Genshin Impact seems to have come from nowhere.

A month ago nobody

knew what it was; now ads for it are plastered all over the New York
subway and it’s the talk of gaming Twitter. It has raked in more than
$100m (£75m) in its first two weeks, placing it among the Chinese
games industry’s most successful forays into the global scene. That’s
because it’s a pretty good game that looks, sounds and feels expensive,
but is available for free – at least at face value.
Like Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – which it
heavily resembles, at least on a surface level – Genshin Impact is an
action-packed role-playing game with a huge world, chock-full of
gorgeous vistas to explore by running, climbing and gliding. The
appearance might be similar but the feeling is significantly different.
Breath of the Wild’s aesthetic is based on the beauty and solitude of
nature; Genshin, by contrast, is the theme park version of that. Where
BotW was content to merely hint at hidden treasures and leave vast
spaces in-between, you can’t go 30 seconds in Genshin without tripping
over some glowy object or mysterious chest. A constant stream of new
weapons, trinkets, crafting materials, coins and characters to play with
makes it dangerously easy to keep playing.

Where Genshin shines brightest is in combat; it’s almost as complex as a

combo-heavy fighting game. Every character has elemental moves (fire,
water etc) that combine to create fun special effects: for instance, hitting
an enemy with water followed by ice will freeze them instantly. Combine
this with the usual attacking, dodging and special moves, and swapping
between different anime-styled characters mid-battle, and you find
yourself with engaging, involved fights that test both your reflexes and
forward planning.
The catch, though, is this: the game makes money by encouraging
players to pay for a chance to win new characters. This business model is
known in Japanese as “gacha”, after the gachapon vending machines that
dispense little randomly selected toys in plastic spheres. Here, this is
what we call loot boxes. You can slowly earn most of Genshin Impact’s
bewildering array of custom currencies by playing the game – or you can
just hand over your credit card details right now for a dice roll and a
dopamine shot straight to the brain.

Loot boxes already infest much of the modern gaming landscape,

from Fifa to the Avengers, and Genshin is by these standards relatively
gentle. Right now, there’s no real “difficulty paywall” where the game
becomes impossible to complete without putting money in. And as a
Chinese company, developer miHoYo is legally compelled to publish the
abysmally low odds of getting rare characters (it’s also legally compelled
to censor any messaging deemed anti-CCP), so there’s at least some
transparency.
Dangerously easy to keep playing ... Genshin Impact. Photograph: miHoYo

But however the games industry tries to defend these monetisation

techniques, this is essentially gambling where you win virtual trinkets
instead of money. This insidious practice kills Genshin’s happy-go-lucky
vibe. Every chest you open, every dungeon you complete, every level you
attain earns you a couple of fake funbucks that you need to roll the dice.
A cool character you meet may have an interesting backstory, but if you
don’t acquire them on your next pull of the lever then you can’t even
begin exploring it. And later in the game, it starts to restrict your rewards
based on a timer unless, of course, you spend a couple of dollars to
circumvent it.

Playing Genshin Impact means constantly resisting the temptation to

spend too much money on it. For players who find it easy to resist the
siren call of new shiny things and an ever-expanding collection of
characters, it has a lot to offer. It’s playable across PC, PS4 and
smartphones (though there are, alas, minor issues on each platform;
unwieldy virtual controls on phones, performance problems on console,
and questionable button placements). This is a gorgeous, engaging game
for a low, low price – but then, the first hit’s always free, isn’t it?
Circumvent: To find a way around an obstacle.

It is a great feat to circumvent the security in the hotel.

Trinkets: A thing of little value.

Shelly’s attic was filled with little trinkets that she had collected on her trips to
Malaysia.

Vista: A pleasing view.

When I reached the top of the mountain, I saw a beautiful vista that lay before
me.

Abysmally: In an extremely bad way.

The abysmally bad treatment of her pets eventually led to their deaths.

Insidious: proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with very harmful

effects.

The amount of spam that she is sending me is getting more and more
insidious
 I picked this article as I found the different descriptions and views different
people have on gacha or games with lootboxes, as some articles paint these sorts of
games in a bad light, making the game seem extremely harmful to the player’s
mental health, whereas other articles that promote the game only state the features
of the game that make it fun, and does not mention the low chances of getting a new
character or weapon as stated in the passage as well as other side effects to the
player if they become addicted. From these different passages, I can learn a lot
about persuasive writing and how to convince readers that a certain product or way
of life is good or bad by highlighting the object’s flaws or describing how it can help
the reader. However, to people who are familiar with the product being reviewed,
they cannot be swayed so easily by the author painting the product in a bad light.
Overall, I thought that this article was very interesting as it would make a regular
reader who had never played this game think that it would be harmful to their mental
health and in turn, choose not to play the game.