Genshin Spiral

 

It's been a good few years since I last played Genshin and was last brutally humbled by a game that was so much better than I had assumed it would be when I first saw that trailer all that time ago. Although I suppose that experience did unveil my unconscious bias against what I presumed to be a 'rip off game' and the bizarre protectiveness I assumed over a game that I had literally no hand in making. It's a strange and totally illogical obsession that I soon shirked off, which is probably why I lacked the general public's kneejerk rejection of Palworld when it launched earlier this year and why even though I think the concept is tired, I don't spit out the game's name like an unholy curse word. But over time Genshin became more and more filled with content to the point I realised that with the amount of time I was spending playing just Genshin, other fantastic games were passing me by. So I retired my time with the game and MiHoYo in general- not because their games are bad: I just want to experience more different types of games from other developers- pretty please!

But just because I left Genshin behind in my rearview mirror that doesn't mean I don't check in every once and a while to see how the old girl is doing. Reminiscence on the good old days, think about what currently is and what could have been- sappy, stupid stuff like that. And that means I do hear about it every now and then when something happens that shakes the Genshin world in such a significant way that some people are out there waving their death flags announcing this to be the beginning of the end. Which I find utterly insane personally- Genshin has that 'too big to fail' energy going on/ but then so did CrunchyRoll and we saw what happened to them. Admittedly I wasn't quite as in-tune with the anime market when that news dropped so maybe there was more writing on the wall than it seemed, but the name CrunchyRoll seemed so ubiquitous before it's announced merger- could Genshin find itself sliding down the same path?

Most surprising of all- this backlash does not come from the Western gamers freaking out over a single translation error in an offhand conversation with a background character like usual. (Seriously, American's online act like their entire self worth is based off the presumed moral values displayed in their fiction, it's honestly impressively delusional.) This actually pops out of MiHoYo's backyard all the way with Chinese players who are upset about the way they're being treated, which is news to me because I thought China was ground zero for all the most insane microtransaction nonsense. Although after seeing the EU specific release of DMC Peak of Combat, which ruined all the great content the Chinese Release had at launch, now I'm starting to wonder if Chinese Developers just actually hate the rest of the world and want to spread that perception to spite us.

The controversy is actually a little bit of a repeat job- drawing not on some new spark of injustice that has shaken the fandom to it's core, but rather an old sore spot that has been repeatedly hit over the course of several years. The Chinese New Year event, a significant celebration moment for Chinese players, just isn't hitting with the same rewards that many of it's players think such an event demands. Year after year we've heard the same grumblings about how the minuscule free Gatcha spins are such an offhand reward that the team might as well have not bothered, and when compared to other Gatcha games that at least spoiled their audience with an abundance of five stars characters and materials drops. Genshin seems to have become complacent with it's position at the top of the pile.

So start the review bombings and the boycotts and the pulling of millions of fans on social media as players of Genshin slowly open up to the fact that the game is no longer feeding them like it should. Even as the game accepts more than enough new content to be less than stingy every now and then, the allure of the profitable 5 star grind shuts up the purses of the development team and sets off the irk factor on the beleaguered. The West seems less vitriolic, around here the acceptance that Gatcha games are usually geared towards being unfavourable to the player is accepted gospel, so this sort of news is no great shock- but Genshin is typically better at making it's fans feel less than squeezed dry. You can call them 'all the same' if you want, but to compare 'Diablo Immortal' to 'Genshin' in terms of monetisation is like comparing Oranges you bite into that are sometimes a little too sour to Oranges you get forcibly smashed into your unprotected eyes searing your receptors irreparably. There are tiers to consider!

Of course, one might ask whether or not such a backlash even shows as a blip on the radar of a ship as large as MiHoYo's. They are internationally one of the biggest Gatcha developers on the planet and the amount of revenue they score yearly would be enough to drag some third world nations out of debt. When you get to that stage the only real thing that can you bring you down is yourself, and though there are been some mild grumblings about lacklustre content reveals in recent months- sentiments are nowhere near universal enough to popularise any theories that Genshin is 'falling off'. We're nowhere near Modern Warfare 3 levels of desperation where the team spit our recycled multiplayer assets and then hide behind their bully-boy voice cast to defend them. (Seriously, pathetic.)

But let's throw ourselves into an alternate reality wherein fans are respected, and when they feel disrespected- their suggestions are put into action: then what exactly would be the recourse to solving this? Because if I were MiHoYo and this boycott was enough to land at my door, I would simply chuck a give-away character in a free email to current players and wait for this whole controversy to boil over again three years down the line- because the public's memory never lasts that long. That's how these big franchises can get away making the same mistakes over and over- there just isn't anywhere near enough of a sustained backlash to force anyone's hand into systemic change. Why shift the direction of Assassin's Creed when you'll buy the next one anyway? It's a losers game so it's best not to play.

Besides, even if push does come to topple and we see the house of Genshin destroyed completely, (Not going to happen but again- we're in an alternate world) then won't the team just turn around to Honkai Star Rail and make that their next big thing? I'm pretty sure that right now Honkai is nowhere near as big as Genshin, but it has the framework to adopt that same sort of playerbase if it really needs to. MiHoYo already have their get-out-of-jail franchise ready to drop at a moments notice- there's just no winning against corporations this overpowered! But by all means, if you feel disrespected let your voice be known and largely ignored because afterall, what else are you going to do as the player? Suck it up and keep playing? (The joke is because that's what they're going to do in a month anyway- get it?)