Is Genshin Impact fine for kids?

[hlat]

My daughter asked to play Genshin Impact. I've never heard of this video game before. Searching around, I haven't noticed a red flag.

Have you played Genshin Impact? Do you think it's fine for kids?

Examples of games that I think are fine.
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. One town is women only so the hero has to sneak in dressed as woman.
Dragon Quest XI. There is one flaming gay teammate.
Splatoon 3. I'm not happy about the ambiguous transgender TV host.

 

[T.C.]

Two thoughts come to mind. The imagery is kind of sexually provocative: the Japanese anime style of depiction of girls.

But the main problem with Genshin Impct is that it is what’s known as a ‘Gatcha Game’.

A Gatcha Game is specifically designed to manipulate the dopamine circuits of those who play it. Like a slot machine that pays out just enough for the gambler to continue putting money into it.

Thousands of people have spent thousands of dollars on the reward system of Genshin Impact because you cannot progress as easily without winning the ‘loot’ that requires you to spend money.

And so the in-game play is designed to build up the feeling in the player that they must pay money to progress.

If your daughter must play video games, there are other games out there with similar look and RPG style that don’t involve the Gatcha element. I wouldn’t want my child playing Genshin Impact.

Just my opinion

 

[T.C.]

It seems that as you play the game, you collect gems and when you have enough of them you can spend them on the slot machine system where you can win upgrades to you character. This increases the addictiveness of the game, since people want to keep playing, to get more gems, to get more ‘spins’.

The monetary aspect is that you can spend real money to just buy the gems and then use them in the slot machine system.

 

[brandon]

I don't know anything about Genshin Impact but do have opinions on games in general, used to follow games industry news etc until a few years ago.. Reading that Genshin is a "free-to-play" gatcha game, yeppp, totally agree with T.C., I would not be happy with my kids playing that, if I had kids. I reckon those type of games, regardless of their actual contents (characters, storyline, world building, gameplay mechanics etc) are quite a harmful software drug. That kind of thing has been around forever (eg coin-operated arcade machines going back to the 70s, designed to be very difficult & short-lasting, so as to take as much money as possible because people want to keep playing) but modern "free-to-play" games are of a slightly different character - they're designed to take as much of your TIME as possible, they're never ending time sinks.. Their defenders say how you can fully play and enjoy them without spending any actual money, which is sometimes true, but IMO they do something nasty to people, even outside the lure of spending money on 'em. If you let your kids play something like that, you can of course limit the time they're allowed on it.. but I feel they have an insidious effect of...how to explain? Something like, altering your perception of art, culture, creativity...towards the "you will own nothing, and you will like it" style of meaningless, mass produced, impersonal Products.

Probably many people think ALL videogames are pretty much like that, or energy wasting dopamine circuses.. they might be right! But as someone who has been playing games and also programming my own ones since I was a small child in the 1980s, there's a lot of nuance involved that I can see, and in the world of computer games, when these type of ones started to appear it was like a big shift away from the personal & creative software I loved as a kid, towards something I find cold and sickening..

Ahem, sorry for my little rant there.. obviously it's a bit of a personal issue of mine, maybe not that helpful.. Basically, I don't know if any of the specifics of Genshin Impact are harmful or not, and it could just be some fairly innocent fun, as much as modern games can be.. But I honestly think the whole structure and.....vibe?....of these type of games is subtly harmful to anyone, possibly moreso than more traditional kinds of games. (But having grown up surrounded by them, it's hard for me to say... I often think I'd be a better person if I'd never laid eyes on 'em!)

 

[loreta]

I agree on what TC and Brandon said about this game and video games in general. My concern is that they are addictive.

It is complicated to have young kids today so it is difficult at certain point to control what they do or what they want to do. How old is your daughter?

These games I think take out energy and the creativity that every human have, the imagination, etc. It is much, much better to read a good book of the Fantasy world! Like Tolkien or Robert Jordan.

 

[United Gnosis]

how old is your daughter? As already mentioned, Genshin impact is a gacha, with gambling as a core progress dynamic, mature esthetics, and then there's the simple fact that's it's a "free-to-play"/pay-to-win MMO with all the toxicity it implies.

I'd guess she might be mature enough to deal with it if she's 13-14. Otherwise I'd stick with more controlled environments (i.e. local play, not online) and a constructive sandbox. My brother got his kids Vintage Story recently (a minecraft-inspired crafting/survival game) and they've been loving it. Sure, it's simplified, but it's the kind of game where you have to shape your own clay molds, and then bake them, just so you can pour your melted bronze into tools. You have to forge your own iron with an anvil and hammer, you can graft trees, you have find proper chemicals if you want to tan leather, you can chisel blocks and create intricate carvings, and you have to think forward on what you want to achieve, and basically create your own tools to achieve it.

Whatever the age, it might be a better game than genshin, since it's a survival sandbox, it's much more interactive and requires plenty of creativity and resourcefulness.

Especially once winter starts, crops no longer grow, and animals barely have any meat on them, and you have to survive on your preserves. It's funny, like minecraft on the surface, but much deeper, I'd recommend for young teens.

 

[Natus Videre]

When I was a kid, I used to play MMORPGs like MapleStory and RuneScape, both of which shaved hundreds if not thousands of hours off my youth. In retrospect, I think the issue here is the "abuse of imagination." Kids have an extraordinary ability to imagine fantasy worlds and can become vulnerable when The Gaming Industry tries to lock them in a carefully crafted world. Instead of relying on their own limitless imagination, their mind is hijacked by an artificial construct which focuses their energy on deceitful objectives concealed beneath the very appealing impression of "progress."

Considering what I have experienced, I wouldn't recommended games which dictate how one shall think or what one shall do.

 

[Zzartemis]

think the issue here is the "abuse of imagination." Kids have an extraordinary ability to imagine fantasy worlds and can become vulnerable when The Gaming Industry tries to lock them in a carefully crafted world. Instead of relying on their own limitless imagination, their mind is hijacked by an artificial construct which focuses their energy on deceitful objectives concealed beneath the very appealing impression of "progress."

 

[hlat]

My daughter is a teenager and plays another free game with optional payments called Sky, and it seems fine to me. Right now I don't have a concern about addiction or time limits. I'm more concerned about harmful content. As an example, cartoon creators made new Voltron and Avatar main characters gay and put it in the last episode to try to avoid parents turning off the show, but I read about these shows beforehand and was able to censor or criticize it in advance.

We have a Nintendo Switch videogame system, and the games we got are fine. Genshin Impact hasn't been released on Switch yet though it has been planned.

 

[Beau]

Does she have Breath of the Wild? I'd let my teenagers play that. The fighting part of it is pretty tame all things considered.

 

[Alejo]

Well, I would stay away from those games that fish on the dopamine circuits of the brain, and it is true that one has to have something to supplement by the addictive behavior, and in that sense the game itself won't generate dependance. The trouble is that such games are empty of a story that will leave anything in the player.

There's plenty of games that are designed for younger audiences that have great stories, they do have loot boxes or gambling dynamics, but they're easily avoidable because the story is engaging.

Now, in terms of content itself, I would consider also that Japanese audiences and content creators are to my knowledge a bit different in their depiction of transgender issues and whatnot. For instance, transgender anime characters have been around for a long time and it never felt like they were trying to push the issue on to the viewer, the characters were fully formed and were simply part of the world, so I would take that into account.

So, perhaps I would read reviews or watch online reviews of the game and see what you can determine based on this. I did a quick search on YouTube and found an IGN one (which isn't going to address your concerns) and I can say I wasn't impressed.

 

[hlat]

Does she have Breath of the Wild? I'd let my teenagers play that. The fighting part of it is pretty tame all things considered.

Yes, she's played it for 5 years and she wants Breath of the Wild 2 whenever it comes out.

Now, in terms of content itself, I would consider also that Japanese audiences and content creators are to my knowledge a bit different in their depiction of transgender issues and whatnot. For instance, transgender anime characters have been around for a long time and it never felt like they were trying to push the issue on to the viewer, the characters were fully formed and were simply part of the world, so I would take that into account.

It's funny that the company making Genshin Impact is actually Chinese, and it's taken advantage of the Japanese anime popularity. I'm hoping the Chinese overlords don't allow harmful woke content, so Chinese ownership is a plus for my concerns.

MiHoYo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I did a quick search on YouTube and found an IGN one (which isn't going to address your concerns) and I can say I wasn't impressed.

I'll watch that review and some other ones too.

 

[Alejo]

It's funny that the company making Genshin Impact is actually Chinese, and it's taken advantage of the Japanese anime popularity. I'm hoping the Chinese overlords don't allow harmful woke content, so Chinese ownership is a plus for my concerns.

MiHoYo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I hear you, but also... it would be like buying the "Chinese knock off", one of the things the review said was that it looked pretty, but it lacked a story... despite having 100's of hours worth of play, which I can't imagine how you can go through a game for that long without anything to hook you into it?

so it looks the part, but it has no substance apparently... it's only fun.

 

[pinkfreud]

When I was a kid, I used to play MMORPGs like MapleStory and RuneScape, both of which shaved hundreds if not thousands of hours off my youth. In retrospect, I think the issue here is the "abuse of imagination." Kids have an extraordinary ability to imagine fantasy worlds and can become vulnerable when The Gaming Industry tries to lock them in a carefully crafted world. Instead of relying on their own limitless imagination, their mind is hijacked by an artificial construct which focuses their energy on deceitful objectives concealed beneath the very appealing impression of "progress."

Considering what I have experienced, I wouldn't recommended games which dictate how one shall think or what one shall do.

I didn’t really do video games until I was out of high school, but I spent more time than I’m proud of on Civilization, Zelda games, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Runescape.
I was struggling to cope with both depression and anxiety at the time, so it was a very overt form of escapism. I was “living” and “progressing” in worlds that didn’t afford such afflictions.

On its face, it is innocent fun.

From experience, it reminds me of this line I heard once:

Do you know why people had to wait as long as eight hours in the bread lines? So they couldn’t do anything else with those eight hours.....

 

[pinkfreud]

Too late to edit, but feel I should add:

Parenting is very difficult. I think sometimes, depending on age and stage of development, it is ultimately more beneficial to foster understanding and knowledge of what the choice IS than what choice should be made. That is with regard to woke ideology, infectious symbolism, time management, and rigid rules and regulations.

If the video game is the main outlet or source of fun, it may be more harmful to forbid it. Maybe a better route would be to introduce a new, more constructive or creative activity that also hits the “relax and enjoy” circuits. Then offer the choice on a more regular basis and see what happens.