Hypergryph Network Technology Co. Ltd. (Chinese: 鹰角网络), commonly known as Hypergryph (HG), is a video game development company based in Shanghai, China. It is known as the creator and developer of Arknights and the publisher of the game's original Chinese version.
Background[]
Hypergryph was founded on January 24, 2017 by Hai Mao and his colleagues from Yostar and MICA Team (now Sunborn), the latter of which is notable for being the developer of Girls' Frontline. Most of them, including Hai Mao himself, are the alumni of China Academy of Art; later on Hypergryph also hired former members of Massive Black and Cygames branches in China. Early after their foundation, Hypergryph started the development of Arknights, which is the first video game they developed before Ex Astris.
A photo of Hai Mao at Hypergryph's new headquarters.
Hypergryph was originally headquartered at 700 Yishan Road on Xuhui District, which is in the same avenue as miHoYo's headquarters – notable for being the developer of Honkai Impact 3rd and Genshin Impact. In 2020, the headquarters are moved to an underground basement in Changhui Mansion at 799 Yinxiang Road on Nanxiang Street of Jiading District; the new headquarters included resting areas and a quarantine room made due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Notable activities[]
- On June 7, 2021, Hypergryph joined the Anti Internet Backlash Alliance (Chinese: 反网络黑灰产联盟) in Shanghai alongside miHoYo, TapTap, and Shanghai Lilith Technology Co., founded in response to the various backlashes started by the rampant "keyboard warriors" and "toxic" fandoms on the Chinese internet in order to prevent such occurrences from happening again in the future as well as setting up a proto-type of game-rating, a system that is currently not yet implemented by the government.[1][2]
- On September 2021, Hypergryph announced the development of Ex Astris, a third-person single-player action RPG (with the gameplay inspired from Valkyrie Profile and its spiritual successor Valkyrie Elysium) and the first game developed by Hypergryph that does not follow the free-to-play model, as well as their first game that is to be released simultaneously worldwide.[3]
- Ambience Synesthesia marks the first offline event of Hypergryph though it is considered to be under the wing of Monster Siren Records. On November 2021, Terra Discovery Society was held in Shanghai as a small convention with Arknights' fandom creators.[4]
- Like other gaming companies, content leaking is also an issue for Hypergryph. Starting from A Walk in the Dust, some leaked news had circulated among social platforms, especially Baidu Tieba. In March 8, 2022, Hypergryph finally took action by suing one of their employees who was responsible for the leakage.[5]
- In March 16, 2022, Arknights: Endfield, a spin-off of Arknights, was announced. A concept trailer and gameplay vertical slice were revealed on March 18.
Subsidiaries[]
Studio Montagne[]
Studio Montagne (Chinese: 蒙塔山工作室) is a team within Hypergryph acting as the Arknights development team.
Nous Wave Studio[]
Nous Wave Studio is a team within Hypergryph acting as the Ex Astris development team.
Mountain Contour[]
Mountain Contour is a team within Hypergryph acting as the Arknights: Endfield development team.
Monster Siren Records[]
- Main article: Monster Siren Records
Hypergryph releases all music related to Arknights under the Monster Siren Records flag, named after a major recording label in the game's world.
CHOEARTH[]
CHOEARTH (Chinese: 朝陇山, formerly CH.O3) is a subsidiary of Hypergryph responsible for the production and distribution of Arknights merchandises for CN players; Arknights merchandises for Global players are managed by Yostar instead.
Terra Historicus[]
Terra Historicus is an official website where Hypergryph releases various Arknights comics, which so far includes Stories of Infected: Blacksteel, A1 Operations Preparation Detatchment, and a four-panel series Rhodes Island Leisure Center.
Yostar releases the English, Japanese, and Korean localizations of Terra Historicus comics directly on the Arknights' official website instead.
OCTAVEDGE[]
OCTAVEDGE is a recording label and subsidiary of Hypergryph separate from MSR. Their first project is a music group/studio named Cubes Collective, described as intending to "tell stories through cubes" and had released three works: Waves, Kubos, and Melting White.
GRAVITY WELL STUDIO[]
GRAVITY WELL STUDIO (Chinese: 重力井工作室) is a subsidiary of Hypergryph, responsible for creating 2D/3D animations. They also produces Lee's Detective Agency: A Day in Lungmen, and Kay's Daily Doodles, as well as 3D animations in Arknights teasers for certain events and Main Theme episodes.
Note that this studio has no relation to an American game development studio of the same name.
Games[]
- Arknights (2019)
- Arknights: Endfield (TBA)
- Ex Astris (TBA)
- Popucom (TBA)
Hypergryph also acts as the publisher of Arknights in China.
Notable employees[]
- Hai Mao
- Rua Niu (RUA牛), real name Le Junwei (乐俊伟): Developer and game designer
- Huang Yifeng (黄一峰): CEO
- Fan Rundong (樊润冬): Head developer
- Wei@W (唯@W): Art director (until late 2021); Arknights creative director/IP handler (since late 2021)[6]
- Da Huang (大黄): Level designer
- Hychio(黑桥): Level designer
- STAR: Company operations director
- William: Game operations director
- Xiang Yangchao (巷陌曹): Merchandise designer
- BREAKLESS: Audio engineer
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Hypergryph's Chinese name translates to "eagle horn", referring to their logo.
- The name and logo itself are based on the hippogriff, also spelled hippogryph.
- The Arknights community jokingly believes that Hypergryph is in fact a music company due to the game's background musics/BGMs, Operator leitmotifs, and songs related to the game which came in a wide variety of genres.
- An actual live concert featuring the game's songs, Ambience Synesthesia, cemented this belief.
- The CN community takes this further by calling HG "Musicgryph (音角)" instead, which is a pun to the hanzi for "eagle" (鹰; Pinyin: yīng) that are pronounced similarly to the hanzi for "music" or "sound" (音; Pinyin: yīn).
- Due to their unnecessary verbous text in their stories cut-scenes, the CN community often jokingly calls it as "Hypergryph's language" (鹰语).
- Hypergryph has an official mascot named Miss Hypergryph (鹰小姐), appearing as a cold yet funny office lady with white, long hair and black horns. She is described to be in charge of the official Sina Weibo accounts of HG and CHOEARTH.
- In April 26, 2020, Miss Hypergryph accidentally posted the advertisement for an Arknights merchandise using HG's account instead of CHOEARTH's. This caused the CN community of Arknights to jokingly refer to Miss Hypergryph as a cute but clumsy lady.
- Recently, Miss Hypergryph has also received a overhauled design, which can be noticed through their Weibo posts in CHOEARTH's account.
- The Global server replaces Miss Hypergryph by a chibi bunny that resembles Amiya.