain traction, with images comparing Elder Jinji to Li continuing to go viral and giving the Neo brand more exposure.
Li seems to have received a lot of pictures shared with him by his friends, saying in the comments section of one of his Weibo posts yesterday that he had received a lot of such pictures, urging people to support the masterpieces created by local teams. Various fields.
Black Myth: Wukong is an action role-playing game developed and published by the Chinese team Game Science.
The game is inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and centers around an anthropomorphic monkey based on Sun Wukong or the Monkey King from the novel.
Black Myth: Elder Jinji is hiding in Wukong, and players must complete a secret mission to get there.
The game is one of China’s rare successes in this field, with the number of simultaneous players on Steam surpassing one million within an hour of its release.
Last night, Black Myth: Wukong hit 2.36 million concurrent players on Steam.
In addition to being well received by players, the game is also seen as an important platform for more foreign users to learn about Chinese culture. Government media including People’s Daily have expressed great appreciation for this.
At yesterday’s regular press conference of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a reporter mentioned the game, and spokesman Mao Ning made the following comment:
I don’t know much about video games, but thanks for bringing this game to my attention. The name of the game indicates that it is inspired by the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West. I think this speaks to the appeal of Chinese culture.
Some car companies have tried to capitalize on Black Myth: Wukong’s popularity to market their products, but with little success.
For example, Neo’s local counterpart Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI ) shared a video on Weibo yesterday of a blogger visiting some Black Myth: Wukong locations with the Li L7.
Both Blogger and Li Auto offered prizes to encourage Weibo users to retweet the video, but the cumulative retweets totaled more than 3,000.
As of today, there are still many Weibo threads about Li and Elder Jinji, many of which have been read by millions.
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