The October Post - Genshin Impact, New Ideas

Been exactly a month since I last wrote, and two months since I started my new job. My personal life is nothing much to write about as I have simply been working at my job for most of the last month. Workload has gotten slightly more lenient at least for the time being - I'm now clocking ~45 hours a week give or take, and my work-from-home commitment has gradually moved from nil to 2 days a week (which is more relaxing, but ofc I get less work done at home).

Friends and I have moved off from our brief stint in Paladins (which was a terrible game, in hindsight) to a mix of Overwatch and the brand new title Genshin Impact.

 

I guess I should discuss Genshin since it's new and most of the gaming world is talking about it. It's certainly not a bad game, but it's not a good one either - somewhere around a 5/10 in my books. The problems Genshin has are really complex and not something I can discuss in a short blog post.

 

If I could sum it up, Genshin is both a mobile and a PC game. Mobile games are intended for short spurts of gameplay - you can just switch it on during lunchtime at work/school and play for 15-30 minutes for example. On the contrary, PC games are generally intended for longer sessions as one has to sit down and dedicate time at home to play. The problem with Genshin is that you've got a game that is rigorous enough to require the precision of the PC's mouse-keyboard controls, but the systems are designed for short periods of mobile gameplay. So it doesn't really feel amazing on either platform, and that's where I see a majority of complaints come from.

 

Also, the game is a gacha (gambling) game. Not much to say in that area but I feel all reviews should disclose this for people who are against gambling, who may have children interested, or who are against pay-to-win games in general. I should also note Genshin's rates are very expensive ($3 per roll and 0.6% for the rarest units), so even people who do enjoy the occasional gamble may want to avoid it.

 

Anyway.

 

I've been really struggling with my story. It's a bit weird since I've always considered myself a good writer. But as it turns out, writing a linear story and writing a game are two very different beasts.

 

My main line of thought right now is that I should just scrap my old idea and work with something else from scratch. I actually have a number of story/game ideas that I have no intention of working on (as I don't think they are good enough to market to the general public). But then I looked at the most complete idea and thought, "Why don't I transpose this into my original game's story, since it kind of sucks right now?"

 

My old story idea involved something to do with racism, which I figured was an important topic that permeates the lives of many people around the world. But when I think about it, I realize many game devs are leftist-type folk and so there's already tons of stories with themes of diversity out there. If the gamer crowd can go through titles like Overwatch, Wolfenstein 2, Mafia III, or Far Cry and ignore the lessons in diversity depicted in those, then why would my title be any different? What could I, an amateur dev with 0 experience, possibly do that would magically make an impact where bestselling titles have failed? This direction feels like an exercise in failure.

 

I think it would be more effective to tell a story that metaphorically references the region I come from. Not to say that this is any easier. In Singapore we don't really have any national dress like the Chinese or Japanese or Koreans do: we use the Indonesian batik, the Malay kebaya, and the Chinese hanfu or qipao. Neither do we have much history in war, so I would struggle to take any part of Singapore's history and convert it into the ever-popular action RPG genre that I am making. If I were to ask myself, "How do I take my ARPG and make it 'look uniquely Singaporean?'" I have no answer. (Perhaps for a good reason. Why must we be so obsessed with fighting?)

 

But I set out to make an ARPG, so I will. I think I would have to assimilate elements from other cultures. To my mind, the coolest of the few extant depictions of Singapore in global media is Pirates of the Caribbean, particularly Sao Feng. Seafarers in the South China Sea such as Sao Feng identified as Chinese (and Disney calls him Chinese) but many would eventually become Singaporean in later decades, or their children would. In that sense, Disney was accurate with the movies (and also captured much more of the Chinese audience that way). I can also use elements of British/European culture as we were colonized by them.

 

If this new story idea is good I will achieve my original goal. Singapore has not "beat" racism - no one can - but we do alright as far as legislation and regulation is concerned, plus we are a minority voice in our own right. To tell something Singaporean to the world, then, is to tackle racism in a small way.