While Waiting for 12 GB. Update of Genshin Impact I Wrote This
Not many production house will let you download their game for “free”, and even more when the game does have a great mechanic, kawai graphic with potentially tons of loli and waifu characters, and especially a great fucking lore. Genshin Impact will let you do that, however with a certain price.
The game itself is indeed free to download but boy there are lots of micro-transaction going on here and there. The more level that you have the harder it is and the more time-consuming it is to get the crafting material. It is very true whether it is to upgrade weapon, characters, weapon enhancement, you name it. Micro transaction let you minimize this time problem by converting it to money. Sad but trues, the more money that you have injected into the game the less time you need to be good at it.
However, the money-time gap as i call it isn’t something new. I believe this is true for every RPG game out there. If you are and online RPG veteran who has tried lots and lots of similar RPG game, this things don’t surprise you anymore. But what is strikingly difference about Genshin Impact is that it is actually more of a solo-player game rather than multi-player game.
How is this things matter. Traditionally in an RPG game, competition is one of the things that keep people buying stuff on the game. People want to get the best weapon, armor, and etc. as fast and as powerful as it could be. Players don’t want to be left behind. They want to keep up with the highest level of play. They want to reach the level cap as soon as possible. Some players grind very hard and long for this and some others just buy their way up.
And of course money is also a privilege that not all people have but it is also true for time. Not all people have enough time to grind their way up in the game and that is when money comes into play.
Now what drives all of this things was because they get to see how other players play and they don’t want to lose to them, at the very least nobody wanted to be in the bottom of the barrel.
I remember playing Dragon nest and to get high-grade item you need challenge dungeon where the item is dropped. However sometimes people don’t want to be in the same party with you if you don’t have high grade item to begin with because its going to be a lot harder to challenge difficult dungeon with half-ass weapon and armory. But then, how are you going to get that high-grade item if you don’t challenge the dungeon in the first place. The things that you can do to break this cycle was to purchase high grade item in the market and it can be done sometimes by using micro-transaction or real money.
There are lots of other feature in the Free Online RPG game that are built on a multiplayer foundation. Things like Player Market, Guild War, Nation War, PVP, Game Achievement and etc. Most of the time, even if the mechanics of the game demand some sort of skill, tactics, analysis or quick finger movement, the one who can create a huge gap by getting valuable item by using any types of method available including real money will eventually top the competition.
With this things in mind Genshin-impact should be a flop right from the start but the data seems to disagree with what i think. According to PC Gamer after two week of release globally, Genshin Impact gross over $100m. For a free download game with no to little competitive play that is impressive.
The reason for this huge success which i am not sure either was the gatcha-style micro-transaction type that the game has. The idea is that you get to purchase the playable characters and weapons by random loot-box. Everytime you do the gatcha the game will randomly give you characters based on the rarity of the item. Meaning that the rarer the item is, the more difficult it is to get it.
See from this, players who are driven to get those valuable item will spend more time or money in order to get more chance to play the gatcha. Even the Washington post editorial call it
However i am still questioning if it’s really the only reason for the success of the game. I have been playing this game for quite some time and i feel no necessity to purchase any item that you can purchase with money. Mostly because of there is no necessity to keep up with others.
(N.B: By the time i finish this blog post, i still have 11 GB data to download)
