GAMES | Genshin Impact Controversies
On Genshin Impact controversies writes Natalia Trojanowska, student of the Faculty of New Media Art at PJAIT, Warsaw.
Games (G) is an elective subject that is conducted by Anil Demir within the Faculty of New Media Art of our Academy. The students of the subject discuss various theoretical and controversial topics related to video games and work towards a game studies article of their own throughout the semester. This is one of those articles in question.
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play RPG gacha game that relies on microtransactions. Inspiration from games like Nier: Automata, The Elder Scrolls series and Grand Theft Auto 5 in combination with anime-style created a huge and successful game. Its genius comes from its lovable and family-friendly characters that were created with an extremely intensive and careful design process.
Genshin Impact is free-to-play, but only on the outside, you can download it for free, but if you want a specific 5-star limited character or weapon there is a big chance that you will have to spend some money. There is no need for that of course, although so-called “whales” who spend a lot of money on Genshin have an easier game, usually, deal more damage. Despite the huge success of the game both financially and in terms of popularity, the game had few controversies.
New adventure
Genshin Impact has been the third biggest-earning mobile game worldwide in the past 12 months. The game made over 1 billion dollars in its first six months only from mobile phone users and it is still earning around 175 million dollars a month. It is estimated that almost 3 million people play Genshin Impact every day.
The game would not exist without MiHoYo’s three founders, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei, and Luo Yuhao. Their love for anime made them create Genshin Impact. “Our inspiration was born from our passion for technology and [anime, comics, and gaming] culture, and we wanted to share this passion with the world,” they said during the interview, “The other reason was we didn’t see many anime-style games that really intrigued us, so we decided to create a company to make anime games that were exciting to us.”
Before the company was officially founded MiHoYo released a few mobile games in anime style, but they weren’t popular. The reason for this could be that these games followed what was trendy at the time and did not chase after something new. Cai explained that MiHoYo became successful by sticking to what they already knew. They narrowed their focus to a specific target audience so-called “otakus” who seek cutesy anime girls. As their company grew, their mission was not only to satisfy this specific target audience but also to achieve international success.
Controversy after controversy
The game industry in China is a great deal. Soon there will be more PC gamers in China than citizens in the United States. The $40 billion industry is also the most regulated industry in the world. Recently the Chinese government regulated the law and now young people below the age of 18 cannot play more than 3 hours a week.
Games need to undergo a rigorous censorship process, if a game is too violent, erotic, or even features some political statements it could be rejected of being published.
Genshin Impact had a controversy regarding a few of the characters they have created. Gender is a very sensitive topic in China and because two of their boy characters were considered too feminine it was said that they might be deleted from the game. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but MiHoYo from now will be more careful while creating male characters. Another thing that concerned Genshin fans was that in the future those more feminine male characters might never come back as obtainable.
Soon after gender controversy, more taboo topics occurred. This time it was about the female characters whose outfits were too revealing. For now, Mihoyo created 4 alternative and more conservative outfits which will be replaced on Chinese servers and be available as additional content for the rest of the servers, but in the near future, they probably will release more alternative costumes for all female characters.
One of the first things that players shamed Mihoyo for is that the mechanics of the Genshin Impact were very similar or even the same as the Breath of the Wild. Similar style, gliding and climbing mechanics, enemies, and scenery are only a few things that Mihoyo copied from Nintendo’s game.
The first anniversary was the biggest failure the company made. It was known to players that anniversaries in Asian gacha games tend to be special and most rewarding, with a lot of gifts, new content, and free limited characters or weapons.
Unfortunately, Genshin Impact’s anniversary event wasn’t much bigger than the average one. Fans felt disappointed and underwhelmed and thought that it wasn’t worth all the effort put by them into the game. Many people expressed their disappointment on various social media platforms including Mihoyo’s account on Twitter. The company censored criticism towards them by deleting negative comments which were even more criticized by people. In a few hours, the reviews from Google Play went from around 4.6 to only 1.8.
MiHoYo has come a long way but still needs to be careful about its content. Regardless of all controversies, Genshin Impact is still one of the most popular games on the market with the ongoing growth of fanbase.
