[2.4] Genshin SKIN-pact - Looking at the reasons behind character outfit updates

this video is accurate as of january 6 2022. however the situation is still developing i will be updating the pinned comment of this video as we get new information so please make sure to check that out as well before spreading any information presented in this video or commenting below all right let's try this again now as you may or may not be aware mihoyu has recently announced some design changes to some certain characters currently this list only includes four characters jean amber rosaria and mona these four characters will be receiving new default designs however these designs come with a little bit of a caveat and it's generated a lot of concern i'm here hoping to put some of those concerns to rest and to also give you a better understanding about what actually is going on and what it means going forward but to do that we need a little bit of context surrounding how genshin works and how mihoyo operates in the grand scheme of things so let's start by talking about the servers now everyone who plays genjen knows that genchin has multiple servers depending on whatever region you live in it's the server that you play on right if you live in north america you play a north america server at least you're supposed to not everyone does but that's how it's supposed to work anyway once you've selected a server you cannot change it that is the server for your account period end of story however the server system is actually not just these individual servers but they're two clusters of servers split into two groups there's one cluster for global and one cluster for china these are two very different server groups and they actually run two different builds of the game the builds themselves are very similar but there are some subtle differences between them and those differences may or may not increase over time depending on any number of factors that we'll just not focus on right now so the reason for these two different builds has to do with how china regulates and distributes video game content i will not be elaborating on this process as a whole as it's really not my place to do so as i don't really understand it all that well to be considered you know like a real reliable source on it so for the purpose of this discussion all you really need to know is that everything that gets published in china has to go through a sort of review process and can only be published after it has been approved this only applies to content that is distributed in china and it does not apply to any content that is distributed outside of china hence why there are two versions one for china and one for global in the context of these new character designs we get two different uh executions of these designs let's just say so if you are a player on the global server the new character designs that were announced will be released as default skin options that you can toggle on and off as well again they're just skins now as far as we're aware these skins are free and they're not really like the alternate costumes like you know ninglong and kaching are getting for lantern right they're you know alternate default costumes so they're not you know special edition or whatever this could change just saying but it is unlikely now if you play on china servers it's a little bit different these aren't really skins necessarily but new default character design so like pre-rendered cutscenes will feature them and so on and so forth you may have seen images like this floating around and yes this is real and it is currently live on the chinese servers from what i understand these kind of weird altered designs are only temporary adjustments to the current character models and will ultimately be replaced by the new designs when they have been finished and that said this is also subject to change and it's very possible that chinese players could have the option to toggle between these two as well but it will still not be the original designs but the altered version of the original designs chinese players will also receive 1200 primogems as compensation for this change while global players will not because they don't really need compensation because this is a toggleable option and it's like a bonus so it's like a free thing so you don't need any primos so rip people who wanted the primos i guess now the real question everyone wants to know the answer to is why is this happening how did it go down what's the deal before i try to answer that i want to reiterate one more time that this is a developing situation and that this explanation is subject to change but here's how i've come to understand it in china gentian impact is rated for ages 12 and up if you're familiar with any rating system you will know that every rating system has its own list of restrictions and types of content that it is considered acceptable and not acceptable to have full disclosure i do not know what is included on this list for the 12 and up in china and i barely understand the american age rating systems because they're so malleable and they vary so much but anyway in light of the game's age rating a feminist group who believed that gentian was presenting women in a way that was inappropriate essentially reported mihoyo and under pressure mihoyo decided to make some adjustments to the character models immediately and then also provide redesigned characters to have more cohesive and i guess some age-appropriate outfits is not really a good way to word that i do want to emphasize here that i have incorrectly stated in other places that this was something that came about as per governmental regulations and that is not exactly the case as this feminist group doesn't technically have any political leverage the situation is actually incredibly nuanced and is a separate issue entirely from censorship at a government level this does not mean that censorship does not occur at the governmental level it just means that in this particular instance that's not where the problem originated i could spend some time elaborating on this particular situation but i don't believe i'm the best person to do that so instead i will be providing some resources in the description as i locate them and in the pinned comment for further reading if you are curious about the details but regardless of those details here are a few things to be aware of in the context of this game's future and really in the context of mihoyo's future but as i say this i am not doom posting okay this isn't a do post video thing i'm only looking to explore some possibilities in order to help everyone maintain realistic expectations going forward and how certain issues might develop and heavy emphasis on the might okay first i want to clarify that this is not an isolated incident and that gention itself is not the only target of groups such as this one this sort of thing has happened many times before with many games that are sold in china and will likely continue to happen over and over and over again some games respond to this kind of pressure by removing the offending topics or characters from the game entirely imagine that mihoyo will not do that okay so please don't freak out about that what appears to be more common is for games to release two different versions one for the chinese playerbase and one for global mihoyo has already technically done this although their two versions are incredibly similar currently now when there are two different versions of the game that means that there are more than just tiny differences between said versions but on the whole it does appear that most of the changes that happen within these versions tend to air on the cosmetic side of things whether that means removing graphical depictions of blood and replacing it with you know like blue fireworks or whatever or you know changing animations like idle animations or like in this case giving characters completely different skins sometimes different wording is provided for dialogue and sometimes certain words are removed or replaced with other terms in order to meet the local regulations and expectations but none of that is new or unique to china for that matter what appears to be less likely with games like this is the changing of the entire story plot or world building unless it's like a really blatant representation of china that paints them in a bad light but in which case it never would have passed the you know approval process anyway so there's there's that but a lot of people have just expressed concern that these skins are just the start of a wider reaching censorship movement and i'm very confident that this is not the case for right now in this context okay like that's that's a whole separate thing doesn't really apply here could certain things be censored in the future yeah but it wouldn't come from the same place that these current changes came from i've had a lot of you mentioned that it felt as though the inazuma archon quest was likely so janky because it was probably censored this is actually a very definite possibility because as we've mentioned anything that gets released in china has to be approved before it's published if for whatever reason their original storyline was not approved and they were close to the deadline then they would have had to scramble to put something together however that is actually a completely separate issue from altering the character designs because they originate in two very different places even theoretically and even then i don't think that this will happen again to the story inazuma is kind of a unique situation because it was about a resistance militia fighting against an established government which is a topic that is kind of no bueno in china in hindsight no one should have been surprised by this so ultimately what's the takeaway here well basically it boils down to this global players will get alternate skins for free that they can toggle on and off at will chinese players will be receiving the same character designs but as their permanent default options and it is unclear if they will also be keeping the censored versions of the current designs but it is confirmed that they will be receiving 1200 primo gems as compensation for the changes i also don't think that this is the last batch of characters that will see changes the feminist group in question has already been rumored to be making a new list of characters to report so we will probably see this happen to another batch once again i think the most likely candidates for this change are official beto and yanfei as the three are non-limited characters i don't think any male characters are at risk here either because this is specifically a pressure put on by a feminist group and i'm not quite sure what they would do with the men in that just anyway it's just those three female characters that i think are mostly at risk because uh even though lisa is kind of you know uh mommy-ish she's uh not that provocatively dressed weirdly enough she's actually pretty conservatively dressed so i don't think she'll be next also beta official and yanfei are all non-limited characters and i just don't think any of the limited five stars will receive any changes at all in the near future and this is mostly because gambling laws are a real pain to work around and changing limited characters after they've been released is just like uh it's a it's a it's a minefield it's really difficult okay it's just really really hard even if they put like a lot of pressure on them it's gonna be a really difficult thing to get changed just saying so uh limited five stars are probably not gonna have this happen to them now that said going forward we are likely to see one of two things happen possibility number one we will be getting less scantily clad or skimpy or whatever female character designs in future this is fairly possible just due to the game's rating of being for ages 12 and up in china and i'm still not clear on what the restrictions are there but even then i don't know that it'll be too drastic of a shift in design philosophy in the case of shinha for example they basically just removed her belly button to show that the fabric of her outfit isn't sheer and that's apparently enough to make her whole outfit acceptable so i guess it depends on what your definition of like scantily clad or whatever the term they want to use here is basically what i'm saying is that even though this change is a possibility you know the change itself isn't going to be that pronounced going forward like shenhua still maintains all of her aesthetic without her belly button it's just so minor but anyway a possibility number two is that if the initial creative direction for a character airs on the side of too skimpy or scantily clatter whatever the term they want to use is mihoyo may opt to make two different versions one to be released on the china servers and one to be released for global creating two versions of the same character is not a difficult or sufficiently time-consuming task and if they believe that making an outfit more revealing for a global market will net them more money then this is actually something we could realistically expect but that doesn't mean that every character will be released with two skins and we do have to keep in mind that the chinese playerbase doesn't really respond all that well when global receives something that they do not i'll leave some articles about some rather infamous incidents in the description box for you to take a look at to understand what i mean but i won't be going over it here because uh just know that it's a little bit more problematic than you know screaming at somebody over twitter now with all that said i realize that this video is a little bit of a departure from my usual content and it's not something i tend to cover this is a game theory channel after all the misinformation on the internet can spread so fast and honestly it can do a lot of damage while i may not be a very large youtuber in my area of influence might be rather small i do feel the need to make what little difference i can where i can and that starts with making sure that i'm providing everyone who watches my content with the best information i can possibly give them and it's not always 100 accurate because this might come as a surprise to you but i am only human and i'm also only one person so there's a limit to what i can do and while i have an approximate knowledge of a great many things i am not an expert on any one thing that's why i go out of my way to try and listen to all of you and read every single comment that you leave because some of you are far more informed and educated about certain topics than i am i learn a lot from you guys so i made this video to ensure that we have some place to start these constructive discussions and so that we can better understand what's going on around us reacting impulsively and getting angry without actually understanding the roots of the situation just benefits nobody even the people you think you're trying to support so what i'm asking is to please try and understand the situation from both a global perspective and a business perspective and the perspective of the chinese player base because each perspective has its own nuances and what mihoyo's done here is found a pretty good way to compromise in a situation that is honestly a little less than ideal for everyone involved we shouldn't hate on the people who really like the new designs and we shouldn't hate on the people who don't like the new designs and who want to keep the old ones we're navigating this situation together with any luck little discussions like these can help make a difference to the right people in a small way so i hope this video would have helped you and i hope you found this informative like i said i will be updating the pinned comment of this video as i get new information so please make sure to check that out for the latest details thanks again so much for watching you guys and i'll catch you next time

Channel: Ashikai

Views: 60,971

Keywords: genshin impact, mihoyo, skins, mona, rosaria, jean, amber

Id: HnisBpqXoaQ

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022