Exploring miHoYo, The Past and Present | Asmongold Reacts 

One of the things they definitely spent a lot of money on is the fucking music. These guys hired the London Orchestra team to make the music for the 'German region', the Shanghai Orchestra team to do 'Chinese region', etc. They also hired professionals who know how to play exotic instruments from Japan, India, the Middle-east etc. The production value is insane. Their composer is also very gifted (read that as 'probably expensive').

Honestly, in comparison to other companies, Mihoyo is.. well, incomparable. - They built a school in a rural impoverished area. - They donate to autism support, legal support, education, animal preservation, and organization promoting art in children according to videos on their Bilibili page. - They donated a huge number of masks and surgical garments to hospitals and the red cross. Toys and pillows to children's hospitals. Food and other such things for employees. - They invested $65 million in nuclear fusion devices to contribute to Energy Singularity's Tokamak research to reduce carbon emissions. Nearly the same amount they spent on developing Genshin, used to revolutionize renewable energy for the world. - Working with hospitals on brain-computer technology development for depression. - Creating an industry defining VR world for a billion people by 2030. - Helping set up a VA agency in China for young VA artists through funding and opportunities. The founders of this agency, along with many of the young artists went on to get huge roles in Honkai Impact 3rd and Genshin Impact. - Buying hundreds/thousands of PS5s and other tech to give to their staff for free. - Offering some of the best working conditions in the tech and gaming industry: anti 336 work culture (crunch in the west), people bring cats/pets into office, high salary, flat organizational structure where the founders are literally working in the same open space as everybody else. Half of these things (VA agency, building a school, welfare for autism support, legal support, education, animal preservation, work conditions for employees) were already in place even before they became a billion dollar company with Genshin Impact. Their slogan from when they were just three university students in 2013 was “Tech Otakus save the world”, and they’ve proved their commitment to that phrase time and time again. It’s inspiring to say the least. Whether people like them or not, nobody can deny that they’re incomparable to any other game developer.

Huge respect to Mihoyo, I can't believe they went from Honkai Gakuen to Honkai Impact 3rd to Genshin in the same decade

Honestly. the way Mihoyo was able to grow from 3 college graduates to making one of the most recognized games in the world in under a decade is just mindblowing. It's insane how popular Genshin is and how big Mihoyo became as a result of its popularity. Edit: Also akashoT is amazing, I'm so glad he's getting the recognition he deserves. A few other things to note: Mihoyo is actually one of Tencent's biggest competitors and is one of the few game devs in China that have no affiliation with Tencent whatsoever. Tencent attempted to buy MHY at one point IIRC and they refused, which is why Tencent allegedly has a grudge against MHY and funded development of Tower of Fantasy as a "Genshin killer". Obviously that didn't turn out too well for them. I also think Genshin is legitimately a step in the right direction when it comes to the mobile gaming industry. While many will argue that gacha is predatory by nature, the way Genshin (and many other asian gachas like Arknights or Azur Lane) do microtransactions is a lot healthier IMO. You don't see any ads or popups nagging you to spend, spending doesn't give you any competitive advantage, and everything in the game is easily completable as an F2P- in fact I'd argue the game is balanced around F2P investment and whaling essentially breaks the game balance. It's a far cry from the "nickle-and-dime" mobile games like Candy Crush or Zynga games that are essentially dressed-up cash cow machines that don't respect your time and money. Like Gigguk once said, "it's not pay to win, it's pay to waifu".

29:34 If Zack's genuinely asking, if you want to know whatever the fuck the budget went, just look at advertising they did (Japan, South Korea, Europe, South East Asia) the music behind the game (they hired a bunch of orchestras around the world to do their music) the gigantic roster of voice actors they have to pay in four different languages and obviously your usual game development shenanigans (research, art design, programming etc)

There's no chance in hell Asmon would complete the story of Genshin. That shit is already like a hundred hours long and it isn't even complete.

Kinda rough that about 50% of his video is about Genshin. I personally think that Honkai also derserves a part since it's mihoyo's 2nd biggest game.

When it comes to the story, personally I felt the first part was very generic and childish even but it gets better. Especially on Sumeru (the 4th nation) you can really see the attention to detail. The lore is very interesting too if you dig deeper enough. Its lore is scattered everywhere in the world and they don't just shove it to your face(unlike the main quest sometimes).

*Genshin Impact* is so bloody expensive to develop because they keep introducing per version all these _one-off_ events and fully-acted storyline quests and mini games with their own unique mechanics. If you weren't around back then to experience those, they're mostly gone forever (some might return due to popularity but with different flavour). It's just insane how much throw-away wastage this game has.

MiHoYo is a lot of thing, but wasting their profit into executive yatch is not one of them. They are a rare company that put majority of their profit back into growth of company, they keep growing because of that. Unlike a lot of companies that wasted their profit on executive bonus and corruption in general.

My favorite thing about Genshin specifically is how it reference cultures all around the world. I watch a video from them about how the Chinese composer work with Japanese musicians for the in game music for the Japan-inspired zone and it was really wholesome

You wonder why all of a sudden, every people online got ultra mad at mihoyo at 2020？ It's because of tencent. Very simple, although some other gaming companies would also love to make mihoyo look bad but It's mainly tencent who does the dirty work under the light, buying views, hiring people to talking shit about genshin impact.

Just the fact they can rival Lasengle's Fate Grand Order is impressive, in that short of time specifically

Bro, I bought like 5 iPhone games over my life time (because I’m still not into mobile gaming) and the Flyme2theMoon game was one of them. Played the shit out of that game. Never thought in a million years I’d see it mentioned randomly years later in a Asmongold react lol.

A big chunk of the $100 million probably went into salaries. 120 people worked on Genshin at the start of 2017. That number grew to 400 people by the end of the year., For comparison: The Witcher 3 cost ~$81 million dollars and it started with 150 employees which grew to 250. Yes The Witcher looks more techically impressive but we have to keep some things in mind. Genshin is a mobile game and optimizing this game for mobile devices probably took some recources and time. Another important thing to mention is Genshin's level if polish even on release. In 2 years of playing I have not experianced a single gamebreaking bug or heard of bugs being a problem for players. Worst bugs I have experianced is not being able to complete a minor side quest. Thats really impressive for a game that gets updated every 6 weeks. Edit: Also marketing is way more expensive than people realize and its obvious that they put alot of money into Marketing

17:26 "How did you spend so much money?" Because Mihoyo has a great development team, they improve the game engine, they publish articles, and they have so many technical patents. All of these cost money. By the way, in QS World University Rankings, Shanghai Jiaotong University is a top 100 Uni. In an interview, Liu Wei said "Unfortunately, I got a postgraduate recommendation". Cai Haoyu played computer games at the age of 5, won the second prize for animation at the age of 8, and was named one of the first 13 small academicians in China at the age of 12. All the founders are geniuses, that's why Mihoyo is successful.

It was pretty funny when people were freaking out about Genshin. As if Zelda invented stamina bars. They took some ideas but that is how the industry works. What is important is that games do enough to stand out as their own thing. Which Genshin does. As for where all that money went, they are currently making two new games while continuing to update Honkai and Genshin.

25:08 "What's inside his mind? Nothing, bro. It's like a bird cage and the bird's dead inside the brain." Lost my shit right here

mihoyo takes "tech otakus save the world" very literally btw, its not JUST anime girls. search up all the stuff theyve invested in. a lot of the stuff they put money into also feel similar to Honkai. things like rocket ships, schools, something called energy fusion etc i think its pretty cool

Well one of the things that made them much money from the characters is the effort they give to their demos... Definitely should react to them chronologically before playing.

I remember the launch date of Honkai on the App Store. I was immediately drawn to the game. Prior to it, I obviously played Gun Girl Z, briefly. I will be honest, miHoYo is goated for a gacha game maker company. The amount of detail they had in Honkai alone as far as mobile games go was simply absurd. Even when fortnite mobile beta was available, there wasn't many games like Honkai Impact 3rd. The story, the voice acting, the cinematics, the characters... I'm talking about a story so good (with insane animated cinematics from a chinese company), you would question why you cried at FF14 story. I really enjoyed Genshin too but Honkai is a better experience than Genshin if you value multiplayer experience as well as challenging combat.

I just want him to react to all the character demos already!

You have a great point with the battle royale phase, every gaming company is looking at Genshin as a way for themselves to make money, we are going to see a LOT (both good and horribly bad) of these kinda of games coming up in the future. These poor otakus....

i still dont understand why ppls think mihoyo games are like diablo immortal, here the fact, i just use genshin since everyone know genshin compared to diablo immortal >no pop up asking you to buy stuff >no paywall, free characters can finish the story just fine >no pvp or competition or rank based so no pay to win >only pvp is card mini games and all the cards are free i just find it annoying ppls keep bashing it without even know anything about it and learn stuff from false misinformation echo chamber just because the game are made in china

My respect for Mihoyo increased greatly Gigchad anime fans making a game for anime fans

The video unfortunately skipped alot about the honkai impact game. It is insane. Animation and story wise. Even the music is top tier

Cost 100 million to make, then makes it back in just two weeks... that's insane.

Anime is peak stylized graphics, it will never get old at this point so it's here to stay. Also, a lot of people played ToT. Shockingly.

Sad how he didn't cover about how Tencent tried buying mihoyo after they released Genshin Impact and was flat out rejected then Tencent got so salty they went on smear campaign for 2 years like paying journalist to write articles about Genshin painting it in bad light and encouraging their low level development studios to rip off in-game assets from mihoyo's game.

Looking forward to the genshin streams now 👌 Glad you watched this vid, didn't really know who MiHoYo were uptil now 😅

I played both Botw and Genshin, pretty much the only thing they copied from BTW was the glider and being able to climb almost any surface.

He doesn’t even realized what he’s about to do to himself - he’s gonna be like when squidward ate krabby Pattie’s for the first time

I can speak English and Spanish and I read this as "Exploring my hole".

asmon needs to react to the character demos first

The Zelda fangirls that were crying about Genshin being a clone with stolen assets, are on the same level of intelligence as the Dark Souls fangirls saying that every action rpg is a Souls-like. Two of the most toxic communities in gaming. And Genshin even in version 1.0 was better than BotW. Right now (3.4), BotW can't even be compared to Genshin, the later is worlds above the first at absolutely every single metric (story, writing, lore, characters, world & exploration, level design, gameplay, combat, soundtracks, visuals, content, and everything else).

I'm actually dreading the start of the game. I saw the appeal of the game early on, but the game didn't really pick up for me until the end of Liyue. I was invested after the Golden House onwards.

I downloaded Genshin and have only played it like 3 or 4 times really, the game is not really for me, but the game is surprisingly smooth like there’s something about a smoothly running game that is very appealing imo because most games today don’t run smoothly.

When he reacts to Zhongli and Raiden Shogun demo...that'll be the best

as a DOS3 fan, I hate people saying Genshin is a BOTW clone, it's just feels like they never play any other game

I love that time in Genshin Impact when they say "It's Genshin Time!"

"So yes we will play Genshin Impact..." - Asmon 2022

I've played both of the games a lot BoTW and Genshin (as an almost F2P, around 25-30$ spent at most in almost 2 years), and i have to say that people who consider both games similar are just blind and brainless. The only thing they have in common is the climbing mechanic, that they are open world games and use stamina metter for sprints(these last 2 not a BoTW invention). The type of quest, story, gameplay mechanics, weapons and items, and many other aspects can't be more different to one another. My experience with Genshin is the following, I got lucky in the beginning and got a decent 5* in the free pulls they give you (the very hard characters to get without paying) and it carried me through the game so i didn't feel tempted to spend money to get others and i have to say that if you are not a trend victim you get a fair ammount of gacha resources as a F2P (although you have to play a lot) so i have been able to get many other 5* without expending almost any money, but i had to be cool minded and save for the ones i wanted to get passing some others. Here i see the problem with more hot headed people or trend victims who need to have all that gets promoted because the only way is paying money and a lot of it and this can develop an addiction. Gameplay wise i think their combat system is very interesting and deep, all the characters are different from each other so the styles of the compositions play very differently with the different combinations with each character and the elements, i would describe it as easy to learn hard to master, and also most cheap characters (4*) are really really good anyways so haveing the expensive ones(5*) is more a luxury than a necessity most of the time because you can clear everything without expending money. The story is decent, the world is interesting to explore and the puzzles are ok to make you interact with the open world. Got into genshin bcs of the open world and BoTW comparissons so i'm satisfied in this aspect. It gets also many upgrades and events that add mini-games that some of them are fun to play. I'm mixed with this type of games because for a kid or a hot headed person this game can be a serious problem if they can't control themselves and start spending money they should not because the game constantly gets updated with new "shiny" and "awesome" things and encourages the desire of obtaining the new character or weapon released hence creating addiction in weak minded people. I consider the game as a whole to be objectively good despite the gatcha system but very dangerous for kids or weak minded people.

"when i try genshin ill play the story" hes gonna drop it just as hard as he dropped FF14 lol

As a Honkai and Genshin player I don't think you will regret going through the Genshin story. That is a lot of content to catch up on

As far as I know, mihoyo has at least four projects in development right now, and only two of them have been announced. And they have a bigger plan to develop using technologies such as deep learning AI for example. genshin is just the beginning for them.

I honestly wish a lot of that money went to the people who make the music for this game. Coz a lot of us criticize many parts of genshin, but everyone can agree - the music is just superior. Also looking forward to the Genshin playthrough, I genuienly wonder about his objective opinion on this game, too many people hate on it for no real reason and on the other side - too many people overhype it. It is a solid game, that is fun, but ain t gonna chang your life (well unless you stream it coz for streamer that genshin money is lifechanging).

"Where did all that money go?" Well currently they have multiple new games in development, 2 of which we already know, Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. They also greatly improved Honkai 3rd. There's also stuff like Concerts and anime adaptations. Also, Honkai Impact 3rd has a game mode called APHO, which is basically Devil May Cry. And the thing is, that game mode is completely free. The main game has no effect on that game mode. Hell, you can't spend money for that game mode even if you wanted to. It's literally a literally an entire game mode which essentially could be it's own separate game, and miHoYo was like, "Here have this. This literally makes us no money but have it anyways and we'll be making more of it in the future." Rather than losing quality because it makes them no money, it actually even have higher quality in a lot of areas than the main game.

1:42 finally, the correct way to say "liyue" (sort of)

Honkai team: Makes one of the best stories in gaming Sends physical artbooks to your house on anniversary Gets you to sing in their concert along with the staff Refuses to elaborate Simply built different

I recommend doing a reaction video to honkai impact 3 animations and lore videos, besides loving watching them myself i don't think you'd be dissapointed, not only am i certain that it will we get a lot of views (even the smallest channels can get at least thousands of views by doing a simple reaction video) you will see that Honkai Impact 3rd is about so much more then just pretty anime waifus, the effort put in the story, lore and characters is simply amazing. The animations and music themselves are simply some of the best out there as well (in this category it actually outshines genshin in production value & quality even to this day). If by some chance you are interested in this please give me a chance to create the perfect playlist for you to watch the animations in a chronological way that makes sense (and with a JP dub which will make most of the watchers more comfortable :p).

I still remember playing Gun GirlZ on my old iPhone 4. Started playing to get that Miku Leek melee weapon, but never even realized there was a gacha system.

Another great point, people "stealing" concepts is nothing new. Artistic and culturual appropriation has always been a core aspect of creating new art, IP, games, etc. Playstation guy might be upset, but the reality is that theres now a newer game that is similar to the one you love playing, that should be a win. There are plenty of google search suggestions that are something along the lines of "console/pc games similar to ______". I don't support greedy practices by these games, but I get excited to play games with familiar mechanics that I enjoy playing

Where the hell does all the 100m development money go? Quality... Quality Graphics, Quality Soundtrack, Quality Anime Tiddies.

The botw statements were probably based around the fact that in their first beta tests, designs were "obtained" from botw; though to be fair, it has long been since they changed them. Many of these claims at release probably weren't even made by people that played botw

Bro, Honkai Impact is fucking incredible. Just gonna say that now. Early game is slow, but they explain the world. After chapter 9, we start to really see it kick into gear. Then it punches you in the gut repeatedly to force the waterworks open. I mean tears, not piss.

wow, it will be very interesting to see Asmon play this game

This is one of the rare cases where you can clearly see where all the money goes. Not just in the existing games, but all the stuff around as well as new projects.

Started playing genshin because my ex show me a video of amber shooting arrow to the sky and it looks like a shooting star. Still play genshin impact but where are those who share the memories.

That part of the video where frank Sinatra show up on the Google search always cracks me up haha

In the part where BOTW fans are hating on Genshin, I pretty much didn’t mind it. Simply because I didn’t have any access to BOTW, I ain’t rich enough to buy a Switch. Heck even my phones are just hand-me-downs. Point is, I like BOTW. Heck, I watched a lot of gameplays of it because I can’t play it so when Genshin came out and it is on mobile, consoles and even pc, I had to play it. It was simply because I have an easier access to it than BOTW

People just don't realize and appreciate what this company has done for its community. The game was made to create a unique open-world experience involving a protagonist to go on a journey to look for clues and track down an enemy god who took their sibling. Along the way, they are met with countless friendly people and a variety of cultures and landscapes that are based in real life. Each region has their own distinct national identity that were inspired by reality where players get to have a taste of its culture. Players for the longest time have been loving these cultures from every nation as well as the characters, the music, the story, and the gameplay. The gameplay is not as bad as some people make it out to be. It's rated among the best games in the world currently for a reason. It's just simply that good of a game, and one you should definitely try. Edit: Oh look! A crying loser replied!

The most surprising thing is that Genshin would update its contents with quality every 42 days, which has never changed since its release. I have witnessed so many delays and bugs for the 3A games but mihoyo's project management is really impressive.

Back in the day,Mihoyo got blamed by Tencent for "Copying Honkai Impact 3rd for Genshin"

I am actually so happy asmongold has watched log horizon

This video is kinda outdated, by now they have moved their HQ to singapore as far as i know to escape chinese censorship. They also heavily reinvest the huge amounts of money they are making and you can really see it. free concerts with actual orchestras, theyre making an anime, working on like 5 new games, content flow in genshin like no other game has it. seriously, a huge patch every 6 weeks which they made EVEN faster recently and is now more like 4 to 5 weeks, and an actual "expansion" every year. genshin is on track to become the most expensive game in history, costing 200 million a year in development. all while they are still fucking degens and want to make some kind of swort art online weeb vr world, im sure they are working on that with the money genshin generates.

Sooooo Shift Up literally uses the same marketing strategy as Mihoyo for their success ... there's no way out of this bois, anime was born and is here to stay now forever with us

Awesome video asmon, I have a feeling noelle will be your favorite character to play as.

the game has a lot of production value, I'm not sure how much of that money goes back into the game but seeing all the stuff they make, it cant be a small part.

Hey I got a question: When I'll be leveling in chromie timewalking campaign (10-60) and I'll hit lvl 60 WHEN I DON'T OWN DRAGONFLIGHT willl I be teleported to capital city and won't be able to finish my chosen expansion like it was before or I can stay there and be happy?

This is probably the first game where there has literally no problems with servers running simultaenously and is still smooth on top of that in all device platforms. I hardly remember genshin having a server failure. Probably majority of the budget went on that. Plus, the bugs are too minimal and the cheats are non-existent. There are a good 50% of games that are literally unplayable because of server traffic and games that are just full of exploits so genshin is far from bad tbh. I'm not gonna talk about stories, gameplays and such since it's subjective but from a dev perspective, the way the game was coded is closer to flawless. Maybe aside from security since it's not always going to be reliable given at how many viruses are invented everyday but every other games just suffer as much if not more anyways. About the BoTW argument, meh I can't say that games right now are even original. I'm pretty sure Elden Ring didn't invent horse mounts either. I'm just glad they took inspirations from it with the environment and mechanics since games now tend to lean on futuristic genre. It's safe to assume that this is pretty much a love letter to botw and it succeeded just how stardew valley was a love letter to harvest moon.

If and when asmon decides to play genshin i'd love to see him play honkai impact 3rd aswell to experience how amazing the story is not to mention the short cinematic's spread out in the story which are really high quality, the music is pretty decent to especially in the cinematic's, it is one of the few games that has made me cry multiple times from the story.

Great to see him using Lost Pause playing Nekopara clips.

I'm interested to see if Asmon enjoys Genshin

Ah yes, a free game being expensive. I guess I just have a lot of self control.

BOTW fans: why is there no games similar to BOTW?? i need more...... Genshin (a game with similar features) got announced BOTW fans: HOW DARE YOUUUUU

How did they spend $100million? People tend to forget that every worker has a salary lol. Mihoyo grew their team to hundreds of people who worked on Genshin for 3 years before releasing it. Assuming they all make shit $50K salary for 400 people that is $60mil right there. Then look at the insane production value of their music, the way they send their workers out into nature to gather inspiration for region building etc. It’s easy to imagine where all the money goes.

I just want to see Asmon react to all the Honkai Impact 3 cinematics....

Devs like these make the world a better and more cultured place. Looking forward to their future games.

There's a lot of story in Genshin Impact. Some of which are limited time events, so if you want everything explained you need to watch vids on the events for all the story.

I think asmon should react to all the character trailers of genshin cause it's extra content and creates more hype for the eventual genshin stream he will be doing

anime is not a game type it's a style, you can basically have any game type in the style of anime, that's why it won't fall for long long time

Funny that asmon doesn’t think the anime girl gacha vampire survivors doesn’t already exist

asmon gonna play the same time as lantern rite :v that's quite the timing

I still remember that TV logo youtube had I was a little kid at the time

This is also why a lot of dumb players see a new game and say "that game stole something from another game" when there's no barely any new game out there that's 100% unique or have direct similarities from previous released games. I bet there are a lot of dumb Genshin player out there that are gonna say "Blue Protocol is copying Genshin." when they see the gameplay and act as if Genshin was innocent in not copying a lot of its systems from previous released games from the beginning. I like and still play Genshin but you can't really ignore that they obviously copied A LOT of things which was obvious at launch so players shouldn't really yell on other games for it when the game they play themselves did it in the first place.

We won boys, we got him to play Genshin. Let's F ing GOOOOO!!!! POGGIES

One of the reason why so much money been pour into the development of Genshin before it even released, was becasue Mihoyo had no experience design an open world game, the try and error phase cost them quite the fortune

"Where did that money go" I guess towards world design, big ass updates every 6 weeks, music made in some grand orchestras around the world. Oh, and probably mostly towards optimalization, because it runs flawless on 5 different platforms that can be seamlessly connected with each other. Finding a bug in this "indie gacha game" is harder than finding another AAA release WITHOUT bugs.

did Nintendo ever go after Mihoyo for graphical likeness? If not, then why should its gamers?????? Genshin coming to the Switch is the definitive Nintendo answer to these toxic gamers.

Most of the budget probably went on music and voice acting.

27:43 lmfao i have that Boa figure in the background

people are missing the biggest hidden cost of the 100million , when you go from 7staff to 400 staff you need a new build, new computers and pay all these people plus then the servers to run the game are also a huge cost. these are most likely the biggests costs

Oh Asmon you are underestimating the female otaku scene for the Tears of Themis playerbase... They are thirsty. THRISTY

Everyone should play Genshin Impact.

Time for some character demo/teaser reactions. Then we do the version update reactions. Maybe a few story related cutscene reactions. Then we go hype mode..... Honkai Animation reactions.......

Life beats me down and then I see "is that Dr. Phil?

Asmon needs to get into the gacha business with "Bald Impact" series.

Did he sais explore everything in three hours?? I would love to see it...

theya re chad for being honest about their simple dreams, and i love mihoyo, being honkai veteran and genshin players now, theya re awesome team, as honkai veterans would tell anyone, came in for cute anime girls stay for the great story and character progressions

29:59 The quote that describes a generation. Will forever be marked in history.