The Genesis: From Shanghai Dorm Room to Global Phenomenon

In a modest dorm room at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, three students with a shared obsession for *Touhou Project* bullet-hell patterns and the vast, player-driven economies of *EVE Online* sketched out a future that would eventually redefine the global gaming landscape. Their venture, miHoYo, began not with a grand business plan or venture capital, but with a simple, almost naive, belief: that technology, in the hands of passionate creators, could indeed save the world. This chapter traces the improbable journey from that cramped dorm room to the cusp of a global phenomenon, unpacking the core philosophies and early industrial impulses that would later fuel the creation of one of the world’s most valuable entertainment IPs. What emerged was not merely a game studio but a proto-industrial complex—a system built on the relentless pursuit of “something new” and a deeply ingrained conviction that the traditional, project-based model of game development was fundamentally insufficient for the scale of their ambitions. The seeds of what would become the Genshin Engine were planted not in a boardroom, but in the crucible of necessity, audacity, and a culture that treated every line of code as a step toward saving the world.

The Dorm Room Genesis: Touhou, EVE, and a Big Idea

The story of miHoYo is, at its heart, a story of three university students whose passions collided in the most productive way possible. Liu Wei, Luo Yuhui, and Cai Haoyu—all enrolled at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s prestigious School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering—were not your typical business majors plotting a startup. They were engineers in the making, but engineers with a profound love for the fantastical, the interactive, and the deeply narrative. Their shared universe was not one of textbooks and circuit diagrams, but of Gensokyo, the mythical realm of *Touhou Project*, and the cold, unforgiving star systems of *EVE Online*. These two games, seemingly worlds apart, would become the twin pillars of miHoYo’s foundational ethos.

*Touhou Project*, the legendary bullet-hell shoot-’em-up series created by Jun’ya “ZUN” Ota, represented the pinnacle of 2D aesthetic and mechanical precision. Its intricate spell cards, ethereal music, and expansive fan-made lore spoke to a deep appreciation for hand-crafted artistry and community-driven storytelling. For the trio, *Touhou* was not just a game; it was a cultural artifact that thrived on fan creativity, a universe where boundaries between creator and consumer blurred. It taught them that a world could be built not just by a single author, but by a passionate community co-authoring its expansion through fan art, music, and games. This seed of transmedia storytelling—the idea that a narrative could and should extend beyond its original medium—would later blossom into miHoYo’s signature multi-platform IP strategy.

*EVE Online*, on the other hand, was the antithesis of *Touhou*’s 2D elegance. A massive, player-driven sandbox set in a science-fiction galaxy, *EVE* was a living, breathing economy and political simulator where every action could ripple across thousands of players. Its scale, its systemic depth, and its emergent narratives—where a single player’s betrayal could spark a war lasting years—showcased the power of a persistent, living world. Here was a game that did not just present a story but provided a stage for stories to happen. For the engineering-minded students, *EVE* was a masterclass in backend architecture, database management, and real-time synchronization on a massive scale. It demonstrated that a virtual world could be more than a sequence of levels; it could be a complex system with its own rules, economies, and social dynamics.

The fusion of these two influences—*Touhou*’s hand-crafted charm and community mythos with *EVE*’s systemic scale and persistence—created a unique vision. They wanted to build a world that felt both intimately hand-crafted and massively systemic, a place where beautiful, anime-inspired characters could inhabit a living, breathing universe with real consequences. This vision was first given form not in code, but in ink. In their dorm room, they began creating a manga series titled *Houkai Gakuen* (later localized as *Honkai*), a story about girls fighting against an apocalyptic force. The manga was their love letter to *Touhou*’s aesthetic and narrative structure, but it also hinted at a larger world waiting to be explored. The characters—Kiana, Raiden Mei, Bronya—were not just drawings; they were prototypes for interactive avatars. The story’s lore was not just a backdrop; it was a blueprint for a game world.

The transition from manga to game was both logical and audacious. Why merely tell a story when you could let players live it? In 2012, with little more than a prototype built in C++ and OpenGL, they entered their first project into a student competition. The prototype, a 2D side-scrolling action game featuring the *Honkai* characters, caught the attention of a small angel investor. This seed funding allowed them to officially establish miHoYo (originally 米哈游, a playful transliteration of “miHoHo,” referencing *Touhou*’s protagonist Reimu Hakurei) and release their first commercial title, *Houkai Gakuen* (later rebranded as *ZombieGirl* internationally), for iOS. The game was a modest success within niche circles, praised for its tight combat and *Touhou*-inspired aesthetic, but it was far from a breakout hit. It was, however, a critical proof of concept: they could build and ship a game. More importantly, it was a brutal education in the harsh realities of the market. The game’s limited scope, 2D graphics, and lack of a sustainable live-service model highlighted the vast gulf between their dorm-room ambition and commercial viability.

Yet, even in this early stumble, the industrial impulses were already stirring. The team, still numbering just the three founders plus a handful of early recruits, was forced to confront a fundamental truth: to build the worlds they dreamed of, they could not rely on the ad-hoc, project-based approach of a typical indie studio. Each new game could not start from scratch. The assets, the code, the tools—they had to be built to last, to be reused, to be improved upon incrementally. The failure of their first title was not a dead end but a diagnostic tool, revealing the need for a foundational technology stack that could support iterative development and scaling. The dorm room had become a laboratory, and the first experiment, while not a global phenomenon, had yielded its most important data point: the old model was broken. A new engine—both literal and metaphorical—was needed.

"Tech Saves the World": The Founding Philosophy

If the dorm room was the birthplace, then “Tech saves the world” (技术宅拯救世界) was the founding scripture. This slogan, emblazoned on early miHoYo merchandise and repeated in countless interviews, is often dismissed as a cute, self-deprecating nod to otaku culture. To do so is to miss its profound operational significance. For Liu Wei, who would become miHoYo’s CEO, this phrase was neither irony nor hyperbole; it was a core design principle and a strategic mandate. It framed technology not as a mere tool for profit, but as a moral and creative imperative—a means to construct immersive, meaningful experiences that could, in their own way, make the world better.

The philosophy has two intertwined roots. The first is a direct inheritance from *EVE Online*’s philosophy of player agency. In *EVE*, the developers (CCP Games) famously positioned themselves as caretakers of a living universe, providing the systems and rules while the players wrote the history. This resonated deeply with the miHoYo founders’ desire to create worlds that felt alive and persistent. “Saving the world” in this context meant building robust, scalable systems that could support millions of players simultaneously, where their actions had we