I wanna say first off that I totally agree with you. I think there is a tendency in most people if not all (myself included of course!) to defend the art we enjoy when it is doing things that we should not defend. It is important in moments like this to acknowledge that we can enjoy things that have problems and that we can condemn parts of a thing we love without renouncing it entirely. I’d like this to be a normal thing to do, where we don’t feel judgment nor project it.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, so I can’t speak to the nuances of that conversation. What I’d like to hone in on here is not that anything to do with the perceived defense of Genshin Impact or the Chinese government, but rather the xenophobia found in gaming communities. This has already been talked about in this thread, but I think it’s important to talk about in regards to that response to criticism. To those who condemn both the action of the Chinese government and the US government (like myself), this sounds like whataboutism. As @Peng was saying, this feels condescending and hand-wavy. It presumes an ignorance and hypocrisy that isn’t present, and that’s really frustrating. But to those who only condemn the actions of the Chinese government and not the US government, it is addressing the xenophobia present in that position. Many “Gamers” have a rabid hatred of anything that even vaguely hints at origins in or influences from China, but are more than happy to gloss over working conditions and geopolitical propaganda in US-made games. That can only be explained by xenophobia, nationalism or ignorance, and that needs to be addressed.
I don’t think not buying any of these games, or depriving myself of the potential fun they might allow me to have in this hell world, truly does anything. I’m going to keep buying and playing games I want to play regardless of what conditions they were made under or what they might happen to contain if they happen to be something I know I’m going to be into.
I don’t view boycotting games as praxis. I don’t think it improves labor conditions and I don’t think it changes the politics of the companies who make them.
Tbh I see people discuss the ethics of games and it reads similarly to “vote with your dollar” rhetoric and it comes across as perspective rooted in liberal consumerism.
If we want to change the way games are made we need to be revolutionary. That means unionizing, making co-ops, and opposing the systems that create the conditions these games with bad shit in them arise from.
I get that not buying a game with gross shit in it might feel like a personal moral victory over a bad corporation, but they’re still going to make money one way or another.
Tbh, play more indie titles on itch? Make more indie titles on itch?
Idk ya’ll I get real tired of this conversation happening for every single AAA video game that gets released. None of us are problematic for enjoying problematic media.
Edit: just to add, this is more general and not China related. But with regards to China I think the xenophobia surrounding this game is absurd. The US and Chinese state apparatuses suck IMO. Developers aren’t the state though.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but in the podcast they discuss that a certain character has an ability unavailable to players without that character. The ability makes world navigation easier and more enjoyable but getting that character depends on luck, or spending money and luck. Again, I could be misunderstanding, but if that’s the case then that sucks! A lot! Especially because I assume that won’t be the only instance of it in the game. It feels like the game is saying “Hey, if you wanna have the MOST fun with this game, make sure you roll these characters.” I think that’s a lot more egregious than developers following the law of their country.
Maybe it’s just because of who I do/don’t follow on Twitter and the fact I don’t really follow any major game news outlets, but it’s weird to hear that there has been a lot of backlash against this from the Gamer Community. Aside from a tweet I linked in another thread addressing the subject of this article, I’ve only seen people gushing about how great Genshin Impact is. I completely believe that there IS xenophobic backlash, and that makes the defense of it more understandable, but I agree with many of the other comments made here so far.
My gripe is more with critics than players. Because most of them are insulated from the mobile game industry, there’s a pleasant surprise to find that this is less upfront with the obviously sleazy “pay five bucks to refill your energy if you want to keep playing”. The much more insidious way this model subsidizes costs onto an easily-manipulated minority of players with poor impulse control is either unexamined or treated as the devil’s piper to pay so that this kind of game can get funding.
Because it’s so abstract compared to limited energy systems* or loot boxes, it doesn’t receive the sort of backlash that they do. As long as the advantage they give is nebulous at best, the reality of some players gambling away hundreds of dollars goes overlooked. The Pokemon gacha game literally set the pity threshold for outright giving you the banner character at nine hundred dollars. That’s how cynical these games are.
(* gacha games have energy systems too but they exist more to suggest a daily session length, free energy resources become comically abundant after a few weeks of regular play to where it stops mattering)
i don’t think anyone here is suggesting that you, personally, are necessarily “problematic” or a bad person for buying the games you want to buy. i’m not sure why you feel tired of a personal attack that i don’t see happening here.
if what you’re tired of is discussion about the ethics of buying morally/ethically compromised or questionable video games, well… that’s not stopping. it’s an important conversation.
in my opinion, supporting transphobic companies or companies that abuse their workers isn’t great. do i still do it from time to time? of course - i think most of us do, intentionally or not - but i still try to pay attention to what i’m buying and why, and i think that’s important. it sounds like you do that too, just that you’ve come to a different conclusion that i have.
the following paragraph will contain the word ‘problematic’ several times.
buying problematic products is just that… problematic. i agree that the videogame industry needs systemic/revolutionary change. so does the gun industry. so does the car industry. so does our food system. nothing short of a huge shift will turn things around. i’m still not buying AR-15s and Ford F9000s and stuffing big macs down my face. we need a revolution, but it isn’t here yet. we still live in the pre-revolution world and make choices in it. all of those choices have implications and consequences and can/should be discussed.
just because attempting to make a moral choice doesn’t completely solve a problem (like boycotting a game ending workplace abuse in gamedev, or reducing ones carbon footprint ending climate change) doesn’t mean that that moral choice is meaningless or inconsequential. i will always disagree with this fatalistic attitude.
edit: i hope that my post didn’t come off as too lacking in compassion. it often does feel like we’re living in a hell world, and i completely understand people doing whatever they can to seek solace and comfort themselves. in moments of weakness i still occasionally buy a pack of cigarettes - that is, i buy a product from a company that actively doesn’t care if i die from using their product. it sucks! it’s problematic. i want to be sure to differentiate between people with problematic habits and “problematic people”. i don’t think anyone is the scum of the earth for buying problematic games.
And that “free energy” and “free pulls” from resources you can earn in the game is also manipulative. It trains you to think about the digital goods as things that have value (I’m getting this valuable thing, for free!), making you more likely to eventually spend some money you may or may not be able to spare on the game.
And games like this (like FIFA Ultimate Team) are immensely successful at making money, so it’s likely that more games with good game-play will be based on addiction-based monetization models in the future, not less. In the past, that hasn’t been as true, simply because they haven’t needed to be good games. The addictive elements were enough to draw in players. But that probably won’t always hold as understanding of what these games are about grows in the general gaming audience, so they’ll need to be good games to set the hook.
I know that gacha mechanics bother me (even when they are relatively circumventable) and that sometimes they get me (I spent at least $80 on Marvel Puzzle Quest), so I know I won’t be playing this one. Which gives me a bit of a feeling of being left out, which also sucks because that’s exactly the kind of thing that could pull me, or someone who can less afford it in. I think the contemporary Chinese game development world is fascinating, but I’ll wait for a good one that isn’t Gatcha to take a closer look.
No where in my post did I say I felt personally attacked, so I don’t know why you felt the need to reply in this way. I was speaking broadly and generally about a kind of post I keep seeing on these forums that I think is unproductive and uncritical.
There is a difference between the kind of critical support (or decision to not support as the case may be) that you’re talking about and what I’m talking about, which is people basically saying “it’s shit don’t buy it.” And it’s that latter thing I take the most issue with. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be critical of the games they buy and play. I’m critical of them myself, especially as a person who writes and makes stuff that I want to be better than what is released by the mainstream.
And you’re right we do have different tactics with regards to this. I believe in prefigurative politics and building dual power structures. That means that for me, the revolution is now and is an ongoing process. There is more to this than purchasing decisions. You mention AR-15s as an example of something you personally will not buy. Groups like the socialist rifle association would disagree with you that that is a good decision. They believe they need rifles to train and practice for community and self defense. Most of their fund raising and dues goes towards mutual aid and disaster relief. They’re still a rifle org and even they critically discuss which manufacturers and shops they should and shouldn’t buy from (the critical component we both agree on), but ultimately come down on the perspective that it probably doesn’t matter much where you got your rifle if you’re using it to protect your community and furthering the goals of the left. You’re mistaking what I’m saying as leaning into fatalism. It’s not that at all. I just don’t view not buying something as nearly an important tactic as something like organizing or, hell, making indie projects that reject that status quo. I feel like this is kind of the same flavor of post I get in reply to my posts about voting on here and I kind of wonder if it’s just because this forum doesn’t really have a strong grasp on anarchism.
your original post said “i’m not problematic for buying problematic games”, which read to me as you defending yourself against a personal attack. my apologies if i misinterpreted.
I gnash my teeth when I read posts about how “generous” a gacha game is just because of how often it gives you free pulls.
Just as a small warning: the endgame of these is often outrageously grindy. I played one (Dragalia) every day for around 18 months and it was still difficult to get enough resources for the high-end raids. Their priority isn’t creating new content that’s fun, it’s making new content that’s constantly inaccessible enough that you can’t risk detaching from the daily check-in rhythm.
I said “None of us are problematic” which is a bit different. I don’t want anyone, on these forums or otherwise, to feel bad about buying and playing a game they want to play or engaging with a gacha mechanic or whatever.
I probably could have been more clear in my original post. Anyway, I don’t want to divert the thread from the actual discussion any longer.
I gotta be honest, I just cannot bring myself to care about the original ‘issue’ here in regards to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I think it’s important to consider the relative ethics of the purchases we make, but the idea of me as an American getting upset over China’s response to Western imperialism in the word filter of a video game is laughable.
Just gonna throw out there that people seem to easily over look that it was Valve that really kicked off the loot box trend in PC gaming and they have received more backlash for trying to allow modders to sell content directly then for introducing a gambling mechanic to one of the world’s most popular FPS’s.
The original Steam forums are gone now but there were a number of posts about people talking about sinking large amounts of money into it. The one that will always stick with me is the person who said they had a gambling addiction and had turned to playing TF2 online in a community as a way to try and self police themselves from going out and gambling. Well hats, specifically unusual hats, get introduced and they sink $1k in a month into it and are now facing financial trouble.
The fact that no one including press really gave a damn about these kinds of issues at the time and were more focused on "wow look at these wacky hats Valve is putting out! " still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Just listening to the pod where they discuss this and had some thoughts on the crew’s takes. Gita and Austin talk about “decolonizing your mind” in regards to criticizing the Genshin developers on regards to this stuff, but it seems like a pretty glaring hole to pair that with comments along the lines of “of course China’s human rights violations are as bad or worse than America’s”. That’s such a not decolonized attitude, because it relies on uncritically believing the things actual colonial powers say about China and then mentally sidelining that. To me, actually decolonizing your mind would mean not just swallowing up the claims made about China by evangelical maniacs and the US government while it’s trying to ramp up a cold war to deflect from enormous domestic failures and a shrinking position on the world stage.
Leftist discourse on China in the West is so far behind where it needs to be, imo.
I honest to god have seen Gacha make people I know and respect turn into literal addicts and have had to have the real conversation of “no I’m not addicted I can stop anytime I want to” as they start saving up 100s so they can hopefully roll for a dumb character’s summer version. I abhor what gacha and any adjacent thing that has been brought about in games, such as the fifa stuff, overwatch, hell even tf2 and csgo crate.
What’s worse is I feel like genshin could be a turning point. It’s a big budget game, but more importantly it’s good! It’s really fun from what I’ve seen and people enjoy it a whole lot for very good reason. But also that’s what terrifies me. Because now gacha isnt beholden to minimal gameplay games on phones. Now with Genshin’s success the door is open to just make a good ass game and then include gacha and make up you money within a week or two. Add on that it’s free, on every platform, and of course the required “generous” gifts you get for playing at launch. Which all leads to a recipe for gacha being predatory to a large but still kinda niche audience to now a much more widespread appeal and it just makes me feel sick. I wish this game tanked and shut down but I knew it wouldn’t. The worst is the disappointment that it was so easily accepted.
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Reading through this thread, one thing that really caught me is that while we talk a lot about politics and working conditions of game developers, we rarely about the working conditions and politics of hardware manufacture. Thinking about it is really bringing closer to ExWeis’s viewpoint. You can boycott a developer, but the hardware you are using to play the game was probably made by workers in even worse conditions than the developers. How many people died mining the raw resources needed for your console and computer? Not only that, but even using electricity will contribute to the destruction of the planet and the destabilization of global south countries (how much depends on the energy production mix of where you live). For me this really puts the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” in to stark relief.
Again, I don’t mean this to shame anyone for boycotting or not boycotting a game. It’s very much a personal choice, I’ve certainly boycotted games whose politics I don’t like. It’s just a harsh realizing how much damage the escapism I use to try and remain sane does to people and the environment.
