“Welcome back, my friends
To the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend
Come inside! Come inside”
– Karn Evil 9 by Emerson, Lake & Palmer
So, here we are again. Another year. Another year of gatcha gamers furious at Hoyoverse and their staggeringly hit gatcha game Genshin Impact because they don’t feel “appreciated” by the company about their “new year rewards.”
I’ve spoken about exactly this sort of thing before, but I suppose it bears repeating, because gamers really don’t want to get it. They want to believe that publishers and studios have some sort of mutual investment with their players that players have with their games. They want to believe that the relationship is more than transactional. And so they continue to act like jilted lovers every time a company, like Hoyoverse, doesn’t “appreciate” them.
(And trust me, Hoyoverse doesn’t appreciate players. At all. They’re probably one of the worst companies when it comes to seeing players as anything more than numbers on a ledger. Tied with damn near every other game company.)
The most recent rage stems from Genshin Impact’s Chinese New Year rewards being exceedingly meager, like they were last year… and the year before… and the year before that…
Meanwhile, the game Honkai: Star Rail is offering up a free five-star character for their “loyal player base,” and it’s got Genshin players seething, threatening to pull their support and jump ship for that title. Leaving aside the eye-crossing ridiculousness of the threat (you’re taking your money away from Hoyoverse, and giving it to…. uhh… Hoyoverse), it really highlights the fact that gamers and publishers are speaking two entirely different languages. The latter group knows this. The former group perhaps willfully refuses to.
As I mentioned in the previous post, these sort of rewards and incentives aren’t really appreciation to current players, and more advertisements for non-players. Any rewards a game gives are, at least by publisher thinking, money left on the table. They are loathe to do that unless they feel they absolutely have to.
When Star Rail is offering a free 5-star reward, players choose to believe Hoyoverse is saying:
“We appreciate you for your support. Here’s an awesome reward for all you’ve done for us!”
When what Hoyoverse is really saying is:
“Our player numbers aren’t hitting our internal targets. Tell the world about our game, will ya?”
Now is this to say that Genshin Impact is “doing it right,” or that people shouldn’t be angry about not feeling appreciated? No. Because frankly Hoyoverse doesn’t give a shit about their player base. They never have given a shit about their player base. But when gamers rage online about being “unappreciated” and how [x] game is doing it all wrong, and [y] game is doing it right, especially when both titles come from the same company, you are unwittingly doing pretty much exactly what that company wants you to do; advertise both games and get those titles on people’s lips. Granted, it’s not ideal for them, but they’ll take it.
If you really want to send a message. Go silent. Take your money, and walk away. Until gamers have the willingness and the willpower to cut off these sort of companies, they will continue to play these games with their players.
TKO Creations 