Investors of Black Myth talk about Web3 games: No passion, no possibility of creating good games.

Mihoyo’s Dawei Ge commented on a friend’s circle, ‘I’ll say it here: in the past five years, the most powerful investor in the Chinese gaming industry is Daniel, no doubt.’

The person who posted this WeChat moment is called Wu Dan (Daniel), who was the first person to invest in the game Myth of Empires: Wu Kong. Seven years ago, his company Hero Games invested 60 million yuan in Game Science and owned a 20% stake. Until Tencent’s investment in 2021, Hero Games was its only investor and largest external shareholder.

What everyone doesn’t know is that, in addition to a 60 million equity investment, Hero Games has also added at least one billion to the ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ project. This one billion also makes Hero Games the sole co-producer of ‘Black Myth: Wukong’.

Daniel’s circle of friends

In fact, from an investment perspective, the Kuro game, which is the blockbuster issuance “Ming Chao” in the first half of the year, may be Daniel’s most successful investment case. He has been adding funds since the first investment in 2017, and at one point held as much as 49% of the shares.

He is a strategist with unique vision, and truly a companion to the founder. He promptly invested one billion in the game science project ‘Black Myth: Wukong’, and assisted the Black Myth team in relocating to Hangzhou, where he found a secluded working place in the mountains. He even lent a car owned by his father in Hangzhou to the founder Feng Ji (Yocar) for his convenience in getting around Hangzhou.

After the launch of Black Mythology, Daniel wrote on his WeChat moments: Many people asked me how to invest in Black Mythology and Mingchao. I can’t really answer that because the methodology is so simple that there’s nothing much to say about it (to say more would just be showing off). It’s just a matter of human effort… as long as you have the right people. If there really is any methodology, it’s the teachers who introduced me to the investment industry, Teacher Xu, Teacher Wang, and Anna, who implanted in me some feelings and trust in people deep inside my heart. Whenever there’s a little achievement, I always miss the true master of the law.

In 2012, Daniel, who was working as an auditor at Deloitte, met Anna (Fang Aizhi, Founder and CEO of ZhenFund) at a dinner party.

Anna said, ‘After eating, he said he wanted to discuss something seriously with me. I thought to myself, we don’t have a budget and we still have to pay rent. Why is this handsome guy coming to us?’ But coincidentally, we were working on spreadsheets every day and needed someone to handle finances, and we could afford to pay his salary. So, okay, let him help us with some reports.’

At that time, Daniel liked to wear big shorts and slippers to work, 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, you just let him watch games, he can become the best game investor in China.

After a year and a half in the company, Daniel was promoted to the youngest vice president in the history of ZhenFund. During his three years at ZhenFund, he invested in ‘Superhero’, ‘National Gunfight’, and ‘Vanity’, which once accounted for 70% of the successful entrepreneurial team mobile games in the entire market. Later, he transitioned from an investor to an entrepreneur and co-founded Hero Games with Ying Shuling.

Last week, Daniel returned to ZhenFund and talked to us about the investment philosophy in the decision-making of “Black Myth: Wukong” and “Mingchao”. After so many years in the gaming industry, the key is still to “start from the individual”.

The following is an excerpt from the interview.

Daniel, who loves cooking, is making breakfast at Airbnb (left).

During his freshman summer vacation, he once studied in a hotel kitchen in Hangzhou.

Teacher Wang (right) said,

“Daniel’s scallion noodles are a must-eat for early investors in the real deal project”

01** ‘Apart from all commercial conditions, I think he becomes’

Q: Going back to that point in time, Yocar came out of Tencent’s ‘Fight God’ with his old colleagues. Was this a white horse project that everyone was fighting for?

Daniel: To be honest, at that time, it was a team that definitely had some people interested, but also definitely had some people uninterested (laugh). It’s a team with polarized evaluations. Looking back objectively, there should have been other companies offering, but neither the valuation nor the speed of payment made the team as excited as my offer did. Of course, my decision-making speed and payment speed were definitely influenced by ZhenFund. At ZhenFund, Teacher Xu once proposed a reform called ‘One Page TS (Term Sheet)’, which deeply influenced my investment style.

Looking back now, many people say that the Black Myth team is very capable and has worked on ‘Battle God’. However, if you understand the game industry, ‘Battle God’ was a project that spent so much money but had insufficient commercial returns. At that time, the only indicator for everyone to assess the capability of a game team was whether they could make money, whether they had strong commercialization abilities. This was definitely questioned by many people. But at the same time, their content ability and production experience also attracted many people.

Q: Why did it turn to Hero投? “Fight of Gods” was very famous in the industry at that time, but neither Tencent nor Netease invested.

Daniel: I think it’s a two-way choice. If the two big companies don’t invest, it’s either because they are slow in making decisions, or they don’t want to invest, or they can’t offer the valuation I’m looking for. There are possibilities behind all of this.

I believe that many people will think that the commercial ability of this team is not good, too idealistic. But in the end, making money does not entirely rely on commercial ability; to a certain extent, it relies on idealism. Or as the founder said, practical idealism.

But when I finished chatting, I was determined, resolute, and wanted to sign the contract and make the payment with the team immediately, the next second. The hero was not very famous at that time, and we were just a start-up company, a bit like the early stage of ZhenFund as a new fund. But the training ZhenFund provided me in the past let me know in that moment that I had to be fast, ruthless, and sincere enough to achieve what I wanted.

Q: What were the reasons for the decision to invest ‘firmly and resolutely’ at that time?

Daniel: When I finished chatting with Yocar, it was so rare. Such talent.

First of all, I was already doing hero work at that time, and during the process, I would delve into research and development. Delving into research and development helped me understand the ability of ‘industrialization level’, which is how to enable many people to exhibit sufficient coupling ability on a project, arrange the assembly line properly, and make production highly efficient.

At that time, I had a simple judgment, assuming that as the game progresses, industrialization level is the most important. The level of industrialization must be based on project experience. Without experiencing projects involving two or three hundred people, you will not have such industrial experience. It is very complex, involving understanding of pipelines, understanding of tools, and so on.

There are very few in China with such extensive project experience, Tencent’s ‘The King of Fighters’ and ‘Moonlight Blade’, NetEase’s ‘Revelation’, just these three or four major MMO projects, very few. This kind of project experience is 100% scarce.

Secondly, the first impression after chatting with him was that he is an all-rounder. He has a background in technology, art, planning, and operation in the game industry. To some extent, there will be shortcomings in all areas. But Yocar really understands it all. He has a strong sense of aesthetics, understands planning, knows some technology, and has a strong understanding in all aspects.

Then he is also very knowledgeable. Talking to him feels like talking to a biologist. In theory, he could have a PhD 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 Teacher Wang (Wang Qiang, co-founder of Zhenfund), he reads all kinds of books.

I don’t know what these things will eventually be transformed into. At that time, you couldn’t imagine that all of this would be realized in the product “Black Myth: Wukong”. But at that moment, I was very attracted. It’s just genius, all-around talent.

Q: What did you talk about during the first meeting? It is said that the conversation lasted for less than half an hour.

Daniel: The first time I met in Shenzhen, Yocar told me about the team’s history and the ideas behind the making of ‘Art of War: Red Tide’. His way of chatting is very strategic, and you wouldn’t think he’s a game producer. He always starts by saying, let me give you an example, today there’s ‘The Wandering Earth’, what does this prove? What kind of market should China theoretically have? It’s a way of talking about things from a macro to micro perspective.

There is also an interesting chat detail. The promotional videos for ‘God of War’ and ‘One Hundred Generals’ are of very high quality, like movies. I asked him, why can these films be shot so well? He said, do you know what I did in college? I was addicted to watching commercials in my dormitory every day, and I watched hundreds of them.

He is such a person. What kind of person is Yocar? Look at his Moments, recommending 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 poems, and if one day there is no rhyme in the Moments, there will be a lot of questioning comments asking why there is no rhyme today?

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

Daniel: After all, this brother is still a well-known person. I thought about it at the time, and in any case, I had to invest. Such talent is too scarce, such a team is too scarce, and such project experience is too scarce.

Actually, when suddenly encountering a 60 million project, you still have to grit your teeth. Deals in ZhenFund used to be in the range of several million… It’s like always doing angel investments, suddenly encountering an angel project that requires a Series B financing amount at that time.

Q: In fact, Hero Investment went for ‘War Art: Red Tide’, and the team hasn’t started ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ yet. How was the decision made to start the single-player project? Why was another 100 million given?

Daniel: Before the team officially made ‘Black Myth: Wu Kong’ in 2018, they made three products, from ‘Fighter of the Gods’ to ‘Bai Jiangxing’, and then to ‘Art of War: Red Tide’. Simply put, it took about 12 years, three to four years for a product, or maybe longer (the actual development time of ‘Fighter of the Gods’ is unknown).

Actually, at that time, after finishing the red tide, the team was in a relatively confused state, and there was not much money left in the account. We were chatting at the Xianggan Farm in Shenzhen, which is a great place to eat. I asked him what to do next?

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

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

To me, since this team can’t do commercial games and doesn’t want to do it that much, it’s better to try again what I like.

Actually, at that time, I was mainly based on several judgments, which are the major assumptions for this matter to succeed. 1) Assuming that the standalone market really exists and there is such a big opportunity. 2) Assuming that telling a good Chinese story will bring about a great era dividend. 3) Assuming that the team can really tell a good Chinese story and have the ability to produce AAA-level games.

Among them, 1), 2), the film industry has already taken the lead, verifying the feasibility of such a big story.

And 3), in fact, is the most important to me. That is, I deeply believe that this team has the ability to tell a good Chinese story and the ability to produce AAA games. I remember Yocar’s words at the time, ‘People must bind their careers to the rise of the nation and the nation, in order to gain the greatest momentum. This is the most basic sentiment and the most basic rationality’, which is his attitude towards this matter.

And in their previous works, they have shown an understanding of Chinese culture, a love for Chinese culture, and the ability to commercialize Chinese culture with their own aesthetic ability. This has convinced me that although AAA game production is challenging, they have the ability to achieve it.

Telling a good Chinese story is a big topic. Many people are fake, but he is real.

Q: How do you view the internal of the hero?

Daniel: Most of the company is still against me. In fact, after completing the red tide, there are still voices of opposition within the company against this team, at least the team that participated in the red tide project… Most of them have left Hero…

And to some extent, investing in projects at this level also means competing with the company’s internal project team for resources, after all, the company’s money is a limited resource.

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

Daniel: To some extent, it’s about you wanting him to succeed. As for Yocar, I set aside all business conditions, I want him to succeed.

If he fails, I will not be resigned either. In fact, there is such an emotion. This is also the real humanistic part that brings to me. I also really want something of Chinese culture to come out in this form at some point. I also really want to play such a game, and I firmly believe that this team can do it.

02**“The most difficult thing is his mentality”**

Q: Many people say that the success of Black Myth is a combination of timing, geographical advantage, and human factors.

**Daniel：**His timing is crucial. When we started this project, our initial idea was to combine the popularity of “Wolf Warrior” with the success of “The Wandering Earth”. We assumed that if a work with breakthrough technology and quality could emerge, it would definitely bring significant commercial success and national pride.

Journey to the West is a Chinese story. This team has made “Fighter God” before, and they are all Journey to the West scholars. Journey to the West scholar is also a word that the team taught me. To create an IP, the most time-consuming part is actually the setting of the worldview and the design of the art monsters. For example, if I draw a monster today, what does it look like? It requires a lot of research. So theoretically, if they continue to make a game in the same style, they will become more and more proficient.

At that time, the best-selling standalone game in the Chinese market was 100,000 traps. At that time, we estimated that ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ would sell 10 million traps (within three days of its release, the total sales of Black Myth: Wukong on all platforms exceeded 10 million)

The hardest part is that you really have to be able to make “The Wandering Earth”, that’s the strength of the team. But we judge that he has the strength.

Going forward, it’s all about taking a walk, trying it out, and constantly enduring hardships, exploring the process in the uninhabited area. The first film went out, and there were over 50 million views on B station, which is very good.

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

Daniel: The worst is plain and unremarkable. You sold, for example, one or two million shares.

What I am most worried about, from the perspective of investors, is that if you sell 100,000 copies, it doesn’t matter, you will know that this market does not exist. If you sell one or two million copies, it will be stuck in the middle, not enough money to make the next game, and the results are not enough to raise money for the next one. This is actually the most uncomfortable.

Q: As the founder of Yocar, what is the most critical trait?

Daniel: On the one hand, he really has a deep love for the country, as mentioned above. Both his desire to do this and his ability to do the product well are inseparable from his deep love for every aspect of the motherland. On the other hand, from my perspective, the most difficult aspect of a founder’s qualities is not actually how strong the R&D capabilities are, but rather his mindset.

When the traffic floods in, many people will be drawn to it. After the first video went out, it had over 50 million views, and then many people started looking for him. He told me, ‘Daniel, you help me block it all out. We need to block out all external interference now.’

At that time, they moved from Shenzhen to Hangzhou, why? It’s because of judgment, and the team’s mindset is also very important. I can’t be in Shenzhen today, digging you up alone. Hangzhou is a quiet and suitable city. Secondly, closing oneself off in a mountain in Hangzhou is actually very ‘hard.’ Once I went to Hangzhou to see him, and rode in his car. He said he could drive for three months with one tank of gas. Just think, I could finish a tank of gas in just a few days.

Game Science Hangzhou Studio

There is always a saying within them, completion is more important than excellence. It is also a saying that Yocar constantly emphasizes to me every time I visit them.

In the process of making games, subtraction must be constantly done, and there must be a sense of boundaries for the project. Many times, a project can last for ten years or the budget can be endlessly spent. In fact, from a professional game perspective, there may still be many problems with this game, and players may have many picky areas. But we are very clear that completion itself is a breakthrough.

The organization structure of Black Myth: Wukong has 7 partners. All interviews say that these 7 partners have been through hardships together. After so many years of hardships, they have never fallen apart. The large amount of content in the end is the result of everyone’s concerted efforts.

He even leveraged all the abilities of the hero. Before the launch, dozens of people from the entire issuance team voluntarily lived in Hangzhou with him for issuance. It’s hard to make a person live in another city for one or two months, but “Black Myth: Wukong” has this ability to unite you. He makes you feel like you are struggling for an ideal, which is a part of this ideal, and it feels very inspiring.

I also thought of a sentence that Teacher Xu said to the team back then, I forgot what the occasion was. He said that he had invested in so many companies, and often those entrepreneurs who really did well were grateful to him.

After finishing the game ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ today, players will see a long list. The list contains the names of many heroes, all of whom are people who helped the hero team when he was making ‘War Art: Red Tide’. Some of these people did not play a role in the online process of ‘Black Myth: Wukong’, but he is grateful to them. This may also be a part of his character, which is very heartwarming.

03**“The talent I follow is self-consistent”**

Q: When you are deciding whether to invest in a game team, what questions do you ask?

Daniel: Well, it’s like this. (Pauses and smiles, strategically takes a sip of water) When I was at ZhenGe, I was also curious about what other investors would ask. The most joyful thing at that time was going to meet with Anna and listening to the pros. I also went to listen to what the pros were talking about, and it felt like a great learning experience.

But when I actually started to be a hero myself, I found that investors and teams value two things. So I think it’s not about what I will ask in the end, but that you already have the level.

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

Because I only work in the gaming industry, I know too much about what everyone in this industry thinks. I am also in charge of hero development, issuance, and investment. Theoretically, I am in charge of all directions covered by games. When making investment decisions, this can drive a lot of things in a true sense.

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

Daniel: The most important ability that a game producer needs is macro thinking, regardless of whether it’s a single player or an online game.

There are many ways to play the game, and the systems, values, and so on are all nested and coupled with each other. You need to think about how to couple them right from the start, whether my target users are large or small. All the concept, art, and technology will be developed around this center. The most perfect state is that I made a project planning proposal today and listed five goals. After three years, when I look back, these goals have not changed. This is the most powerful, thinking very clearly from the beginning.

Most people only stay at the first level, ‘I want to create something fun.’ But if they can’t articulate the user group and system structure clearly, it means their thinking is incomplete, and they won’t make money. Games are most afraid of unclear thinking and rework.

Also, it depends on his game aesthetics. Game aesthetics will converge with the direction of the games he wants to make. Because his game aesthetics are the types of games he enjoys playing, the experience of game types determines to some extent his inclination in making games. If you read Wang Shuo all day long, what you write will be in this style. Soul-based games may be somewhat 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 '90 and had very little game production experience at the time. But I found that his aesthetic and visual sense are very suitable for making cool two-dimensional games.

If you are familiar with this field, at that time, most of the successfully verified second-dimensional games were Japanese-style Saillucia. However, there is also a big track for the second dimension with a slightly realistic style. No one was doing it at that time. Although this producer is young and has not made a complete game, he is very familiar and obsessed with this culture. More importantly, the way he thinks about problems is macroscopically complete and microscopically stunning, so he decisively invested.

Q: What are some things that can be determined at the first meeting?

Daniel: To some extent, it’s about the process of getting in touch. Actually, later on, I realized that, for example, when you talk about investment with someone today, I would suddenly mention that the price drops beneath their company without their knowledge, and then I would say, ‘Let’s take a smoke break or have a cup of tea.’ You need to casually chat in informal situations. This way, you can uncover more information.

Q: In the process of long-term contact with the founder, what do you think is good and what is not good?

Daniel: What I really observe all the time is whether they focus on their strengths and persist.

The first priority is to ensure the strategic level is very certain and not random. The gaming industry has a major characteristic: a strategy will impact you for at least three years. If you decide to develop a game today and assume it will cost 1 billion in the first year, if you change the strategic direction in the second year, the 1 billion will be wasted. Throughout this process, you must remind yourself that you cannot change due to any circumstances, and you cannot chase hot trends.

The second priority is to look at the organizational structure, which must conform to your production factors. Secondly, it is about looking at the relationship between the founder and the management, because what makes them happy? What makes them unhappy? Many small things are hidden in the heart, and suppressing them for a long time is not good. Paying attention to this kind of thing is very important, because this kind of thing directly affects the stability of the organization.

Q: From the beginning, when you first entered the game investment and struggled for more than ten years, do you think there has been a change in the perspective of a game team?

Daniel: Originally, in ZhenGe, the thing I followed the most was the team’s talent. Things are done by people, so at that time I only thought about people.

The talent I am following now is a self-consistent one. This self-consistency is crucial. It comes from many aspects, such as your recognition of this matter, the coupling between you and the investors, the organizational structure, such as the need for many people in this project, so the management ability must keep up. Whether it is to revolve around one thing, there must be several elements behind it. Break down the elements and see if this 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, your ambition for the product. The energy behind it is huge.

You must have such strong ambitions. Because the process is very, very hard. The gaming industry is the most overtime industry in the world, always working overtime, always making mistakes, always iterating in no man’s land.

Q: How do you recognize a person with such energy?

Daniel: It feels like talking to him. When he is nothing, he will think about who he wants to be, for example.

Q: What are your principles for investment?

Daniel: It must be very early, which may be related to the experience of working at Zhen Fund.

The issuance right of the first product should be given to me. Then continuous investment is crucial for deep funding. Only when these three points are combined, can you maximize profit.

Q: Everyone says it’s not good, but you think it’s a good project VS everyone says it’s a good project, which one do you prefer?

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

What I am most worried about is when everyone says it’s good. You will wonder why this opportunity is for you? Why does this project belong to you? Once there is strong competition, I will definitely withdraw.

Basically, every investment I make, when questioned by others, is met with a lot of skepticism, which makes me feel more secure. Of course, the premise is that I have had real experiences, and I have confidence and logic in the investment decisions I make.

***Q: It seems that you only invest in dark horses. Are there any successful investments in the gaming industry?

Daniel: There are not many pure white horses that have emerged in the gaming industry.

Assuming you are a white horse, it means you must have very strong successful works. Having strong successful works means you must have path dependence. Having path dependence means you are still competing with the traditional big companies in their areas of expertise.

What does it mean when an industry matures? It means that everything you want to roll up, big companies will spend ten thousand times the time or resources to roll with you.

Q: You came from VC to enter the industry, what advice would you give to investors from pure VC institutions now?

Daniel: Investment is a process of removing the ego. You have to be a blank sheet to truly understand others. My advantage is that I am naturally a blank sheet, and that’s my personality.

Sometimes you have thought about a direction a hundred times, and it may not be reliable. It may just be that the direction he is thinking at the moment is not reliable, but the person is reliable. You should avoid misjudgment 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 on the same level. I personally prefer to always maintain the initial level of looking at people. If you slowly start to look up at this person, it may be time for you to add a note.

Q: You mentioned that you don’t have much time to play games now, and you only play a little for fun. When you use yourself as a ruler to measure the team, how do you maintain the sharpness of this ruler?

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

The prerequisite for good product aesthetics is human aesthetics. We still need to understand many dimensions of humans.

04**“The investment opportunities for the next era of gaming will be better judged in two or three years.”**

Q: In the gaming industry for so many years, what did the biggest hits do right?

Daniel: I think the biggest hot sellers are all because you did what others couldn’t do. It was the case with “Genshin Impact” back then, and it’s the same with “Black Myth: Wukong” today.

Because the game industry is not rocket science, it can be done in many years. The difficult part is 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’s not replicable. The original team is also very difficult to replicate. What this team can do, others can’t. The gaming industry relies heavily on talent, just like the film industry relies on directors.

In my personal opinion, it is difficult for younger developers today to create this type of single-player game. Why?

Games like Black Myth require a high level of cultural accumulation for an individual as a whole. Older developers, who have experienced more changes in the times and more life experiences, have more accumulation. The younger generation grows up in a relatively smooth and happy environment, and they cannot create games with a sense of heaviness like this. Looking ahead, in another ten years, the young generation inspired by ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ today may only be fifteen or sixteen years old and say, ‘I want to create something like this.’ That’s possible.

The investment opportunities in the next era of gaming can only be judged after two or three years. For now, I’m basically not investing in any of them.

Q: You’re not investing (in external gaming startups) now, so what are you doing?

**Daniel：**I am now very focused on doing hero games. I have been working on my own project, now more than 2000 people.

Because you have a great positive feedback in investment, you will want to have a work of your own. Of course, this is also related to objective laws. The stage that hero games go through may be the same as the stage that the Black Mythology team experienced when they were making “War God”. The rule that the game industry cannot escape is the need for accumulation and precipitation. I will now spend more time letting the hero team accumulate and precipitate on the right things.

Q: What have you been waiting for in the past two or three years?

Daniel: After two or three years, AIGC will become a significant variable and should bring about a new round of investment ideas and changes. However, at present, AIGC has not formed in a meaningful way. 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, AI games, but it seems difficult for them to come out in the end.

Daniel: I feel that it’s always a game plus something else.

Anytime. I just said you should follow the team and not be deceived by some new directions. I have seen a lot of game industry entrepreneurs who started doing Web3 after it 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 simple truth.

Many people ask me, do we need to create a Vision Pro game? I said we don’t need to create a Vision Pro game, because our ability to endure hardship and exercise every day is the production capacity of content creation. It is both about quality and efficiency.

Assuming that Vision Pro really becomes popular, it will provide the best content based on my quality and efficiency. It’s not about providing good enough content by doing it early. There are two logics. Like in the early years, everyone was saying to invest in a mobile gaming company and overthrow Tencent in the future. It’s not going to happen. In the end, Tencent still dominates this market because of its production quality and efficiency, it’s just that this market has matured.

What you need to grasp is what big companies cannot achieve. Either big companies cannot attract talents like those from the second dimension, or they lack the organizational efficiency to do so. In fact, you just need to follow these.

05**“Enough pain for oneself, but to give hope to everyone”

***Teacher Wang: In the past, in ZhenGe, we thought you were a person of temperament, a very gentle and shining child. But as such a person, later to YingXiong, now managing more than 2000 people, becoming a unique number one. From entering ZhenGe as a game investor, to founding a company, becoming a CEO, what is your greatest growth?

Daniel: The greatest growth is actually painful enough.

I used to be a very easygoing person, sitting with my legs crossed during meetings, and the team didn’t feel any pressure. Now I’m not in this state, and I will try my best not to laugh.

You will realize that many things have to be done in a very cruel way. When the company was transforming, I fired hundreds of people right away. During that time, I even turned off my phone. The pain lies in the fact that someone’s wife in the team would send you a message saying, ‘My child is only a few years old, why do you have the right to treat me like this?’

Once you go through this transformation, you will gradually find some feelings. When firing employees, it should be done all at once instead of doing it in stages, as it will continuously drop the morale of the entire company. By doing it all at once, the remaining employees will know it won’t be me.

In the whole process of company management, what you find most difficult is actually finding your own weaknesses, or in other words, what is most difficult is always how to better understand yourself and how to cooperate with yourself. For example, although I may appear strict today, I am not someone who can exert pressure on the team internally, so I will leave it to someone who can push.

Suppose in this company I am a Liu Bei, the people cooperating with me must be like Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, people who can take a beating. Strategists just don’t work for me, you must be a military general. Also, because I am not a harsh person, I will not beat anyone, which means those who work with me for a long time must be self-motivated. I don’t like to spend too much time teaching and leading people.

In recent years, I have experienced a major cycle transition in Hero. There have been significant internal adjustments and adjustments in mindset. For me, it is important to determine the specific direction first, and then adjust the mindset, allowing a small group of people to become rich first, and then using this group to influence the rest of the people. Slowly, this feeling of positive and upward influence is forming within the company. For me, my investment is to allow a small group of people to become rich and drive the team’s influence internally. It is a benchmark, and of course, these benchmarks have become significant, possibly benchmarks for the industry as a whole…

Now I write an internal letter to the company every year. During the Spring Festival, I stay at home and write internal letters, and I slowly feel the changes in my thinking.

Actually, this is also what I learned from Zhen Ge. Didn’t Teacher Xu also write letters before? The power of words is far greater than that of the mouth. After writing more, I found that I can still write, and I can really write.

In 2017, why can’t we be a publisher today, we need to transform. In 2018, why do we want to make certain types of games, how do we do it? In 2019, how our organization transforms from a small team to an industrial management team. In 2020, what we need to pay attention to during the transformation process, as well as the changes in the external world, and so on. Write consistently every year.

Why are big companies easier to manage? Do all the players of King of Glory work overtime every day? People in the gaming industry can’t compete with big companies because they have a clear trickle-down effect. Everyone at Tencent knows that if a project team earns so much money, everyone will work as hard as him.

Entrepreneurial teams don’t have this capability because if you don’t have someone who is already wealthy, you have to create one yourself. For me, I rely on investments and the power of the ecosystem. In a way, Tencent probably did the same thing. They started by relying on investments, such as the Four Little Dragons, League of Legends, Dungeon Fighter Online, and CrossFire. This then drove internal transformation and achieved their current dominance. When I first started working on Heroes, I studied a lot of their strategies and ideas.

You have to come down layer by layer like this, first of all, you can’t be in a hurry. You have to find the law of development of this thing, you have to be especially patient. You have to observe them, accompany them, and then develop like this.

Q: What impact will ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ have on the hero genre?

Daniel: It has no significant impact. We have refined a strong issuance capability during the process. As a co-producer, much of the issuance work is done by us. For example, how to select KOL and KOC? How to collaborate with different industries? By doing these, we have actually gained a lot of experience improvement.

This process has taught us a lot. For example, we now have a trapAlgorithm for the entire KOL management, forming a trapAlgorithm for ourselves. Based on the logic behind the number of views, people, and so on, we can accurately calculate which KOL’s live streaming sales effect is the best. In fact, this is very helpful for all the games we will do in the future. You must go through an issuance of such a game product, to try, to be able to figure it out, to polish your Algorithm.

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

Daniel: My way is to chat with more people, and try my best to chat with the most talented people. Of course, I also love reading books.

Q: What is your greatest talent?

Daniel: I think my biggest talent is shamelessness.

Let me tell you a story. No one knows this story, I’m telling it for the first time today. When I first came to ZhenGe, I was given a business card that said ‘analyst’. But at that time, the gaming industry was already booming, and my challenge was to meet the industry’s big bosses and sell them games. So, I printed a business card for myself, calling myself a ZhenGe partner. I still have this business card until now, haha. You have to figure it out on your own.

For example, when I first met Anna, I took the initiative to say can you recruit me? Shamelessly sells himself to Anna.

Teacher Wang: I know about the business card. Do you know why? Once you took me to Shanghai to meet a foreign student, and you showed me this business card. I said you used it quietly, haha. Teacher Xu didn’t know either.

Anna:? (Looking shocked, she turns to everyone and says) Don’t you guys learn bad habits!

**Daniel：**Yes, I got to know Zhou Yahui in this way. So you still have to come up with some tricks yourself, this is very difficult to teach directly. Haha.

Mr. Wang: Daniel himself is also a case study of the philosophy of true investment. So Anna: You brought Daniel pump in at the time, how did you tell that? ***

Anna: I’ve been joking because his salary is cheap.

But it’s definitely not because of that. First of all, I really think that at that time, I would be willing to let anyone who wanted to join ZhenFund in. Until now, all of us still only have ZhenFund in our eyes, and we definitely won’t apply for other jobs. You said you want to make money, then you can go to a large institution. You must love this thing, love angel investment.

After Daniel joined ZhenGe, he always played games and didn’t write memos. Then, Teacher Xu asked Daniel to do game investment. Through Teacher Xu, I learned how to observe people and find their shining points based on their talents. People should not do what they don’t want to do.

Teacher Xu truly changed Daniel’s direction. What I regret is that he was taken away by Lao Ying to do what he is really good at: starting a gaming company.

(Daniel continued to share two hours of unreleased content)

In 2012, Truth was only two years old when it was team building in California, USA

Daniel is in the C position