Does Genshin Impact Set A Dangerous Precedent?
The hugely successful online gacha game could become a template for other developers to replicate in future
Before Genshin Impact, no one really believed that a gacha game could ever achieve such a level of success on the PC and console market. The console and PC communities, in general, had the perception that gachas were simply predatory games devoid of gameplay content. Genshin Impact releases and those perceptions are shattered. So how did this particular game, managed to achieve that? And why is it such a dangerous precedent for the online gaming scene?
To answer these questions first we have to acknowledge that a gacha game becoming popular on PC and console was inevitable. And one thing should be very clear from the start, gacha games no matter how they are done, always want to force players to spend money. Whether it be with getting new units or speeding up progression, the temptation (or outright compulsion) to spend is always there.
Gamers have slowly been accustomed to microtransaction mechanics on online games long before the mobile era, originating all the way back to games in the style of Conquer Online or Eudemons Online, and even browser-based games like Ogame or Travian which were massive for their time. The only thing that changed to boost the profitability of these aggressive microtransaction systems was accessibility and presentation. This leads me to the first question:
How did Genshin Impact manage to succeed in the PC and console market despite the reputation of the genre?
Genshin Impact was not the first gacha game to release on PC, many tried over the years with no success, most notably Square Enix attempt with Mobius Final Fantasy.
All previous attempts were doomed to fail because making a gacha that appeals to the PC and console players is not an easy feat, there are a lot of things that need to be done right for that to happen, and Genshin Impact does those things perfectly. Perhaps its biggest strength in this arena is that it's not a simple mobile game port. It feels like a big-budget, AAA console/PC title.
Specifically, there are three major things Genshin did better than any other gacha game and arguably also better than many other online games.
Great game design
It's undeniable that the gameplay is good, the combat is simple, yet fluid and rewarding if used to its full potential with the elemental reactions system.
The game encourages exploration and rewards you very well for doing so.
The teleportation system makes sure every area feels very easy to access creating a sense of fast pace when you travel around. This is done by the perfect placement of the teleport points in the world, always close enough to where you need to go and never far enough that a player feels bored from traveling. This allows the player to stay connected to the entire world of Genshin Impact.
The world makes sense due to the rich lore behind the game that was tailored to be complex to the point to be interesting, but simple enough that anyone can follow with ease.
The main story is worth following.
The clusters of materials and mobs are both tailored to the casual player and the hardcore player which is extremely hard to do, the developers manage to pull it off because they clearly understand exactly the two different types of players.
They accomplish this by having a few clusters that have a higher quantity of resources that casual players will collect when they can in a few minutes, but disperse a big amount of lower quantity clusters for the hardcore players to gather over the course of a few hours. As for single Boss mobs, the Adventure Handbook points you exactly to the position of those mobs, which seems to be counter-intuitive from a design standpoint for a game that has such a strong emphasis on exploration, but again, the developers understand that exploring is only fun the first time you do it.
The game is easy enough that anyone can beat with ease but hard enough that players can min-max and feel rewarded for the effort.
Monetization done right
Let’s talk about the thing that everyone likes to complain about, monetization. Whether you like it or not, every F2P game needs a way to survive and make money. It’s naive to think companies should not try to monetize a game to the best of their abilities.
However, the way monetization is implemented is indeed important.
It doesn't matter if you agree or not, but Genshin Impact does it right, the numbers do not lie, but more importantly, the game does it in a way that’s “fair” to the player base. Whether this is correct or even ethical is up for debate and not for me to decide.
So before we start screaming about those who spend thousands of dollars for a single character or weapon, let’s step back for a bit and look at the big picture.
There’s no progression locked behind a paywall, all the content in the game can be cleared with the free characters you get just from playing the story, and most four-star characters are just as good as five-star characters.
Every day players can get gems from dailies, and exploring rewards players with huge amounts of gems, additionally, there are always events running that reward either gems or important materials in the game.
With those gems that you get from simply playing the game, you can do a ridiculous amount of “banner pulls”(the main gacha mechanic).
This is actually a very good design decision on the part of the developers because it makes players feel like the company behind the game cares about the player experience which they clearly do, and in return, it makes players more likely to want to spend money.
A very important point about this is that if the devs did not genuinely care about the player experience, it would show in the gameplay for sure as we have seen so many times in the past. I can't guarantee that it will always be that case for Genshin Impact, but for now, that’s what they are successfully resonating with the player base.
Roadmap
Unlike many other online games, this one has a steady flow of content being released on a six-week cycle, with a very well communicated roadmap that makes the players feel safe to spend money in the game since it's clear they have a long-term plan for content release. So far Genshin Impact has not disappointed with the flow of content, and hopefully, it continues for months to come.
By doing all of the above correctly, Genshin Impact managed to succeed in a market in which the genre was supposed to fail. But coming back to the other initial question:
Why could it be such a dangerous precedent for the online gaming scene?
While it's good that all of that is done right let us not forget that to its core, the monetization of the game is predatory no doubt about it, it may be done right, but it's done right to maximize profit.
This is a dangerous precedent because it opens the door for future games to more easily enter this genre and form of development for PC and console, whereas long as you have a good enough roadmap and cute characters to buy, the game can be “incomplete” at launch, and let us not confuse this with early access titles, remember, this may be F2P but it's marketed as a full title on release.
And while Genshin Impact is doing right by its quality, companies that have tried to chase the formula of a popular game in the past, have ended up focusing only on the monetization aspect of what went right and tend to forget the about rest.
Conclusion
Genshin Impact is a good game, to the point, it could even rival AAA titles, but the monetization behind the genre is a very dangerous thing to become popular on PC and Consoles.
Although, the success of this title can either be a curse on the industry or a blessing in disguise as two lessons can be learned from this story.
Either the take-away is that players are willing to spend a lot on games, and if so, games on PC and Console moving forward will join the Gacha systems with even more aggressive microtransactions.
Or, that players are willing to spend more if a game delivers on quality and cares about the player's gameplay experience.
Only time will tell which will prevail, personally, I truly hope the industry learns the latter lesson, but to be honest, I wouldn't bet on that.
