With the global success of Black Myth: Wukong, images of a character resembling Nio’s CEO have gone viral, giving Nio unexpected fame.
One of the most discussed topics in China this week was the global success of Black Myth: Wukong, a video game created by a local team.
The game’s huge success has attracted many companies and local tourism authorities who want to capitalize on the game’s popularity to market their products or tourist destinations.
Electric car maker Nio (NYSE: NIO) had no intention of capitalizing on the game’s popularity, but it turned out to be the biggest winner.
On August 20, the day Black Myth: Wukong officially opened to users, a comment began circulating widely about a character in the game who looked similar to Nio founder and CEO William Li.
After that, images of the character, Elder Jinchi, next to Li’s profile picture began to circulate widely, and a line from the game was changed to relate to Nio.
Also on August 20, Nio held its Power Up 2024 event to unveil plans to build charging and battery swapping facilities.
Lee was focused on Nio’s event at the time, trying to attract more partners to build EV infrastructure with the company, and apparently had never heard of the game.
During a live video broadcast on the evening of August 20, Lee was asked several times about the game and whether Neo vehicles supported its gameplay. At that time, he also asked the team members what the game was about and who the producers were.
As Black Myth: Wukong continues to gain more momentum, images of Elder Jinchi resembling Li continue to go viral and give Nio’s brand more exposure.
Li himself seems to have received a lot of the photos shared with him by his friends, as he stated in the comments section of one of his Weibo posts yesterday that he had received a lot of such photos and urged people to support the masterpieces created by local teams in various fields.
Black Myth: Wukong is an action role-playing game developed and published by the Chinese company Game Science.
The game is inspired by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and centers around an anthropomorphic monkey inspired by Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, from the novel.
Elder Jinchi is the hidden boss in Black Myth: Wukong, and players must complete a secret quest to reach him.
The game is one of China’s rare successes in this field, with the number of concurrent players on Steam exceeding one million players just one hour after its release.
Last night, Black Myth: Wukong reached a new record of nearly 2.36 million concurrent players on Steam.
In addition to the game’s good reception by players, it is also an important platform for more overseas users to learn about Chinese culture. Therefore, state-owned media outlets, including the People’s Daily, have expressed high praise for the game.
At the regular press conference held by the Chinese Foreign Ministry yesterday, a reporter mentioned the game, and Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning made the following comment:
I don’t know much about video games, but thank you for bringing this game to my attention. The name of this game suggests that it is inspired by the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West”. I think this reflects the appeal of Chinese culture.
Some car companies have tried to capitalize on the popularity of Black Myth: Wukong to market their products, but with little success.
For example, Nio’s domestic counterpart Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) yesterday shared a video on Weibo of a blogger visiting some Black Myth: Wukong locations using a Li L7.
Both the blogger and Li Auto offered prizes to encourage Weibo users to reshare the video, but the total reshares amounted to just over 3,000.
Even today, there are still many threads on Weibo about Li and Elder Jinzhi, many of which have been read by the millions.
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