The Dreamers: Three Students and a Vision

The year was 2010. The city was Shanghai. And three young men in their early twenties were about to embark on a journey that would eventually reshape the global gaming landscape in ways they could scarcely imagine. But in those early days, as they sat in a cramped apartment surrounded by secondhand computers and ramen noodle wrappers, the future felt impossibly distant. All they had was a dream—and an unwavering belief that games could be more than they had become.

Cai Haoyu was the first to articulate what many Chinese gamers felt but couldn't quite put into words. Walking through the gleaming malls of Shanghai in 2010, he noticed something peculiar. Young people everywhere were glued to their phones, playing games that looked increasingly the same—endless waves of identical combat, gaudy interfaces designed to extract money rather than create joy, and stories that seemed written by algorithms rather than human imagination. The market was saturated with what players derisively called "pay-to-win" games, where success was measured not by skill or dedication but by how much money you were willing to spend. Free-to-play had become a dirty phrase, synonymous with aggressive monetization, energy systems that forced players to wait or pay, and what gamers called "whales"—the small percentage of players who spent thousands of dollars while the vast majority churned through无聊的游戏，渴望更好的东西。

Haoyu understood this longing intimately. Like millions of Chinese young people, he had grown up watching Japanese anime—captivated by the intricate worlds of Studio Ghibli, the epic sagas of Gundam, and the emotionally resonant storytelling that defined the best of Japanese animation. He had also grown up playing games, and he remembered what it felt like to be transported to another world, to care deeply about characters, to feel that games were art as much as entertainment. Final Fantasy VII had been one of those transformative experiences. The opening hours of that game—the bombing mission, the arrival in Midgar, the moment Cloud first saw Aerith in the church—had shown him what games could achieve. They could tell stories that mattered. They could create emotions that lingered. They could be beautiful.

It was this belief that would eventually bring together three unlikely partners at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of China's most prestigious institutions. The university, affectionately known as "Jiao Da" among students, had produced generations of engineers, scientists, and business leaders. Its alumni network stretched through every major company in China. A degree from Jiao Da virtually guaranteed a comfortable future—cushy jobs at state-owned enterprises, prestigious positions in multinational corporations, or a fast track into the Chinese tech giants that were beginning to challenge Silicon Valley. The path was clear. The destination was certain. And for most students, that certainty was exactly what they wanted.

But Cai Haoyu wasn't interested in certainty. He was interested in possibility.

The circumstances that brought the three founders together read like the setup to a comedy or perhaps a tragedy, depending on how the story unfolds. Liu Wei had met Haoyu through a mutual friend, bonding over their shared love of anime and games during late-night conversations that stretched past dawn. Wei, as friends called him, had a background in programming and an almost obsessive attention to technical detail. He had grown up in the era when Chinese internet cafes were the primary gaming venues for a generation without home computers, and he had witnessed firsthand the transformation of gaming from a niche hobby into a massive industry. But he had also seen how that industry had calcified, producing endless clones of successful games rather than anything genuinely new or creative. Wei believed that technical excellence could drive creative innovation—that if you built the tools well enough, artists could create things that had never been seen before.

Luo Yu, the third member of what would become the founding trio, came from a different background entirely. While Haoyu and Wei had focused on technology and design, Yu had immersed himself in finance and business, earning degrees in the arcane arts of investment and corporate strategy. He understood how money moved through systems, how companies were structured, and most importantly, how dreams could be sustained long enough to become reality. In many ways, he would become the bridge between the artistic vision of his partners and the harsh economic realities of building a company from nothing. Where Haoyu dreamed of beautiful worlds and Wei obsessed over perfect code, Yu kept his eyes on the numbers—but his numbers were always in service of the dream, never opposed to it.

The three met regularly, their conversations shifting from casual gaming discussions to something more serious. They talked about the games they loved—Final Fantasy, obviously, but also The Legend of Zelda, with its elegant simplicity and its belief that player agency and narrative could coexist beautifully. They talked about the games they hated, the pay-to-win nightmares that treated players as nothing more than revenue extraction opportunities. And gradually, almost without realizing it, they began talking about what they would do if they built a game themselves. What would they create? What would they refuse to compromise on? What kind of company would they build?

The answers came slowly, shaped by late nights and strong coffee, by arguments that pushed all three to articulate exactly what they believed. They agreed that Chinese gamers deserved better. They agreed that the market was not serving the players but exploiting them. They agreed that there was an audience—perhaps small at first, but passionate—hungry for games that treated them as intelligent beings capable of appreciating beautiful art and compelling storytelling. And they agreed, though perhaps not fully understanding the weight of what they were agreeing to, that they would not compromise on quality. Whatever they created would be made with the same care and attention they had experienced in their favorite games. It would be built to last. It would be built to matter.

The decision to actually start a company—to leave the comfortable path that their education had prepared them for—took place over several months of deliberation. It was not a dramatic moment. There was no single conversation where everything changed. Instead, it was an accumulation of small commitments, each one leading to the next. First, they agreed to work on a project during their spare time, creating a small demonstration of what they envisioned. Then they agreed to spend more and more of their evenings and weekends on this project, letting other commitments fall by the wayside. Finally, after months of this gradual immersion, they reached the point where continuing to pretend that this was just a hobby seemed more dishonest than the alternative. They were building a company. They were founders. And it was time to act like it.

The year 2012 would mark their official beginning, but the first stirrings came earlier. In 2010 and 2011, as they were still students, the three began formalizing their partnership and planning their first project. They gave themselves a name—miHoYo—a deliberate construction that blended "miracle" with "hometown," creating something that sounded both aspirational and intimate. The name would eventually evolve to HoYoverse as the company expanded beyond gaming, but in those early days, miHoYo captured something essential about who they were and what they believed. They were creating miracles from their hometown, proving that extraordinary things could emerge from ordinary places.

The choice of this name was not accidental. It reflected a philosophy that would come to define the company in ways both large and small. The founders believed that gaming companies in China had become too