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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Genshin is a pretty stunning example of how quickly Chinese development and animation studios have grown to develop world-class media.

Many consider this game better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is one of Nintendo's crowning achievements.

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> Many consider this game better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Is Genshin Impact a pretty and technically impressive BotW-like game? Yes.

But Breath of the Wild is, by many accounts, considered one of the greatest games of all time [0]. I have never heard anyone suggest this of Genshin Impact.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered...

I don't have a Nintendo and will never buy one, but I do have a phone.

And yeah, the first time I played Genshin I was amazed at the quality for a mobile game. It quickly ran out of content so now it just sits there, quick fun for half an hour.

imo Dragon Raja was better (amazing pvp, damn addictive) but was absolutely ruined by the microtransactions and small servers aspects.

The other day there was a thread about how many HNers enjoyed using TikTok. They are progressing quickly and many seem unwilling to acknowledge it.

So which stage are we in? One- anger or have we progressed to four- depression?

Perhaps it doesn't matter it's all fuel to China's nationalism.

Anger is actually stage 2. Stage 1 is denial.

TikTok is far and away superior to US social media.

Twitter is full of rage and hate, and I can't stand it.

Instagram is posers and people being fake.

Facebook is people posting fake news, baby photos, politics, and inspiration quotes for a life most are unwilling or afraid to live.

Reddit is going after the lowest common denominator.

YouTube is losing its edge and making it harder to succeed as a new creator.

TikTok embraces collaborative world building and positivity in a way I've never seen before. It's a total breath of fresh air. It feels good, wholesome, and truly creative.

Different platforms for different things. I never use TikTok, because the video media I consume is almost always long form informative content. YouTube is the only media giant with a large supply of this, and it continues to accrete such creators and content faster than anywhere else.

> TikTok embraces collaborative world building and positivity in a way I've never seen before. It's a total breath of fresh air. It feels good, wholesome, and truly creative.

This used to be what Twitter and Instagram and YouTube were described as in the past. There's still plenty of gaming views and influencer stuff being done on TikTok, it just hasn't become ubiquitous yet. Or maybe the format means we as a population need to re-adjust to see it. I'm mentioning this because I've seen toxic stuff on TikTok already about niche hobby interests. Stuff like getting people cancelled, internet drama, people posting videos of themselves crying over it, etc.

This comment is a bit rosy on TikTok, and your stereotypes are off a bit. I use all these platforms, and all things you attribute primarily to a single platform above have bled into the other platforms, where format allows. Just look to Instagram stories for a lot of examples of people posting inspirational quotes, or to YouTube for plenty of fake news channels, or to Facebook to see lowest common denominator posting. The locus of each of those things may rest with your stereotyped examples, but reality is much more nuanced.

One can find all of these things on TikTok. Right now it’s just new so it feels more optimistic and you want to see it more optimistically.

Maybe you are following the wrong people on Twitter? Switch it to "latest tweets" rather than the default of "top tweets" and then you'll only see the people you follow.

I see plenty of creative, funny, and thoughtful content. I've learned a ton. There's some that I like that I'd call "useful outrage"; some of the things going on in world need that. I see very little "rage and hate".

Instagram isn't so bad... if you follow accounts that only post cute animal pictures.

1bike1world ftw. The reason I started looking at Instagram.

I'm not defending any of these social media corporations, but the worst people are on every platform and tiktok is not exception. Tiktok also can appeal to the lowest common denominator, it also has rage, hate, conspiracy theories. I think where tiktok's advantage is that that vine wasn't ready to leave this world so its creative medium hasn't run its course, and its algorithm actually feels well designed as apposed to instagram and youtube

It's about the long tail. If I look at the people that I have subscribed to on YouTube, and then take the mean of their count of subscribers, the mean is probably over a million. When I do the same on TikTok it's about 10k. There were probably the same people posting the same content on YouTube, but because there is no discovery, I never found them, and they never found viewers, so they stopped.

What you are subjected to on each platform is based on the discovery methods of that platform. There are probably very good reasons that American sites tend to have really bad discovery, it means that Ads are more impactful and it gives the creator of the algorithm all the power.

So it's not that bad people don't exist on TikTok, but because their discovery system is so good I end up watching content that I like. Whereas on YouTube, because the discovery system is so poor, I am subjected to watch things that the platform favors. YouTube favors high-energy, face-contorting, lowest common denominator content. Up until now because YouTube has been the only source of internet video, I had to go along with it as it was the best we had. Suddenly I don't.

I find it very easy to tune my YouTube recommendations. If I open my homepage I see quality content on machining, optical physics, ML, jazz theory, battery tech, chip fab, interior/exterior design, rocket nozzles, etc… and not a single contorted face.

There's literally thousands of raging and berating tiktoks in the SJW category alone. What are you talking about.

Another Chinese game that I've been very impressed with is Dyson Sphere Program (a Factorio-like game on galactic scale), it's still in Early Access on Steam, by a fairly small team but it's already insanely impressive in scope, and they are improving it constantly.

What exactly is so controversial or disagreeable about the parent's comment as to warrant so many downvotes?

I didn't downvote it, but the comment exemplifies the problem in both how right and wrong it is. Genshin Impact has the potential to be a great game, but it's utterly ruined by the gacha garbage that infests it. It's extremely disappointing, and makes you depressed at wondering what an excellent game it could be if it didn't have such a predatory and self-defeating business model.

That seems like an unfair reason to downvote the post. One could dislike gatcha as a business model but the post is about China's capacity to design a game irrespective of the business model. The quality of the artwork, music, etc stands on its own regardless of whether one personally dislikes the business model.

How can one have a great game that is harmful to the players? To me that sounds like: "This food is truly excellent so let's honor the chef. Whether it's full of rat poop and heavy metals is a totally separate issue."

And how exactly is it "harmful"? Your comparison isn't even right. This is free food that comes without ustensils and without a table. You have to pay for a table and ustensils, but the food is edible without them, and the ingredients and the way they're prepared stand on their own. Especially if you consider that not long ago, this part of the world couldn't prepare such a meal at all, even if they provided all the tables and ustensils in the world.

I've been playing this game for almost a year now and I just don't see the parts where they "harm" you if you don't pay. If you can point out concrete examples of this "rat poop and heavy metals" that you get unless you pay, please do let me know.

Gambling addiction is a serious problem that destroys lives. We should not be exposing kids to things with strong addiction potential.

If you'd like a concrete example, here's a guy who realized he had a problem after dropping $15k and decided he needed professional help to quit: https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/b2fopn/i_spent...

After someone close to him died, he went back to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/p3qxfr/gacha_p...

If you'd like more, there's plenty out there about the harms of gambling addiction. One can argue that adults should be able to ruin their lives as they please, but I think there's no excuse for letting adults exploit children in ways that can create lifelong harm.

The point about gaming addiction in kids is fair. But it's also off-topic. The discussion isn't about whether gatcha should be allowed. It's about the gatcha supposedly ruining the game's quality or enjoyment thereof, which is a completely different topic.

Also, not only kids play games.

It's not off topic. The topic is Genshin Impact. You can't just say, "The topic is the parts I like and not the parts I don't like, so stop talking about them." That's not how a conversation works.

Right, but despite that I think it's still possible to acknowledge the high level of production value that went into it. Never played it but it does look pretty. Edit: also, nice music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1O7LpOTBfM

It's interesting because I just don't see it. The game's monetization is just a new character every month or something like that.

I'm impulsive as hell, but I never had the urge to spend money in Genshin. And I spent almost immediately on Dragon Raja, yeah that game got me good. Fortunately the devs ruined it.

Not just a Chinese problem, it's increasingly present in Western games from Team Fortress to FIFA.

I didn't downvote, but maybe the "many consider" weasel-words? It's one of those ways to make a fuzzy and unprovable claim that you're advancing but not quite saying you think it. (Plus, I've not seen that claim actually made, though I've not gone hunting for it.)

It'd be sort of weird to compare those games at that level, anyway, since although there's some superficial systems similarities (Genshin thoroughly copied BotW's open world traversal mechanics), they play incredibly differently. It's like saying "tennis is a better game than chess", or in video games "Doom is a better game than Tetris" -- the genre difference is so great that I don't know if you can meaningfully compare them.

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