Black Myth: Wukong, as a major work in China's domestic game industry, has attracted widespread attention since its announcement. With its exquisite visuals, profound storyline, and unique gameplay, the game has won strong anticipation from players.

On August 20, Black Myth: Wukong officially launched. Within just a few hours after launch, the number of concurrent players reached 1.34 million according to Guangming Online, and it quickly topped sales charts on multiple platforms including Steam and WeGame, surpassing the peak concurrent-player records of many international blockbusters.

Behind its success, we can draw some profound lessons about project management. This article explores the project management wisdom behind Black Myth: Wukong from a project management perspective.

Project initiation stage: clarify goals and requirements

During the project initiation stage of Black Myth: Wukong, the first task was to clarify project goals and requirements. The project team set the goal of creating a world-class AAA game, deeply explored the cultural meaning of Journey to the West and Chinese mythology, and ensured that the game would have both depth and broad appeal. Clear goals gave direction to the entire team, letting every member know where to focus their efforts and what final results needed to be achieved. Just as in our work, clear team goals can align everyone's thinking and efforts in the same direction.

In terms of requirements analysis, the team accurately grasped player expectations and market demand, focusing on the combination of entertainment value and rigor. At the same time, the project team also conducted SWOT analysis, clarifying the project's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, laying a foundation for smooth project advancement.

Team collaboration and efficient communication

The success of Black Myth: Wukong could not have happened without an efficient and professional team. Game development is a large and complex undertaking involving professionals in many fields, such as programming, art, planning, and sound effects. The art team needed to design scenes and characters that matched the game style according to planning requirements; the programming team needed to implement various complex game functions and optimize performance; and the sound effects team needed to create a realistic atmosphere for the game. Only through good communication and collaboration can duplication, conflicts, and delays be avoided.

The founding team of Game Science, including Feng Ji and Yang Qi, all have rich game production experience and are capable of handling large 3D MMO games. Team members have clear divisions of labor, fulfill their respective responsibilities, collaborate efficiently, and form strong synergy.

As the soul of the team, the project manager not only needs excellent strategic vision and organizational ability, but also needs to lead the team through difficulties and achieve goals at critical moments.

In the Black Myth: Wukong project, the project manager fully demonstrated personal charisma and leadership ability, successfully attracted many outstanding talents to join, and maintained team stability and cohesion.

Schedule management and cost control

The development cycle of Black Myth: Wukong lasted seven years, and the development cost per hour of gameplay was about tens of millions. Such a long development cycle and high cost required the project team to have efficient schedule management and cost control capabilities.

The project team adopted advanced project management tools such as TAPD, Tencent's agile R&D platform, to support full life-cycle project management. TAPD not only helps the team manage requirements, assign tasks, and track progress, but also automatically generates game R&D processes, reduces repetitive operations, and improves development efficiency. At the same time, TAPD provides rich data reports and visualization tools, helping the team identify problems in time, adjust plans, and ensure on-time delivery.

In cost control, the project team emphasized rational resource use and efficient allocation. Through refined management, the team effectively controlled development costs and avoided unnecessary waste. In addition, the team actively sought external cooperation and established strategic partnerships with outstanding enterprises such as AMD to jointly improve development efficiency and quality.

Quality management and risk control

As a AAA game, Black Myth: Wukong has extremely high quality requirements. In quality management, the project team adopted a systematic approach, including quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control. By formulating detailed quality standards and process specifications, the team ensured that the game quality at each stage could meet predetermined requirements.

At the same time, the project team also paid attention to risk control. During project execution, the team actively identified potential risk factors such as technical difficulties and market changes, and formulated corresponding response strategies and contingency plans. Through timely risk warnings and response measures, the team successfully avoided multiple crises and ensured smooth project progress.

Innovation and continuous improvement

The success of Black Myth: Wukong lies not only in its outstanding game quality, but also in its continuous innovation and improvement capability. During development, the project team constantly explored new technologies and methods to improve R&D efficiency and quality. They did not follow old conventions, but continued innovating in gameplay, story setting, visual presentation, and other aspects, daring to break through traditional constraints.

In addition, the project team also emphasized continuous optimization of user experience. By continuously collecting player feedback and opinions, the team iterated and improved the game many times to ensure that it could always meet players' needs and expectations.

For our own teams, we should also cultivate innovation awareness and encourage employees to dare to try new methods and ideas. Only through continuous innovation can we remain invincible in fierce market competition.

Conclusion

For project managers and project management, the successful experience of Black Myth: Wukong has certain inspiration and reference value. For example, project management should emphasize quality management and use high-quality results to meet customer needs and market expectations; stress team collaboration and communication, fully leverage the professional strengths of team members, and jointly overcome difficulties; maintain an innovative spirit, continuously explore new methods and technologies, and enhance project competitiveness; deeply understand the needs and preferences of target audiences to make projects more targeted and attractive; possess perseverance and avoid giving up easily when facing challenges and difficulties, while actively seeking solutions; and conduct effective risk management by identifying and responding to possible risks in advance.

These insights can help project managers better manage projects and drive project success. Let us draw management wisdom and strength from the success of Black Myth: Wukong, continuously improve our management level, and work hard to achieve our shared goals!
Back to List >>