what is Mihoyo? [Hoyoverse/Mihoyo]

 

miHoYo Co., Ltd., also known as miHoYo Network Technology Co., Ltd. is a Chinese video game development and publishing company. In addition to games, the company has created various products such as animated series, novels, comics, music, and merchandise.

The company is the creator of the Honkai series, which consists of several games, including Honkai Impact 3rd and Honkai: Star Rail. miHoYo also developed Tears of Themis, a free-to-play adventure game. Another game that they have developed is Genshin Impact, an open-world action role-playing game, which is one of the highest-grossing mobile games of 2021.

Aiming to expand its content production, technology research, and publications outside China, in February 2022, miHoYo launched its global publishing subsidiary Cognosphere Pte., Ltd. (trading as HoYoverse and stylized as COGNOSPHERE) based in Queenstown, Singapore. Since then, miHoYo has been doing business globally under the brand and has operations in Montreal, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Seoul.

miHoYo also operates under the subsidiaries Shanghai miHoYo Yingtie Technology and Shanghai miHoYo Tianming Technology; the former is the publisher of Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero, while the latter is the developer of Tears of Themis. The global subsidiary Cognosphere Pte., Ltd. known as HoYoverse is the co-publisher of Tears of Themis, Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero.

Etymology

The letters "H" and "Y" in miHoYo's name come from the names 2 of 3 founders, Cai Haoyu and Luo Yuhao, and the letter "O" was added based on the fact that names of famous companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft contain that letter. Due to "HoYo" already being registered, "mi" from the VOCALOID software Hatsune Miku was prepended to the name. Hatsune Miku was picked because of her popularity among otakus.

Houkai Gakuen 2

There are many reasons why we made Houkai Gakuen. When making this type of game, there was not much thought into the details. We wanted to make a game we want to play so we did it. We discovered that the top-ranking games at the App Store didn't have the types of games we wanted to play, so we made our own. The reason is that simple.

为什么要做《崩坏学园》这款游戏，有很多的理由。做这款游戏当时没有想游戏细分的问题，没有想太多，我们就想做一款自己喜欢玩的游戏，所以我们就做了。我们自己想玩游戏的时候，发现AppStore畅销榜上的游戏没有一款是我们想玩的，于是做款自己想玩的游戏，理由就是这么简单。

— Cai Haoyu, 2014

Houkai Gakuen 2 or Guns Girl Z, a pick-up-and-play arcade action game, was launched in June 2013. Later in August, the team began working on server architecture design and generation. The work on the peripheral system and game graphics came in November. Compared to Houkai Gakuen, the development time of Houkai Gakuen 2 was shorter because it used the underlying data, art assets, and core gameplay of the previous game, thus shortening the research and development needed. The core gameplay was further developed by copying and then converting the system of the game Puzzle and Dragons (智龙迷城) into an action game, a process that took three months. The content taken from Houkai Gakuen got expanded with the addition of new characters, weapons, and clothing sets. The testing came on 26 January 2014, and the game was released in March on the Bilibili platform.

Though the game had some financial success, it had many technical problems such as top-up failure and server downtime that were difficult to manage for a team composed of only seven people. Eventually, the company ended up employing its players as staff.^[Within the same year, the Honkai Impact 3rd project began at the same time the company envisioned creating the "Honkai universe.

Honkai Impact 3rd

The Honkai Impact 3rd project began in June 2014.On 6 July, Cai Haoyu attended the GameLook Game Open Day conference in Shanghai, where he made a speech on the development and promotion of Houkai Gakuen 2. In the speech, he mentioned that the team was working on the third version of Houkai Gakuen and that its core gameplay was in progress.

In March 2015, miHoYo started developing its engines for the game. They created a physics-based animation system; it can simulate the performance of various bodies based on physical formulas, showing more realistic character movements and destructive scene effects. It can also correct abrupt transitions between animations, making the animations smoother and more natural. In addition, miHoYo developed its technologies for 3D modeling, light mapping, and real-time and pre-rendering systems. Content production for the game began in October 2015. Creative influences on the combat gameplay were the game series Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. The development team also studied games like Guilty Gear Xrd that used 3D cel-shading. Since no member on the team knew how to do 3D projects, transitioning from 2D to 3D was a challenge. Creating the artwork, model, and animation of Kiana Kaslana took six months. After a test run, the team discarded the work and restarted from scratch to establish the current system.

Honkai Impact 3rd had its internal iOS beta in March 2016, launched in September, publicly tested, and then released in October. Recurring characters such as Kiana Kaslana, Raiden Mei, and Bronya Zaychik appear in a story different from previous games. Its gameplay involves role play and hack-and-slash action and also features gacha mechanics. In addition to the game, it was followed by multiple supplementary media such as an anime series, graphic novels, comics, and promotional videos. Though miHoYo's early titles were successful within Asia, the company did not reach global success until the release of Honkai Impact 3rd. Months after its release in Mainland China, the following servers opened: 22 February 2017, for Japan; 18 May 2017, for Taiwan; 17 October 2017, for South Korea; 1 November 2017, for Southeast Asia; 28 March 2018, for North America and Europe. After being a mobile-exclusive game, Honkai Impact 3rd was made available for PC on 26 December 2019.

Tears of Themis

Tears of Themis is a game developed by miHoYo that combines romance and detective elements. The game released its first PV on July 29, 2019. It started its pre-registration on July 29, 2020, and officially went live on July 30, 2020. The game had a closed beta test for its international version in April and May 2021, and opened its pre-registration in June, reaching over 650,000 pre-registrations. The game received the Pocket Gamer People's Choice Award in 2022. The game takes place in the year 2030, in a sci-fi setting of the fictional city of Stellis. The player plays as a female defense lawyer who works with four male love interests to solve cases.

Genshin Impact

When Honkai Impact 3rd went online and achieved a measure of results in September 2016, we began to think—and continued to think for around half a year—about what our next product was going to look like. For most of the first half of 2017, we were very anxious. What sort of product would we find "exciting" and "out of imagination?" So we returned to the beginning, to the question of "what sort of game would we want to play?" During that period, the thing we were playing most was open-world games, and these games all featured huge worlds and exploration experiences that surpassed our expectations. So, since we want to play these games, and are willing to make this sort of game, why don't we just do it? It was with this simple feeling that we began working on this project in 2017. But we realized later on that we had greatly underestimated the difficulty of creating an open world.

2016年9月，《崩壞3rd》上線並取得一定成績之後。在接下來半年裡，我們一直在思考下一款產品應該做成什麼樣子。整個 2017 年上半年我們都非常地焦灼，到底做什麼樣的產品才會讓我們自己覺得 exciting、覺得 out of imagination。這又回到了我們的初心，就是我們自己想玩什麼東西。那段時間，我們玩最多的是主機的開放 世界遊戲，這些遊戲所帶來的都是非常宏大的世界觀和超出預期的探索體驗。那麼既然我們自己想玩這樣的遊戲，而且又願意去做這樣的遊戲，我們就去做吧。就是抱著這樣一個非常簡單的想法，我們從 2017 年開始做這個項目。但後來我們才發現，我們大大低估了開放世界的製作難度。

— Liu Wei, 2020^[47]

Genshin Impact began its development in January 2017 with the working title "崩坏4" (pinyin: Bēnghuài 4; "Honkai 4"). At that time, producer Cai Haoyu considered creating a new project to enhance miHoYo's core research and development capabilities and present products with significant quality improvement to players in the future. The idea of creating an open-world game came out of that. During the next seven months, the team tried several prototypes. After Cai played Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the team took inspiration from the game's world exploration experience. Other inspirations came from the random events of Grand Theft Auto, the strategy in Divinity: Original Sin, and game developer Naughty Dog.

The production team initially had 150 people. They underestimated the difficulty of creating an open world, so it grew to 300 people by mid-2019, then 500 by April 2020, and then 700 by February 2021.The research and development cost of the project began with 25 million USD and then exceeded 100 million, which was recouped two weeks after the game's release.Much of the game's budget was invested in music production. Yu-Peng Chen (陈宇鹏), also known as Chen Zhiyi (陈致逸), joined the project as a music producer and composed the scores for the Mondstadt and Liyue regions. Zhang Qinghua served as the senior art director.

Genshin Impact had its first beta testing in June 2019, focused on core gameplay mechanisms and the Mondstadt region. In early 2020, the overseas promotion of the game was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Development also got delayed by a month as working from home was almost impossible, and employees could not access office equipment.^[The second beta testing came in March and featured Liyue, and then the third beta testing came in July. The game was released on 28 September 2020.

Honkai: Star Rail

Honkai: Star Rail is a turn-based role-playing video game developed and published by miHoYo as part of its Honkai series. The game is set in a space fantasy universe, where the player assumes the role of a Trailblazer who follows the guidance of Akivili, the Aeon of Trailblaze, and travels across various planets using a train called the Astral Express. The game was first announced on social media on October 5, 2021, and began its "Origin Test" phase on October 8. The game entered its "Jump Test" phase on February 10, 2023, for PC, Android and iOS platforms, and launched on April 26, 2023. The game will also be released for the PlayStation/Xbox platforms later in 2023.

Zenless Zone Zero

Zenless Zone Zero is an urban fantasy action role-playing game with roguelike elements developed and published by miHoYo, set in a futuristic world where a strange natural disaster called the Hollows has taken place. The game released its first trailer on May 13, 2022, and opened for pre-registration and closed beta recruitment. The game had its first closed beta test, known as the "Tuning Test", on August 5, 2022. The game plans to launch globally in 2024 for PC, mobile platforms, and unspecified home consoles.

[Edit: All pitchers belong to Mihoyo_______ source of information: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiHoYo

Editor: Poor_wanderer]