Every few years a game comes along that changes
the industry and Genshin Impact is one of those games. Not many people had heard of MiHoyo before
September 2020. The Chinese game studio was founded in 2012
by three students at university. It now has over 2,400 employees, making MiHoyo
quite possibly the fastest growing gaming developer in the world. Their recent hit title Genshin Impact, has
received attention for many reasons, one of which is its recording breaking revenue, with
mobile income alone surpassing 1 billion dollars in just 6 months, making it the quickest game
in history to reach this milestone, and this figure doesnât include revenue generated
on PC or playstation. And there are other reasons this game could
be considered historically significant, from the unprecedented level of global reach itâs
had for a game made in China, to its technological achievements on mobile systems, or even the
specifics of its monetization method. You could argue that anyone with an interest
in the gaming industry should probably have at least some understanding of Genshin Impact
and why itâs been so successful. And I have an interest in the gaming industry. And yet when Genshin Impact came out I didnât
play it. I didnât even look at it. Really, I tried not to even acknowledge its
existence because I knew, without playing, looking or acknowledging, that I didnât
like this game. This was not because of its anime aesthetic;
Iâm not the biggest fan of anime but Iâm not the smallest fan either; and some of my
favorite pieces of media are anime. It also wasnât because Genshin Impact was
Chinese; I donât have a problem with Chinese games; and some of my favorite games that
I played this year have been Chinese. And it wasnât even because of its reputation
as a Zelda clone. I like Breath of the wild, I might like more
Breath of the Wild, and some of my closest friends are, in fact, clones. No, there was just one reason I didnât like
this game, one word, which carried such dire implications in my mind that the mere invocation
of it was only thing I needed to know I wanted to stay far far away. Gacha â not gotcha, I hear people say it
that way sometimes, quite often actually and thatâs wrong. Its gacha, derived from the Japanese toy dispensing
vending machines, gachapon, where you exchange money for a capsule that may or may not contain
what you actually want. Itâs actually an onomatopoeia describing
the two sound effects involved where gacha is the sound of the vending machine handle
turning and pon is the sound of dreams breaking in young children. When it came to the video games they just
got rid of the pon part though, better optics that way. If thereâs one thing everyone loves its
monetization. Once upon a time people used to just buy complete
games. Theyâd walk into a shop, make a onetime
payment and get a complete product, no strings attached. Luckily those dark days are behind us and
now such primitive up front transactions are on the decline. Welcome to the new age of monetization, we
have it all; lootboxes, paywalls, subscriptions, in game advertisements, take your pick, or
donât, we donât care weâll force it on you anyway. You can pay to win, pay to play, pay to display,
and pay to make those god damn fucking popups ads go away. We got in game stores and out of game dlc,
pre order bonuses and post purchase handicaps, cosmetics and conveniences, characters and
customization. Daily limits, monthly subs, seasonal passes,
yearly events, itâs never been easier to get rid of all that annoying unwanted money. Really, weâve got everything, well almost
everything. The only thing thatâs missing is some way
to make people sign over the entirety of their worthless lives. But how? How do we do this? By George, itâs the most beautiful thing
I ever seen in my god damn life. Okay. Video game monetization is a subject where
there is a risk in being over the top in your Nostradamus like proclamations of the end
times, but thereâs also a risk in being the opposite. New and aggressive monetization methods havenât
exactly ruined the fertile fields of the gaming landscape overnight, but there has been a
slow creep of the intrusive and unwanted into the games of tomorrow, like the ever advancing
march of a plague ridden tortoise. There are reasons to believe this slope may
be slippery. I mean, whatâs acceptable today wasnât
acceptable in the past and thereâs a monetary incentive for companies to keep pulling on
the udders of their audiences to squeeze out as much milk as they possible can short of
forcing players to migrate to greener pastures. But at the same time games themselves have
changed: traditional monetization methods arenât always the best fit for every type
of game, audiences do retain some power through purchasing and reasonably priced gaming experiences
havenât just went the way of the dinosaurs. Weâre in a world where people do have a
choice, and at some level it makes sense to respect the choices of others, and accept
that people can spend their money on what they want. So itâs a complicated topic but that doesnât
mean there isnât a problem here. Ultimately we must each ask ourselves what
is and isnât acceptable and then let our voices be heard through our actions. Which is easier said than done when the same
companies that want your money will also try to influence what you consider acceptable. So to have any real hope of resisting a worse
future, lines must be drawn somewhere. And a day did come, where upon the sandy beaches
of my mind I drew that line, and drew it well. And on the unacceptable side of that line,
was gacha⌠all of it. But what is gacha, why is gacha, how is gacha,
and where is gacha? Thereâs no who is gacha, that would be ridiculous,
but these other questions are important. I have a problem here though, which is that
I donât know who you are. You could be anyone. I mean, you look like a blue yeti microphone
but youâre probably a person, and people have different levels of familiarity with
the gacha genre amongst other topics this video will touch on. So Iâll try to keep this explanation brief
yet informative. Gacha, not gotcha, is a genre of games that
grew in popularity over the last decade, particularly in asian markets. Theyâre usually free to play mobile games,
and the already explained name is no coincidence, as while the gameplay of gacha games varies
greatly, the unifying quality is the gambling like method of monetization through which
playerâs acquire in game characters and items. This activity, usually referred to as pulling
or rolling, involves exchanging an in game currency that can be purchased with out of
game currencies, in order to gain random rewards. Imagine lootboxes, and thatâs pretty much
it, but the difference between the lootboxes of the west and gacha is that in gacha the
entire game is designed around this lootbox like element. This is usually done through large casts of
likeable characters that players want to acquire alongside a heavy focus on progression to
make your characters, items and time spent with the game have a greater sense of value. Theyâre basically great big ever updating
progression treadmills, in much the same way that mmoâs often are except without some
of the catch up mechanics. So, gacha games can create a sense that you
need to keep up, which you do through grinding and daily activates, but rolling for more
characters might not hurt either. Gacha games are strongly associated with anime
and itâs often anime girls that people are rolling for with many popular anime have accompanying
gacha games, but itâs not a genre exclusively about anime characters. Raid Shadow Legends, is a gacha game, which
might explain how theyâre able to fund their widespread content creator harassment campaign,
but there are also gacha games for many big franchises, including star wars, marvel, Disney,
and others. And plenty of video game franchises have got
in on the action too; I mean final fantasy has had 4 different gacha games. How that happened I donât know but I do
know why. Money. And they do bring home the bacon, with some
of the big boys pulling in over one billion dollars revenue per year and there are quite
a few boys these days. Itâs a bit of a sausage fest, the metaphor
that I, the games are kind of the opposite. Itâs a growing genre, and for people who
partake in the gacha way of life, it can be serious business. By which I mean⌠it can be fucking expensive. A few years ago the Wall Street Journal ran
a piece on a guy who spent 70,000 dollars on fate grand order. And while such ground shakingly exorbitant
figures are a rarity, meeting people who have spend a thousand or two on a particular game
is more common than you might imagine. Itâs also common, at least from my personal
experience, for those same people who spend a few thousand dollars to possibly be in denial
that spending such a large sum on a free mobile game might be considered excessive. âOne thousand pounds, thatâs nothingâ
they say, âyou should see what the whales spendâ they say. âIâm just a dolphinâ. My response to this has usually been to politely
ask them to stop throwing aquatic mammal names at me and pay your fucking rent on time. I have since come to think of the whale as
a mythical animal, existing in the minds gacha spenders to provide dogmatic justification
that no matter how much a person might spend, at least there is some sea creature out there
who is apparently spending more so I guess that make whatever you spend okay. Itâs like in star wars; thereâs always
a bigger fish in the sea, at least in your mind there is. Yes, the relationship between man and his
gacha is a strange thing to behold. People love these games. They also hate them. Sometimes, they love them, while hating them. Sometimes they make love to them, while hating
them. Although we donât need to talk about that. What we do need to talk about is, the most
valuable thing of all - time. You could play a gacha game successfully without
spending a penny and people do, but you canât get very far in one of these games without
some serious time investment. As I said previously, the core of these games
is usually progression, and it doesnât happen overnight⌠it happens in the morning when
you log in to do your dailies. And if people can spend thousands of dollars
in these virtual anime girl menageries, they can likewise spend thousands of hours. Gacha can be a commitment. You may be wondering why people play these
games if there are all these downsides. Well there are five unique reasons, as identified
by me, and weâll get to most of them later. Something that isnât one of these reasons
however is gameplay. People do enjoy the gameplay of their favorite
gacha game but through extensive research I have concluded that this is not one of the
main draws to the genre. My reasoning for this is that other games
offer more or better gameplay for less time or money, and that the core gameplay of many
gacha titles is very repetitive, and some gacha games just donât really have gameplay. As is the case with something like Uma Musame,
which is currently the most popular gacha game in japan and is just about training horse
girls. This might seem a little weird but you have
to understand the Japanese actually take their horse racing very seriously, horse racing
has a long tradition in japan, and you know, itâs a culture where respect and tradition
are a really big deal, er, the horse girls also sing and dance. Okay, point is, itâs not about the gameplay
even though there usually is gameplay; the gameplay is just what ties the experience
together. So, in summary, Gacha, not gotcha, and not
necessarily a good life decision. Itâs like gambling, except without the possibility
of winning money. Or, when you consider the time requirements
itâs like a second job, except instead of making money while you do it, you lose money. So I guess maybe itâs more like a way of
life, except a bad one. At least thatâs how it seems from the outside. Gacha seems less like a game genre and more
like an addiction, a hobby offering danger, excitement, and cute collectible anime girls
that can also bring ruin, pain and suffering. Itâs like alcohol, cigarettes or slot machines
for a younger, more anime girl obsessed generation and this appeal might be difficult to understand,
but it clearly exists regardless. Actually it reminds me of the way in which
MMOâs were talked about during the peak of their popularity. Welcome to Azeroth, quit your job, fail your
degree and future proof your virginity, youâll love every second. And that comparison of gacha to mmoâs runs
deep, but itâs worth pointing out that the fearmongering of mmoâs as this new life
destroying gaming obsession did prove, in most cases, to be somewhat hyperbolic. As for where genshin impact fits with all
this, well this is a gacha game, and it might be the most successful one ever made, only
time will tell, but thatâs not the only thing that makes Genshin unique. You see gacha was a mobile genre, and mobile
games had a history of predatory and intrusive monetization methods long before gacha cemented
itself as a thing. But Genshin Impact isnât exclusively a mobile
game, and its focus on open world gameplay is a radical departure from the largely menu
based gacha tradition. And so Genshin Impact is an answer to the
question of what happens if you take the wildly financially successful gacha model and combine
it with a more conventional big budget, highly polished single player experience. And the loudest answer to that question is:
you make money. Which means more games may well be motivated
to follow in its wake. Genshin impact is an intrepid explorer, forging
a path into gaming lands previously untouched to set down the colonizing flag of its uniquely
addictive monetization, and others will probably take notice. And thatâs why I wanted nothing to do with
this game: it was an invader and when its success leads others to follow suit I was
worried the land I cared for might be changed for the worse. And I would have had nothing to do with this
game, until 6 months ago when I decided I wanted to create a deep dive into the Chinese
gaming industry and so I began that journey with some preliminary research involving playing
some of the most important Chinese games ever made, the first of which was Genshin Impact. As a long time hater of Gacha, who had no
actual firsthand experience with the genre but did have a maybe surprising amount of
negative second hand experience, I went into this game not only expecting to dislike it,
but also with a desire to use my time with this game to confirm to myself all the negative
stereotypes I had about the genre. I wanted to prove, to myself, that gacha is
evil, and I was going to do that with Genshin Impact. That didnât happen though. Genshin Impact doesnât start strong. The opening cutscene might impress in terms
of animation but the narrative hook it presents feels weak. In the past your character had traveled to
different worlds alongside your twin until one day an unknown god showed up to abduct
your twin, leaving you stranded in the land of Teyvat. You then awake many years later and set off
to search for your twin with your new found companion Paimon, a small floating child creature
you apparently fished out of the sea one time. Paimon is, in many ways, the real main character
of this story. I mean, you are a mostly silent protagonist,
and paimon is going to accompany you every step of your journey, guiding you in the direction
the writers want you to follow. Really, she is the true heart and soul of
this narrative, there to inject personality and humor into the frequent long stretches
of dialogue with her jovial naivety and⌠my god does it hurt me to listen to this character
in English. Hearing her speak makes me feel like I am
doing something wrong by playing this game. It makes me want to look around my room every
5 minutes to confirm Iâm actually alone because I feel worried one of my parents will
walk in and be disappointed in me, and I havenât lived with my parents for over ten years. So I changed the language to Japanese and
never looked back, until I came to make this video where I replayed the first ten hours
of this game and was reminded of just how much pain this voice causes me. Over my many hours with this game I have come
to thoroughly like this character in much the same way that one might like a slightly
annoying pet. Yes, theyâre not the exact creature I would
have chosen if I was given a choice but as long as they donât urinate on the carpet
or bite small children Iâm more than happy to look after them and show them affection
while I convince myself and others around me that their annoyingness actually just gives
them more character. This would not have been possible if I hadnât
changed the language however. Maybe this is a problem with me more than
Genshin Impact. I donât know. I donât understand the science of why changing
the language from English to Japanese eliminates the emotion of cringe for some people and
if this⌠doesnât make you cringe than I respect and admire your mental fortitude. But I still feel this creature should come
with some kind of warning. Once you escape the first few conversations
however it doesnât take long to be enveloped in the blissful vistas of Genshinâs open
world, which frequently looks phenomenal. From the appealing colour pallet to the seemingly
limitless draw distance thatâs always reminding you of all the exciting places you have yet
to explore, this world is able to make you want to spend time in it through visual design
alone. But is has more to offer than visuals. In fact this virtual space is so densely packed
with chests, collectibles and other things to uncover that even a short walk across its
landscapes can lead you to making so many discoveries that it can feel a bit like your
injecting an illegal quantity of dopamine straight into your bloodstream. The world unravels before you like a never
ending breadcrumb trail of shiny things to interact with where you can always see at
least one more objective to head to from any given location. A lot of these objectives are connected to
simple puzzles or combat encounters that rarely challenge but still provide a surprising amount
of satisfaction, which is probably because even without a great degree of challenge the
player still feels like theyâre always interacting with the world around them in some way. In many open world games the world itself
acts as a container for the activities, missions or quests that the game revolves around, but
in Genshin Impact the world isnât just a space to do fun things in, the world itself
is the fun thing. The experience is about exploration, and the
many chests and puzzles this world is packed with are just there to be a reward for that
exploration. And it works. Curiosity is rewarded. Moving from one place to another will have
you constantly scanning your surroundings, always being invested in what might be around
you. And while the simple challenges and hidden
secrets fall short of being truly mentally taxing, they still force regular engagement. If you see something floating in the sky youâll
have to work out how to actually reach it. Head to one chest instead of another and youâll
find yourself plotting a mental map of the many places you need to return to to get everything. And the first time you solve each of the many
different environmental interactions and secrets provide bitesize eureka moments that leave
you feeling smugly satisfied at your intellect regardless of whether or not they actually
require that much intellect, because hey, at least you worked it out for yourself. And if finding one thing is easy, finding
everything isnât, and so, in much the same way that a collectathon works by giving you
lots of easy things to find that come together to create a more challenging optional objective
of finding everything, for those who enjoy exploring the world there is a challenging
end goal, made possible, but not easy, by craftable items that help you track down those
last remaining items. But keep exploring and the puzzles do become
more complicated, the chests more spreadout and the environments more hazardous, and yet
the pinball like motion of bouncing from one objective to the next remains an enjoyable
activity for hours and hours. Iâve explored the entire base game plus
all content added since release and I still want more. I feel like I might always want more, and
even more surprisingly, when I started to replay this game again for this video, during
which I was exploring places I had already explored before while knowing that all progress
I was making was entirely meaningless, even then, I still found the core activity of exploring
the world and collecting its treasure thoroughly enjoyable and felt an urge to keep going even
when it came time to say goodbye. This is very impressive to me and I canât
think of any other game that offers a similar experience. Well except for one I guess. Before its release Genshin impact was dubbed
a breath of the wild clone and in its early days it probably got considerably more criticism
for this quality than anything to do with gacha or monetization. China does have a history of playing fast
and loose with intellectual property laws, maybe because for years China just didnât
care about intellectual property laws, but regardless there are reasons to be skeptical
of this sort of thing and there are some obvious similarities between the two titles, with
the most apparent being the stamina system used to sprint, climb, swim and glide. Breath of the Wildâs stamina system is great. It takes simple traversal related activities
and adds a small layer of player involvement to turn something that is usually automatic
into something more engaging. When you climb you arenât just pushing forward
on an analogue stick and waiting. Instead youâre actively managing your stamina
meter, looking ahead to judge distances and making decisions based on your surroundings. And genshin impact copies this system almost
one for one. But I donât see that as a problem. Good gameplay systems should be copied and
thereâs more to both of these games than a stamina meter. There are a few other similarities; the worst
to me is how similar Genshinâs hilichurls are to Breath of the Wilds Bokoblins. Of course both of these are just variants
on one of the most common video game enemies, goblins, but thereâs something about the
specific visual design, animations and buildings that just feels more similar than it should
be. Itâs not grounds for a lawsuit or anything
but it does feel creatively bankrupt. Still thatâs one small part of two very
large games, and the list of ways in which these games are different is almost endless. And some of the other similarities people
pointed out feel like a stretch. Like, yeah both games do have green grass
and blue skies, but so does something elseâŚ. The windows xp wallpaper. All these games ripping this off is frankly
outrageous but thatâs hardly Genshin Impacts fault. Both games do focus on exploration though
and both also make the world itself and the way you traverse and interact with it the
main focus of that exploration, but if anything this kind of exploration based experience
almost feels like it could be its own genre. What Iâm saying is I want more games like
this, not less. And despite the focus on exploration there
are still ways these games do exploration differently. Like how breath of the wild is a deeply intrinsically
driven experience where as Genshin impact is almost as densely packed with progression
systems as its world is with chests. Really Breath of the Wild is a great game
and it makes sense that parts of its design would influence future games, and while the
influence its had on Genshin Impact does seem clear, after spending a lot of time with this
game itâs impossible for me not to see Genshin as wholly its own thing, and if the level
of similarity between Breath of the Wild and Genshin impact is problematic to some people,
then youâd probably also need to consider the majority of games in the same genre as
being problematic too. So when it comes to similarities with Zelda,
it doesnât seem like a problem to me, but there are other problems. Some of which come from the progression packed,
extrinsically driven design. Like how there are so many currencies, items
and unlockables in this game that it can frequently feel overwhelming and the early game is absolutely
choked with popups, tutorial menus, and little red exclamation marks telling you to check
something in this particular menu that seem to always start reappearing the instant you
get rid of them all. Even the extra rewards get annoying, as your
early hours are a frenzy of achievements, adventure ranks and handbook rewards, that
end up acting a bit like mini barriers standing in the way of actually playing the game. This is made worse by the way that none of
the many different currencies and items you pick up have any meaning to you early on,
except possibly primogems, because for the others you wonât have interacted much with
the actual progression systems theyâre used in. Someone watching me play in my early days
expressed shock that I was leaving behind items dropped by monsters. âI have enough goblin droppingsâ, I said
âwhy would I need to waste time picking up even more?â With the knowledge I have now I understand
this persons shock and on my personal list of the most ignorant things I have ever said
in my entire life, I rank my disregard of goblin droppings as a solid 4th highest of
all time, thatâs pretty high. Eventually the way in which almost every item
in this world plays at least some role in your future progression is something that
could be considered a positive, at least, to the right kind of player, but the way the
game handles this certainly doesnât benefit the early game experience. In your blissfully ignorant early game adventures
youâll also start getting to grips with the combat. Genshin impact has a similar battle system
to many other action jrpgs, except where most games have the player controlling a single
character with ai controlled teammates, Genshin instead allows you to directly control all
4 of your party members, which you do by quick swapping between them with only one character
on the battlefield at a time. With only one attack, one skill and one ultimate
ability per character, plus a universal dodge, each avatar can feel simplistic to control
when considered as a single entity, but itâs through your ability to freely swap between
characters that combat is given depth as youâre forced to manage multiple cooldowns while
setting up synergies between characters. This mostly happens through the elemental
system. Every character belongs to one of six elements:
fire, water, ice, electric, rock and wind, plus an unreleased seventh element, but we
donât talk about that, never talk about that. Characterâs special attacks will apply an
elemental status to enemies on hit which produces an elemental interaction when the next element
is applied. These elemental interactions are generally
what youâd expect and most just boil down to, first element plus second element equals
more damage, except for water and ice which freezes enemies and rock and anything which
gives you a shield. Elemental interactions also apply to the environment
and can be applied to you too by enemies, as youâll quickly be reminded every time
you come into contact with ice and water at the same time. The elemental system isnât deep but combining
elemental statuses feels satisfying and basically means every single character in the game can
perform some kind of combo with every other character. Making these combos produce large numbers
through specific elemental interactions alongside specific character skills and builds is really
where combat comes into its own, but you probably wonât realize this until much later. Still the novelty of elemental interactions
alongside solid animations and visuals means killing enemies is enjoyable enough that the
interruption to exploration it creates feels easily forgivable. More so than the story at least. Genshinâs narrative is frequently slow paced
with long stretches of dialogue often involving unimportant npcs who have a tendency to give
out unimportant tasks and, foolishly, thereâs also no way for players to skip entire conversations. In the first multi hour chapter youâre introduced
to Mondstadt, the city of the freedom, which is having trouble with a misunderstood dragon. Here you start to befriend Genshinâs large
cast of characters, but itâs not until the introduction of Venti that the story starts
to find its footing. This carefree bard is soon revealed to be
the thousand year old god of wind that everyone here supposedly worships, although no one
actually realizes this, even after he tells them. Venti is a reluctant deity who seems to care
little for the duties of divinity. Instead his interests are more focused on
music and alcohol, which he has trouble getting his hands on due to his youthful appearance. His outwardly free spirited playfulness is
tempered with occasional moments of introspective wisdom and his similar status of outsider
to Mondstadt makes his newfound friendship with the playerâs character feel easy to
believe in. If any of that sounds a little... âanimeâ,
well, it is, and thatâs as much a positive as negative. Still moments with Venti succeed, where other
early quests and plotlines might not, because Venti brings personality, and itâs in this
type of character focused moment where Genshin Impactâs narrative is at its best. That said the overarching plotline of the
dragon does feel rather uninspired. But thereâs more to Genshin impact than
story, characters, combat or even exploration, as I eventually found out. The world⌠isnât a great place. I mean, Iâm sorry if you like it here but
itâs true. There are problems and I think we all know
this. Still itâs not just the world; itâs us
too. Iâm sure weâre all doing our best but
clearly we make mistakes, or maybe our best just isnât good enough. What Iâm saying is that things could be
better, and yeah they could be worse, but they could be better. And you could make something better, if you
had that power. Thereâs a genre of anime called isekai. The word translates to another world, which
describes what happens to the protagonists in these stories, and this is a genre thatâs
grown to be massively popular over the last ten years. But isekai is more than a genre of anime,
people just donât always realize it. I mean, three of the most important pieces
of fantasy fiction ever created: alice in wonderland, the chronicles of Narnia, and
the wizard of oz, are classic isekai stories. Games have their fair share of isekai narratives
to, including but not limited to kingdom hearts, final fantasy tactics advance, ni no kuni,
the entire digimon series, and, in many ways, pokemon, and I donât mean the mystery dungeon
series which is literally an isekai, but also the mainline games, which are thematically
isekais, itâs just instead of being physically transported into another world the main characters
just come of age and are given a pokemon, which becomes a thematic portal into another
world, and the adventure then plays out exactly according to classic isekai tradition. The question of why isekai anime has become
quite so popular is a mystery to some people because this is a genre that quickly became
saturated and plenty of these shows have so many similarities that it can just seem like
the same story being told in slightly different ways. But clearly there is something about this
archetypal story that deeply appeals to people. There is of course a narrative advantage to
having your main character be transported into another world because their unfamiliarity
with their new surroundings is relatable to the audience and can be an easy way to set
up comedy or drama, a bit like how amnesia is a narratively useful trope for storytellers. But really I think the appeal of isekai runs
deeper. These stories are often power fantasies, with
relatable, easy to self insert into main characters which when combined with their settings, make
them almost unrivaled as a form of escapism. One of the reasons fantasy is so effective
as a genre is because it transports us to other worlds more interesting than our own,
but isekaiâs take this thematically appealing idea and then render it more directly, while
often creating worlds and scenarios that play into our real life fantasies, of being important,
living out adventure, and having multiple cute anime girls fall in love with you. Isekai anime took the dreams of anime watchers
and then allowed the deliberately relatable anime protagonists to live them out on screen. I feel I should point out here, for anyone
not familiar with the genre, that most of the protagonists in these shows are super
powerful in these worlds as a direct result of their real world elite gamer skills. Hopefully that speaks for itself. Iâve long believed that this is the reason
pokemon is the largest franchise in the world. Itâs not because of story, gameplay, graphics
or monetization. Itâs because the concept behind this franchise
has such deep appeal at allowing people to step into another world that people want to
step into that this concept alone can sell the exact same game to the exact same people
again and again while maintaining near complete satisfaction. For years I have thought that Pokemon is the
almost objectively correct answer to the common hypothetical of âif you could live in any
video game world, which would it be?â, and that this is what has driven its continuous
astronomical levels of success. But Iâm not so sure the answer to that hypothetical
is as clear cut anymore. What Iâm saying with this dangerously lengthy
off topic tangent, is that Genshin Impact is an Isekai game, and that I think it might
be one of the greatest Isekai games ever made. Genshin released with two large regions, Mondstadt
and Liyue. If Mondstadt is an idyllic fantasy take on
a quaint medieval Europe, complete with timber framed buildings, knightly orders and aristocratic
nobility. Liyue would be the idyllic fantasy take on
a proud medieval China. Funnily enough I didnât even know Liyue
existed when I started this game. What trailers and footage I had seen had focused
exclusively on Mondstadt, and my discovery of another entire landmass to explore was
a very welcome one but it was within this new region that the entire Genshin experience
finally started to connect to me beyond just offering enjoyment through exploring. Liyue is better than Mondstadt in every meaningful
way. The story still suffers from slow pacing with
unimportant npcs giving out unimportant tasks, but the city of Liyue has a much stronger
sense of culture. The story here has a heavy focus on the Chinese
concepts of Guanxi (guan-chi), meaning relations between people particularly those relating
to business, and Renqing (ren-chin), which are acts of kindness, honor or duty. This is exemplified by the regions deity,
Rex Lapis, the god of contracts and money, whose mysterious death after a prosperous
thousand year reign has now plunged the city into political turmoil, and you really get
a sense of this regions more unique and original culture through this story. Some parts still drag but overall itâs a
step up from what comes before it. And the environmental exploration makes even
bigger improvements, in part because of a slight decrease in density and increase in
complexity of the many findable things, but also because the environments themselves are
just more interesting. Golden trees, azure waters and towering stone
pillars litter the Liyue landscapes offering breathtaking views aplenty, but it was when
I first scaled the qingyun peaks that I realized that this world, and this game, has a quality
much greater than the sum of its parts. It was here as I sat amongst the clouds just
listening to the soundtrack while the sun welcomed a new day that this quality really
became clear to me. There is one word that I think accurately
describes Genshin Impactâs world: idyllic. Fair warning, Iâm about to use this word
many times in the rest of this section. I might even use the word idyllicism. Thatâs not actually a word but Iâll probably
use it anyway. Because my god does this game just exude absolute
pure idyllicism. You hear it in the soundtrack, see it in the
landscapes, and feel it in the character interactions, and itâs with you everywhere you go. Itâs in the precise hues of the colour palette,
the reward filled expanse of the overworld, the specific flavors of seasonal events and
the smaller details like how you receive letters on each characters birthday, where they tell
you how much you mean to them. You may not have seen these characters in
months, but it doesnât matter your friendship is as strong as ever, and it always will be. They love you. Theyâll always love you. I donât know how much objective value this
feeling of idyllicism has. I donât know how you could compare it to
more commonly compared attributes like narrative or gameplay. I do know that whenever I hear the music for
this particular region Iâm struck by a strong sense of nostalgia. A lot of video game music fills me with nostalgia,
but itâs always music that I first heard years ago, the music from my childhood. I first explored Liyue a few months ago and
I already feel deeply nostalgic for that time. There have been days where after logging into
this game for mechanical or progression related reasons that I delayed the act of logging
off, out of a desire to spend a few more minutes with this world. With lunch breaks almost over, real life workloads
mounting, and all the many pressures of life weighing heavy on my shoulders, I have cherished
the serene beauty of this world and let its relaxing atmosphere flow through me. Genshin Impact can be as idyllic as any game
I have ever experienced, and that means something, at least it did to me. And itâs through this clear desire to create
the ideal idyll that the story finally starts to make sense. Like with many isekai and many games, there
is a power fantasy dynamic to your characters relationship with this world. Where other characters in Genshin Impact have
one or no elemental affinities, you have the potential to have many. Your main objective of finding your missing
twin becomes an excuse to travel the world, befriending its inhabitants along the way
as you fix the worldâs biggest problems. You are restoring these places to the idyllic
way they were always meant to be. And the characters you meet quickly become
your friends, and confide in you their dreams and desires with the absolute sincerity that
only an anime character can truly posses. Ayaka recently told me that sheâs never
had any real friends, due to the pressure of a highborn life imposed upon her from an
early age leaving her distant from family and peers. I told her I would be her friend. She responded by saying this. This couldnât happen in real life. It would be, at best, incredibly awkward,
and at worst, worse. But in Genshin Impact, it isnât, it feels
natural because the entire game is this sincere and all these characters are similarly idealized. Later that day I went to a festival with Ayaka,
which revealed how important she is to the people of Inazuma, even if she hadnât realized
this until now. At the end of this she told me she wanted
to go to a festival again. I told I did too. Then we talked about our families and she
danced for me beneath the moonlit sky. She told me she would always be there for
me. Except thatâs a liar. You wonât be there for me because I havenât
actually paid to unlock you. And thatâs the problem with the idyllic. It never fucking lasts. I once asked a discord server full of what
can only be described as gacha enthusiasts, why they liked these games so much. The first and most common answer, was one
word: waifus. Waifu is a term so common in the internet
lexicon of today that Iâm not sure I need to explain it. But while I, and others, may know what waifuâs
are, I never been quite as sure why waifuâs are. For long have I pondered this question. I feel, intrinsically, that of all questions
of the universe, this is one that truly matters. To this end I have done what all great minds
do when faced with a question to which they know not the answer. I tried to see if anyone else had a good answer
I could âborrowâ. So I searched in academic journals, but, alas
my search proved not to be a fruitful one. I checked Google scholar, but did not find
any results. I even went back to basics starting where
all should start when chasing lifeâs greatest mysteries but, this time, the Greeks did not
have the answer. Clearly, academics, scientists, philosophers
and other great minds, are just as lost about this phenomenon as I am. All I can conclude is that maybe the simplest
answer is the best one. That people just like characters. And you can take away the anime veneer and
that phenomenon doesnât go away. Fan fiction, cosplay, merchandise, mascots,
comfort characters, celebrity worship, the entire way we chose to present most fictional
stories⌠our like for characters can be seen everywhere in our lives. Waifu is just the natural human enjoyment
of characters in anime form with a heavy side of self aware, often self deprecating irony
from a community that has found pleasure in embracing the over the top nature of their
enjoyment of characters so as to be able to express that enjoyment openly while partaking
in a community based meta humor surrounding the situation. And when considered that way it doesnât
sound weird at all, at least no more weird than most things that have grown from internet
sub cultures. I donât have a waifu. Iâve never had a waifu. But my channel icon is a picture of the magnificent
porco rosso from the magnificent porco rosso. Thereâs no real reason for this. There is no connection between this character
and my channel. Thereâs no meaning Iâm trying to signify,
actually I deliberately chose this image because itâs not very clear what it is. I wanted to have porco rosso as my channel
icon without people necessarily realizing thatâs what it is, precisely because I didnât
want to give this decision more meaning than I meant it to have. Really, I just like this character. Maybe Porco Rosso is my waifu. And I donât even like pigs. Or anthropomorphized characters. Or Italians. Thatâs not true, I have nothing against
pigs, I mean they taste delicious. But while I donât feel a need to own a Porco
Rosso dakimakura that I take out to dinner every Sunday, I do like this character. We all like certain characters. Itâs human. It was probably hardwired into our brains
over the course of our evolution to prevent us from going extinct. Some of us like characters in real life too,
we call them friends. We form attachments to people, whether theyâre
fictional or not, and certain characteristics might make us form stronger attachments, like
whether their personalities display idealized virtues or whether we find them cute. And thereâs nothing wrong with any of this;
itâs just a part of the human condition. So, perhaps it was only a matter of time until
something came along to prey on this through direct monetization that combines our human
love of characters with addictive luck based gambling. Hereâs how that works in Genshin Impact. This is a free to play game. There is a currency called primogems. This is awarded to players for exploring the
world, completing quests and participating in events, among other things. You can also buy primogems with money, either
through a reasonably priced monthly pass, called the blessing of the welkin moon, or
just directly, which happens to be less reasonably priced. Primogems are used to roll for characters,
in game this is called wishing, and in other gacha games this is sometimes called pulling
or summoning but itâs always a similar activity. Each wish has a chance to give a weapon or
character. In Genshin this can be 3 star, 4 star or 5
star, with higher being better. As this is a Chinese game, it means that by
law the exact probability of what you can get has to be included in game for people
to see. And from this we know that each wish has a
base rate of 0.6% to be a 5 star, and 5.1% for a 4 star, with every other wish being
a 3 star weapon which can just be considered unimportant trash. In addition to the base rate there is a pity
system, which means that after a certain number of wishes without winning a higher rate item,
the probability will increase until its 100%. This means that because of pity you are guaranteed
at least one 4 star every 10 wishes, and one 5 star every 90 wishes, and this means the
average probability of receiving a 4 star each wish ends up being 13%, with 5 stars
being 1.6%. This comes to an average of one 5 star every
62.5 wishes. And Iâm sorry if this seems like a lot of
information to take in but we are far from done. Each wish costs 160 primogems. Therefore the average cost in primogems for
one 4 star is 1230.77, and for a 5 star its 10,000. The monthly pass costs 5 dollars and gives
3000 primogems, spread out over 30 days. Through this we could propose a primogem value
per dollar, which would be 600, meaning the average cost per 4 star is 2 dollars, and
per 5 star its 16.7 dollars. However, and there will be many howevers,
so prepare yourself. However, the monthly pass gives a set amount
of primogems and you can only buy one pass per month. If you wanted more primogems youâd need
to buy them directly where the exact cost can vary and there are first time buyer bonuses,
but excluding the first time bonus, the best rate would be 100 dollars for 8,080 primogems. This gives us a primogem per dollar value
of 80.8, which is considerably less than 600. Our average cost per 4 star with this value
is 15.2 dollars, and per 5 star is 123.8 dollars. So these are our average costs, however, these
are the costs per 4 or 5 star, not the cost of specific 4 or 5 stars. So how do you get a specific character in
Genshin Impact? Well there are 3 different banners you can
wish on: a standard banner, a featured weapon banner and a featured character banner. The standard banner is always the same and
contains every 4 star, but only 6 5 star characters out of a total of 16, and that total is increasing
with each update. For these other 5 star characters they appear
one at a time on the featured character banner. Whenever you get a character on the featured
banner, it has a 50% chance to be the featured character, although anytime you donât get
a featured character on that banner, the rate of getting the featured character will increase
to 100%, meaning next time itâs guaranteed. This means the exact chance to get a featured
character in a sample size greater than one isâŚ. I have no idea. I tried to find out, I really did. All I wanted to know was the average price
per specific character after the first 50:50. So I tried to work it out and got lost, and
then I started writing down lots of Aâs and Bâs, where A is success, to try to find
a pattern, it looked like this and I got nowhere, I just donât understand this type of probability. I canât find the way to get the number I
need. So this is me giving up, writing this right
now is my official surrender. If you are an expert on conditional probability
please send help, I need it on the 31st of July at 7:21 pm. Obviously you would need a time machine but
Iâm assuming if you understand this shit the time machine wonât be a problem. Letâs just move on and know that however
disappointed you are in me I am more disappointed in myself. But I blame gacha for my failing. Trying to work out the average cost of a common
scenario doesnât make sense to me and I tried more than Iâd like to admit to try
to force this to make sense. However, this failure says something. It says understanding the costs involved in
this system is too fucking complicated for a normal person. However, weâre still not done because even
with the added unknown costs to get a specific 5 star rather than just any 5 star, the costs
can still potentially be higher because of constellations. Constellations are small bonuses for each
character that are unlocked by getting duplicate versions of that character. There are a total of 6 constellations per
character, so you need to get a character 7 times to get everything. Weapons have a similar system by the way,
and itâs kind of worse. Anyway right here is where I wanted to multiply
my average costs per specific character by 7 to make a really shocking large number. I canât do that though, so instead here
is a calculation by youtuber TenTen, who wrote a script to do the calculations for him that
sure looks pretty legit. And he makes the primogem cost for a 6 constellation
5 star to be 117,120, which comes to about 1460 dollars, using the most likely payment
method. New 5 star characters release at a rate of
one or two every 6 weeks, which would mean about 13 characters per year. So thereâd be a yearly cost of around 18,890
dollars to get every new 5 star character with all constellations and thatâs without
even considering weapons. Hopefully, this is a number that speaks for
itself. Gacha bad. The end. Except itâs not. There are many things to say about this system,
far too many for me to be able to realistically say them all, so now instead of trying to
give exact figures and explain every system as I go, Iâll instead transition to speaking
in generalities and skipping to conclusions. You can play Genshin Impact without spending
a penny, and the experience is still very good. You get six 4 star characters for free early
on, not including your main character, and youâll get many others very quickly by just
playing the game. You only need a party of 4, so you will still
get plenty of choice and, in time, youâll also get some 5 stars. I havenât spent any money what so ever on
wishes, and I have five 5 stars, three characters and two weapons, plus enough currency saved
up to get around 2 more when I spend it, and I have never received a 5 star outside of
pity meaning this is with below average luck. Iâve been playing this game for around 5
months, so I have received over one 5 star per month, and while that rate will decrease
now Iâve completed all quests and exploration, it wonât decrease by that much, if I kept
playing, due to dailies, events and new content. So even as free to play youâll get plenty
of characters including 5 stars. The actual difference between a 5 star and
a 4 star character is also not that large and constellations are even less important. There is no reason why you actually need 5
star characters to enjoy this game or beat all content, let alone specific 5 stars, and
you in no way need every 5 star or any constellations. Of course spending money would make the game
easier but not by a large amount, and if you did ever find the game too hard you can, at
any time, decrease the world difficulty level, which is akin to turning the difficulty down
one notch, and that problem would then be solved. Thereâs only one piece of content in this
game that could be considered genuinely difficult and could make people feel like they need
to spend money for gameplay related reasons, and thatâs the spiral abyss. Weâll talk about that later, but for now
just know that itâs not really that important. However, people do spend money on characters
regardless of whether they need to, and some people will spend a lot, in part because the
act of rolling for characters is fun. Gambling is fun. And rolling for characters is basically gambling. Gambling is bad, in much the same way that
alcohol is bad, which is to say that it can sometimes be incredibly destructive, or just
slightly destructive, but it doesnât have to be and many people enjoy it anyway. Iâm not going to argue the morality of gambling,
but, just like with lootboxes in western games, it feels important to at least call it what
it is, and if you are someone with an addictive personality or just poor financial control,
you really may want to simply avoid Genshin and every other gacha game, for this reason. Still I wouldnât actually consider Genshin
Impact pay 2 win, because thereâs no way to win. There is no competitive side to this game,
no pvp, no real multiplayer, no leaderboards. At best you are paying to make the game slightly
easier, but I imagine most people who spend money in this game are doing it simply because
they want to own certain characters. This makes sense, we are a species that likes
characters, and if you like one of these characters and like the game, you probably want to own
that character in game. If you donât carefully budget the primogems
you get for free youâre only option here may be spending real life money or missing
out as character banners only run for a limited amount of time adding a further level of exclusivity
that adds more pressure on playerâs and their wallets. The important thing to understand about this
system of monetization is that it is designed to prey on people, just probably not you,
and I say that for purely statistical reasons. Because many free to play monetization methods
are designed around the principle that itâs more effective to convince a small number
of people to spend a large amount of money, than it is to make many people spend a little
bit of money. I.e. If only 1% of the player base spends money
on your game, that can be better than having 100% of people spend money, as long as the
1% spend enough. Genshin Impact is no exception in this regard
and this is where those aquatic mammals mentioned earlier come in. The constellation system, which rewards you
for getting the same character multiple times, can be outrageously expensive. A system like this is clear whale bait. It exists to be ignored by the majority of
players while convincing the big spenders to spend big. Nobody needs constellations for 5 star characters,
but some people will want them, and thatâs all it takes. And even if you ignore constellations some
people will still want more characters than they can afford, and then there are also the
specific quirks of the weapon banner, and so there are ways this game has been designed
to be convincing when it comes to persuading players to part with their money. I mean, the fact that some things, like 5
star constellations, are so expensive is probably also designed to make other things look reasonably
priced by comparison. This is probably why the monthly pass is so
much better value than buying primogems up front, because some people will buy primogems
regardless of how bad value they are while others will then feel like theyâre getting
a good deal by comparison for sticking to the reasonably priced monthly pass. And itâs also why there so many different
currencies in this game; itâs to obscure the actual monetary value involved. Itâs all one big cleverly designed system
built for making money, and the data shows it works. There are different ways you can respond to
this. You might say people should be free to spend
their money on whatever they want, because itâs their money and what they do with it
is up to them. And it is true that people should be responsible
for their own money but that doesnât mean a system that preys on peoples irresponsibility
is good. You might also say whatâs the problem with
tricking the rich to spend lots of money? I mean, in a way isnât this just making
the rich fund the game for those less well off? But itâs naĂŻve to believe that everyone
who spends large amounts of money on gacha is rich. I donât have any evidence I can show you
to prove this but I can assure itâs not the case and that there are at least some
people spending money they donât have on these types of games. Then there are the ways in which the gacha
system negatively impacts the rest of the experience. The most obvious of which is that it limits
the amount of characters you get, and in general, more characters should mean more fun, while
also restricting which characters you can get due to limited duration banners. The second most obvious thing is that failing
to win characters based on random chance can be disappointing. This isnât a huge problem in Genshin Impact
due to the pity system but the 50 50 chance to get the featured character can lead to
disappointment and frustration. Beyond these two reasons the gacha system
can also lead to annoying time gating for progression systems and it means that characters
joining your party often makes little sense narratively as by rolling you end up with
characters who youâve never even met joining you, which is rather immersion breaking when
you do meet them 20 hours later. But it wasnât any of these reasons why I
most disliked the gacha system. For me the biggest problem was how it clashed
with the thing I loved the most, the idyllicism, and yes I am still using this made up word
because it doesnât feel made up to me. When Ayaka danced for me in the moonlight
I felt the hairs on my arms stand up slightly. As the culmination of this characterâs questline
it was a moving moment but immediately afterwards I thought to myself how clearly this questline
has been designed to try to part players from their money by making people want to roll
for this new character. And so all the emotion this questline carried
was tainted by a vague sense of manipulation. Genshin Impact can be so idyllic and I love
that quality, but gacha is anything but, in the same way that no one would call a slot
machine idyllic no matter how fun you might find it to be, and there are few things more
cynical and anti-idyllic than preying on peoples love for characters to maximize profits. So I wouldnât exactly say Iâm a fan of
gacha, but, before I played this game gacha was something I genuinely hated and that at
least has changed. Gacha has its problems, and a lot of them
are quite obvious but through playing this game I realized that this type of monetization
isnât as one sided as I once thought. So, let me present the other side of the argument. In the West we pay for games upfront, itâs
how itâs always been, but in China that isnât the case. Years of restrictive legislation meant gaming
consoles were banned for years and so free to play games became the norm and itâs a
norm certain people like. The western way isnât better just because
thatâs what weâre more used to and thereâs an inclusivity to free to play games that
can often be undervalued. Some people canât afford 60 or 70 dollars
for a new game, particularly in a country with high wealth inequality and itâs easy
for people in the west to forget just how high this value can be to others who might
be less fortunate. Free to play doesnât exclude these people
and in free to play models what you pay really is a choice. I mean if you donât enjoy the game thereâs
no reason to pay anything. In this system no one can be mislead by deceptive
marketing or hype into buying a product that doesnât live up to players expectations. Instead you play the game first, and then
decide whether you want to financially support it based on your experience with it. I still prefer to pay upfront for a video
game, itâs what Iâm used to, but I donât think the situation is black and white, and
how a monetization system is handled seems far more important than what type of monetization
system it is. And as for gacha itself, sure it does involve
a system thatâs basically gambling, but this isnât exclusive to gacha. Lootboxes are the same, but so are opening
packs of cards in something like hearthstone, magic the gathering, or pokemon. When I was young I opened many a pack of pokemon
cards, and itâs the same thing. Thereâs even whale bait by way of shiny
cards: You donât need them, but people sure wanted them, and they donât exist to improve
the game, they exist to make you want to spend more by tapping into the value of exclusivity
while delivering extra dopamine when opening packs. And Pokemon cards are aimed directly at children
even if they were co-opted by youtubers with too much money on their hands many years later. Anyway if gacha is a type of gambling, then
this isnât something unique to gacha. In fact, even outside of lootboxes and card
game, many games deliberately utilize the dopamine rush that comes from getting lucky
to make an experience thatâs more addictive. This is a large part of the appeal of loot
based games like Diablo and World of Warcraft, but itâs also a part of games like team
fortress and counter strike where luck based items can even have real monetary value. And if gacha is gambling it is at least a
less extreme form than traditional gambling, because thereâs no potential to win money,
which is what creates situations where people who have lost money have a greater incentive
to keep going to try to win back their loses. This is one of the main things that makeâs
gambling dangerous and leads people to being addicted, and this at least doesnât happen
in Genshin Impact or other gacha games. Then there are the positive qualities of gacha
itself. Because whether you like it or not, this genre
is popular with many people and itâs not because there entire playerbases are comprised
of gambling addicts and innocent fools brainwashed by cute anime girls. Of course, there are positive qualities of
these games that can be found in many games, including story, character designs, music
and gameplay, but there are things the gacha system creates which arenât common in other
games, such as the sense of progression, the sense of value, and the community. The very first character I received from rolling
in Genshin Impact was Bennet. A more experienced Genshin player was watching
over my shoulder as this happened and immediately told me this character, the first Iâd got,
the only non free to play character I had, was terrible. âWorst character in the gameâ, may have
been a phrase that was used. But Bennet was my character. I resolved then to spite this person and the
gacha gods by using Bennet for the rest of my Genshin Impact playing life. Worst character you say? That just means he is the best⌠at being
bad. To this day I have used many characters and
the exact lineups of my party has changed like the weather, but Bennet has never been
removed. He is the one constant, the only constant,
in my time with this game. And the greatest part of all was that Bennet
is not the worst character in the game. That was a lie told to try to take advantage
of my then ignorance to trick me into thinking I had been unlucky. Bennet is actually amazing. He brings lots of healing, plus a noticeable
damage boost through his ultimate and the way his healing scales means you can still
build for damage without sacrificing much healing. And his fire affinity makes him fit into almost
any party effortlessly. He basically has it all. Well except for an interesting story. Actually he doesnât even have a real story,
heâs not important enough. He also has a rather boring character design. Kind of an annoying personality too, now that
I think about it, but none of that ever mattered to me. Bennet was my character, and that was all
it took to make him the best character. Sorry Ayaka, you can dance all night long,
my loyalty will always be with my boy Ben. I have a certain level of attachment to most
of the characters I use and itâs because characters are not given freely that I have
come to appreciate them. I never would have formed an attachment to
Bennet if he was just one of many characters I had available shortly after starting the
game. But itâs not just attachment that this acquisition
method creates. My most played single player game in the last
couple years is Slay the Spire. Itâs a roguelite deckbuilding card game
thatâs heavily skill based, but the skill involved isnât really about the core gameplay. Most battles are quite straightforward. Instead the skill comes from a series of small
choices you make about which card to add to your deck after each fight. You need to understand the inherit value of
cards to add the best ones, but even more than that you need to understand the specific
value these cards have relative to your current situation. In a traditional card game you can build an
exact deck where you chose every card in it and everything perfectly synergizes together,
but you can never do this in Slay the Spire. Instead every single run is about learning
to make do with what youâre given, and thatâs why this game is so fun despite its relatively
simple gameplay and structure. Slay the Spire was not a game I expected Genshin
Impact to remind me of, but it did. Gacha games are a bit like a really, really,
ridiculously long single run in a roguelike game, and if you donât learn to make do
with what youâre given you wonât be as successful. If there is one important skill in Genshin
Impact itâs not anything to do with combat. Sure combat does have some skill based factors,
particularly with knowing enemy attacks and avoiding them, and understanding and executing
specific combos, but if you want skill based action gameplay you should look elsewhere. Instead the real skill of genshin impact is
resource management. There are many progression systems and youâre
always limited in what you have, whether thatâs characters, weapons, gold, energy or time. In the face of such regular limitations youâre
forced to constantly prioritize. Do you want to level this character or that
one? Will rolling for this new character help you
out or is it better to wait for the next one? Are those last few expensive levels you could
increase actually worth it? Should you spend resin on talents or artifacts
or something else? You can pay money to help with these limitations,
which is particularly true in the case of a second monthly pass, called the battle pass,
which costs 10 dollars for 6 weeks and is another way this game tries to persuade you
to spend money even when itâs not actually needed. But no matter how much money you spend you
can never remove the limitations. In fact the more characters you have the harder
it can be to level them up or make the right decisions, particularly if youâre constantly
getting new characters which are replacing old characters you have already invested resources
into. In this way paying money can actually put
players at a disadvantage, if you arenât skillful enough at resource management. You could even say Genshin Impact is pay 2
lose. Most people would think thatâs a stupid
thing to say, but itâs not stupid to me. Itâs like how the bigger your house is the
more expensive its upkeep becomes. Sometimes less is more. Roguelites get much of their enjoyment from
creating variables outside the players control that players are then forced to react to. Gacha games share this quality, and just as
I received many hours of enjoyment from trying to make do with what I was given in Slay the
Spire, so too did I take a certain level of enjoyment from deciding how best to spend
my resources in Genshin Impact. By making the right decisions I felt like
I was mastering these progression systems. And this is something players have to work
out for themselves. You can go look up guides online about which
are the best characters or strongest parties and there are many videos and tier lists that
try to provide this information, but you canât just copy these guides because you wonât
have exactly whatâs needed to do so. Instead youâre basically forced to work
with what you. For example I once got a 5 star bow from the
standard banner. This could be considered lucky but I considered
it unlucky because it was my first 5 star and I wanted a character. Still sometimes you have to make your own
luck. So in response I made the first 5 star character
I focused on rolling for a bow user. This character isnât considered very strong
for a 5 star, but I had a good weapon for them, plus other characters leveled up who
would synergize well with them, plus a need for a water affinity character. This is me saying I chose tartaglia over hu
tao, and I consider this the right decision. I did get a 5 star spear too actually and
Hu Tao is considered one of very best characters in the game, so maybe it actually wasnât
the right decision, but it was the right decision at the time, and I would never want Hu Tao
over tartaglia, because tartaglia is mine, and I care for my characters. Gacha can be fun for reasons that have nothing
to do with the enjoyment of gambling. There is a skill involved in these gacha games
that isnât seen in many others, and isnât obvious to those who havenât spent an extended
period of time with them. But, thatâs not all, because just as the
variability of the genre can create interesting decisions, so too can it create a strong sense
of community. As everyoneâs journey is slightly different,
it makes people want to talk about their experiences and take an interest in other peoples. People become invested in what characters
other people get. Rolling for characters feels like an event,
one that you want to share. And as progression is complicated and decisions
related to it arenât obvious it means knowledge from an experienced player can be invaluable,
which provides a heavy incentive to talk to people about the game. And people do. In 2019 Fate Grand Order was the most talked
about game on twitter, for the second year in a row, beating out games with much larger
player bases like minecraft or fortnight, and since genshin impact released it has taken
that crown. These games have large, active communities,
and that sense of community elevates the experience. This might even be true for people who donât
care about talking to others because a strong community still has benefits, like how it
leads to lots of content being created for these games, lot of hentai, it means there
is a lot of hentai for these games, at least thatâs what Iâve been told while researching
this subject. And lastly, through the gacha system, these
games are continually updated. This means not only is there a constant stream
of new content with an ever advancing story, but also that your time spent making progress
in these games has a sense of long term value. You arenât just grinding to get an item
in a game that youâll complete in a few days and never play again. Everything youâre doing instead has long
term benefit, providing you keep playing the game. I think this is one of the main reasons MMOâs
are popular. Iâve heard many MMO players say they canât
enjoy single player games anymore because single player games feel pointless to them
by comparison. Depending on your perspective this might sound
strange but this attitude might be more common than youâd expect and Gacha games are another
genre where this isnât the case, which usually also offer a lower barrier of entry than mmos
in terms of time required and intensity of gameplay. There is an audience for gacha games, and
while it may not be you, that doesnât mean that the reasons why people enjoy these games
arenât valid for them. There may be victims from this system, but
these games donât have entire playerbases of victims. People who like these games arenât being
psychologically held captive against their will just waiting for a brave valiant youtuber
to come along and reveal how evil this genre really is. Few things in life are that black and white,
gacha included. So where does this leave Genshin? Before playing Genshin Impact I thought gacha
was evil. Not in a despotic dictator committing war
crimes kind of way, but in a casual more insidious manner. I thought these games were a corrupting force
within the industry that had the potential to cause great harm to their playerbases,
and Genshin Impact would be the worst of all in how it sought to bridge the gap towards
traditional single player games while exposing entirely new audiences to these corrupting
practices. I donât believe this to be true anymore
however, and there should be an obvious lesson here, which is to be careful about what conclusions
you draw about that which you donât really understand. Genshin Impact is a good game. It has some of the most enjoyable exploration
Iâve ever experienced, and a sky high level of polish that stretches across its many hours
of game time. Its world is beautiful and the idyllic atmosphere
it creates is unrivaled. One of the most important questions I had
when playing and then later evaluating this game was whether Genshin Impact would be a
better game without the gacha elements. Iâve argued so far that gacha isnât black
and white and that there are positives and negatives to this system, but yeah, no shit,
there are always two sides to every story and that doesnât mean one side isnât more
correct. So, would Genshin Impact be a better game
without the gacha? Well yeah, there is at least the potential
for the talent behind this game to have created something better if they didnât include
any gacha elements, but it may not have been easy to do this without losing some of Genshinâs
positive qualities, and the game it would result in may not have been as an enjoyable
to the audience who currently enjoys it⌠and it wouldnât make as much money. And the subject of money does matter. Mihoyo began as 3 students at university who
just liked anime and games and wanted to make their own. They now employ over 2,400 people. Their first title was a simple 2D, one button
game and each subsequent title has been more ambitious than the last. The money theyâve made through each game
has clearly been reinvested in the company which has resulted in more games. This is where Genshin Impact came from. Itâs how a game of this level of quality
was made possible by a largely unknown developer. And the money Genshin Impact makes might be
used to make something even better in the future. It may also be reinvested back into Genshin
Impact itself to create more high quality content for this gameâs playerbase. The most recent update is 2.0, which added
the brand new region of Inazuma. It is fantastic, featuring some of the best
open world content within the game and a much more engaging storyline than anything which
preceded it. Inazuma has a different feeling than the last
two regions. Itâs a storm in the night, dark and deadly,
long stretches of somber rain that are interrupted by violent flashes of lighting. That sense of melancholy mixed with violence
can be found in every part of this regions design. You feel it in the civil war focused main
story, in the surprisingly sad side quests, in the soundtrack, in the visual of its environments
that combine natural beauty with decay, and in the mechanical aspects of the exploration,
where lighting acts as an unseen threat from the sky, and special zones damage you over
time forcing you to have to frequently find shelter. Even the weather here seems to be hunting
you down, as if to tell you youâre not welcome. Inzauma is a thematically cohesive experience
that subverts the idyllicism of the rest of the game to create something new and dangerous. The main story also feels like it has finally
matured. It still has the problem of too much time
being wasted with uninteresting npcs, particularly during its start, but after this youâre
introduced to the regions complicated politic landscape, which the player is pulled into
against their wishes, and before you know it the story is moving along with real dramatic
tension, until it just stops. Inazuma is not finished; there are more regions
to be released and its story is only half told, but so far itâs been a real improvement
on the already good base game. There have been 7 major updates in the 10
or so months since Genshin Impact first released, which have continued the main story while
adding 5 new areas to explore, with the next updating promising another 2. Some players may still feel there should have
been more content released for a game so wildly successful, but some players will always expect
more and what has been released has been high quality. I imagine Genshin will continue to be updated
for a long time to come, and if this level of quality is maintained, it makes for another
reason in the gacha systems favor. Money can be reinvested back into the game
in a way that benefits all players. So to draw any real conclusion about Genshin
Impact perhaps you have to admit that it will depend on the individual player. There are reasons someone might want to avoid
this game. Some people donât wish to play games made
in China due to the actions of the Chinese government. Some people donât want to play free to play
games. Some people might just find anime tropes annoying. These are all valid reasons if thatâs your
opinion. And there are, of course, people who, whether
due to personal circumstances or individual psychology, are just more vulnerable to the
negative aspects of this kind of monetization. And while I wouldnât suggest that such people
shouldnât be free to do as they please with their money, it is important that all people
are aware that there is some level of risk here, as with other potentially dangerous
things in life like alcohol, unhealthy food and other forms of gambling. And maybe this means there should be regulation
for this type of game to make sure this risk is made clear for potential players, as we
see with other potentially dangerous things. The irony here is that the people who are
most vulnerable might be the same people who would most enjoy the game, up until the moment
they donât. Gambling addicts start as people who enjoy
gambling and the more you like genshin impact the more incentive you have to spend money
on it. You also need to consider that for everything
said in this video I might be biased because I am not that person. I donât have an addictive personality. I also donât enjoy gambling and never have. And I donât even enjoy collecting things;
I much prefer to just appreciate what I have. I think I was like this even as a child. I remember I didnât want to collect all
the pokemon, because why do I need them all when you only use 6? Collecting them for the sake of collecting
them just seemed sad to seven year old me. I didnât want to trap these creatures in
a pocket dimension of nothingness for eternity just to tick a box on a pokedex. I guess this opinion on pokemon wasnât normal
for a child. If it was they did not create a good slogan
for that series. But if you wanted to catch them all, maybe
you would have a different outlook on acquiring characters and spending money in Genshin Impact
than I do. Still the best way to think about Genshin
Impact might be to think of it in terms of an investment, and this also brings me to
the final, and largest, problem I have with this game. You could think of every game as an investment. You put in money and time and get out enjoyment. As you probably donât enjoy every game you
play, some games will be bad investments, but where other games might ask for 60 dollars
and 15 hours of your time, Genshin Impact is potentially a much larger investment, meaning
if that investment does turn bad your loss could be much greater. The real problem with Genshin Impact then
is that players might not realize itâs a bad investment until theyâre already heavily
invested. If you spend 1460 dollars to get a 6 constellation
5 star character, it might be fun in the moment when youâre rolling and you might get some
enjoyment from using this character in game, but how many people would actually get 1460
dollars worth of enjoyment? My guess is, almost none, because no matter
how rich you might be there are surely better things to spend that money on. But the gacha system misleads people into
not realizing that this is a bad investment until itâs too late. You could think about many other things in
life in this way too, and I donât just mean those that involve money. For example if you eat a lot of unhealthy
food you might enjoy it in the moment, but maybe your short term enjoyment isnât worth
the long term negative health consequences. That unhealthy food might end up being a bad
investment, even though it seemed like a good investment at the time it was entering your
mouth. This is spending money in gacha games. And thatâs why you have to diversity your
assets, understand you risk tolerance, and not spend 1460 dollars on a character in a
video game. The thing is, up until now, this video has
been largely focused on Genshin Impact as a financial investment. Is the enjoyment you get from Genshin Impact
worth the money you put into it? Well the answer to that is: if youâre free
to play then, yes, if youâre a whale, then no, and if youâre someone in between then
it depends. Simple. Except thereâs a second cost you need to
consider: time - and itâs for this reason that I donât think Genshin Impact is a truly
great game as it is currently even if you are okay with the gacha elements. The exploration in this game is amazing. The story can be enjoyable and the progression
involves interesting systems and decision making. But thereâs no point to it. If this game has an end game, all it involves
is logging in to do a few daily quests, and spending a resource called resin, which is
basically an energy system and is used to gather progression related resources. This takes about 15 minutes per day, I timed
it multiple times to check, and through this you gain primogems and resources to upgrade
your characters, but thereâs no reason you need upgraded characters. There is one piece of what could be considered
end game content, which is the spiral abyss. This is basically a gauntlet based challenge
dungeon requiring two full parties of characters. It involves defeating different groups of
enemies, takes one to two hours, resets twice a month and rewards up to 600 primogems. For those who donât remember 600 primogems
has a dollar value of 1, based on the welkin pass conversation rate, and 7.4 otherwise,
but even if you have a weak group of characters youâll probably still be able to get many
of those 600 primogems just not all of them. In the abyss the exact enemies change slightly
over time and there are different buffs and debuffs each reset to add some variety, but
this is the only piece of challenging content in the game, and while itâs fun to do a
few times to have some type of content that tests how good your party really is, the spiral
abyss alone doesnât feel like anywhere close to enough content to justify the time you
might spend grinding to improve your characters. Grinding itself can sometimes be enjoyable. It can be fun to make progress and get stronger,
but only because we expect there to be a worthwhile destination at the end of that journey. And in Genshin Impact, there isnât. MMOâs also ask players to invest large amounts
of time, often split over several days, for the promise of some future reward. This is usually enjoyment from dungeons and
raids, or pvp, or just better items. Sometimes you hear that these games donât
get good until end game and this is used to forgive a boring early game. But if you were to compare the end game in
Genshin Impact to the end game in any MMO then Genshin would seem incredibly lacking. And yet Genshin Impact still encourages you
to log in every day to do your dailies and spend your resin doing repetitive tasks over
and over again. After a while, this might not be enjoyable
and it therefore becomes a bad time investment. Even the grind itself has significant room
for improvement. One of the most common things to spend resin
on is domains, which give artifacts and items to upgrade talents and weapons. But every single time you do a certain domain,
you fight the exact same waves of enemies. For the rng based artifact system you may
end up doing a single domain ten, twenty, fifty times even, and each time the gameplay
will be exactly the same. At the very least if Mihoyo expected players
to do this content multiple times they could have added multiple variations for each domain
so you donât always fight the exact same enemies. They could also add a unique buff and debuff
which changes each week, similar to how it is in abyss, that would hopefully add a little
bit of strategy into how you approach this content. And this is just one of many ways the grind
could be improved. But as it is currently it feels like almost
nothing has been done to make the grind more interesting, and while this game has received
plenty of content updates since release, this side has remained largely neglected the entire
time. So after you finish the story and exploration,
grinding stops being an enjoyable part of Genshin Impact, and thereâs no reward for
actually doing it by way of content, outside of Abyss which isnât enough. But this may not be clear to people until
you have already invested time into this side of the game because the progression systems
encourage you to keep improving your characters and the energy system encourages you to use
resin each day or risk losing it. You donât need to grind. New events, regions and story content will
never be a high difficulty, at least they certainly havenât been so far, and if you
do somehow fall behind you can always lower the world level to accommodate this. But the game design encourages players to
grind anyway despite it not being enjoyable in the long run, probably because, just as
with the gacha system, it makes more money to keep players longing in while trapping
them in a never ending progression treadmill that helps to make people feel like they need
to play every day and get all the latest characters. As a single player open world game Genshin
Impact is great but itâs like thereâs a second half finished game attached to it
that tricks people into wasting their time, on top of the gacha system that tricks people
into wasting their money. Which is why, despite in many ways loving
this game, I am going to stop logging in outside of new events. Dailies and resin donât take up much time
but doing them every day just isnât fun after a while. I know this. I have been here before in MMOâs. And so I wonât do it. I donât want to look back one day and regret
wasting time on something that didnât matter and wasnât enjoyable. Itâs a bad time investment and in the long
run forcing myself to stop doing this might actually be the best way to keep enjoying
this game, which is something I do still intend to do. Because for all the problems mentioned in
this video, all the potential negatives of the gacha system and the pointlessness of
the grind, I donât regret playing this game at all. At its very best Genshin Impact is magical
and its promise of an idyllic world to escape into is unrivaled, even if that escape is,
as always in life, only fleeting. Genshin Impact is sipping an ice cold drink
in the garden on a bright sunny day. Itâs the warm glow of the setting sun hovering
over the city as you make your way home after work. Itâs the sound of birds singing outside
your window on a saturday morning as you spend an extra hour in bed. Itâs stopping to listen to the music that
first time you climb above the clouds. And I donât mind overlooking all the negatives
to keep enjoying that. Gacha is quite possibly bad for you, just
like many things in life are. So enjoy responsibly and donât get tricked
into bad investments, because there will always be things that try to trick you. Speaking of which, I have a patreon. It may not provide very good returns if you
donate to it but it might at least be a better investment than a 6 constellation 5 star character
in Genshin Impact. Other than that, if the Chinese gaming industry
sounds interesting, then boy do I have a video for you. Regardless though, thank you for watching
my video. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope youâll enjoy the next one too,
whatever and whenever that may be.
This was a really thoughtful discussion about Genshin Impact and the Impact (heh) of the Gatcha system on a game that, in a general sense, feels like a genuinely good game.
This kind of greed knows no bounds.