Genshin Impact from the company miHoYo has already earned over $ 100 million largely due to the use of gacha mechanics. The founders of the studio told how they began to focus on anime gamers and why in—game purchases in their projects are “payment for love”.Background and philosophy of miHoYo

the studio was founded in 2012 by three programmers with a capital of $ 14 thousand.

  • Six years later, the company reported revenue of $298 million, and now it employs 1,500 people;from the very beginning, miHoYo chose otaku as the target audience — a Japanese term for a person who is interested in something (it is often used in relation to fans of anime culture);
  • all the company’s projects somehow contain a large number of female characters.
  • One of the slogans of the studio sounds like this: “Otaku will save the world”;however, sometimes it played against miHoYo — their first big hit Guns Girl was initially blocked in the App Store due to “violence and controversial content”, and in the Honkai Impact 3rd game there was an opportunity to interact with openly dressed heroines by clicking on their bodies (later the function was removed).
  • How did the company’s formula turn out to be successful?

the beginning of the activity of miHoYo coincided with the heyday of otaku culture in China — an increasing percentage of the male audience became interested in anime, comics and video games;

  • To promote its games, miHoYo began collaborating with the Bilibili website.
  • This is the largest Chinese resource in this segment, which is visited by millions of fans of anime and geek culture;“Bilibili generated more than 50% of our revenue on Android devices,” admits co-founder Cai Haoyu, who calls himself an otaku.
  • Gacha Mechanics and the success of Genshin Impact

the developers first thought about introducing gacha (the ability to get a certain item or character for in-game or real currency) into their games after they studied the successful projects of competitors;

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