Entry 13 - Genshin Impact, Controlled Randomness, and the Extractive Mindset
It's the first time since spring of 2021 that I've put any analytical thoughts on this sideblog. It's also the first time that I've done so without the obligation of an academic assignment. Over the past seven months, I've been working, studying, and reading, but mostly playing a lot of a little game called Genshin Impact.
A lot has been written about Genshin since its release over a year ago. Mostly, commentators focus on the high investment (of both money and time) required to excel at the game. In that way, it mirrors a lot of life: this is mostly a game of resource management, and players balance their energy and materials to achieve their goals just like those following a workout regime. To get the most out of my team of anime fighters, I put in the reps, supplemented with the proper fuel to level them up, and beat back ever-stronger enemies. Add this habit-forming grind mentality to an enticing roulette mechanic, and you've got an addiction machine crafted by the gacha gods themselves.
Although the gambling aspect certainly plays a role in my Genshin obsession, I don't think that's the main reason I return to it day after day. There's a simple fact of life in the Genshin Impact open world that makes it all the more addictive and unrealistic, while perpetuating a dangerous aspect of the status quo in our climate-changed world.
As Youtuber NeverKnowsBest argues in their "Serious Critique of Genshin Impact," the game provides an escape from reality into breathtakingly beautiful fantasy worlds, populated with powerful, charming NPCs who adore the nameless player character. The near-realism of the game's environmental design makes it easy to suspend your disbelief, even in its less-than-believable storylines and battles.
Despite the meticulously crafted interaction mechanics and landscape design, the controlled randomness of this game shatters any illusion of realism its open world creates. Not only does the game employ a slot machine-style system to let players expand their team, it also randomizes the materials players receive after conquering a dungeon or defeating a boss. This leaves players constantly rolling the dice in the hopes of strengthening their characters' niche abilities and weapons, no matter how powerfully or efficiently they fight. (Here, I'm not talking about endgame content, which does measure team strength, but rather the necessary domain and boss fights to gather character level-up materials. Every player has to do these at some point.)
This system of randomized material drops contrasts starkly with the open world resources in Genshin: the flowers, minerals, animals, and other collectible goodies renew every day or so in the same numbers, at the same exact locations. Interestingly, these resources are just as valuable as the randomized ones in terms of leveling up, since each character requires a specific open world item to progress. (If you're getting bored with my explanation of Genshin's leveling system- it's important, trust me.)
An example of character leveling materials from DevilTakoyaki on Twitter. The "Ballad" books are randomized rewards for beating a specific challenge, while the "Cecilia" flowers can be found in key spots throughout the open world. This character needs 168 flowers to fully level up, and 37 bloom in the open world each day.
As I played more and more, I began to take this reliability for granted, going to the same few spots every day to mine all the virtual ore my character needed. This is where the game breaks from reality entirely: in a true recreation of an open world like our own Earth, these resources would be placed much more randomly, and they would be finite, only growing back slowly.
An open world with truly finite resources would turn Genshin Impact into a completely different game. Players would no longer try to collect and raise the entire character roster, since there would only be minerals and plants enough to level up a select few. Trading key materials for combat expertise would carry far higher stakes in the game's multiplayer mode. Over-farming the plains and mountains could even alter the game's plot, as NPCs find that the otherworldly savior/player character they welcomed with open arms now pillages their nation for all it's worth. Instead of going the more realistic route, Genshin's developers chose to remove all this natural unpredictability, then add sprinkles of randomness back in with the gambling system and variable domain drops.
This superficial randomness constructed on a base of natural predictability is the key that unlocks Genshin Impact's true escapist fantasy, and what makes it so addictive to me. As previously mentioned, Genshin released in late 2020 into a world dealing with the multilayered crises of social inequity, a deadly pandemic, and constantly intensifying climate change. Not only does the game provide an escape from all of those issues, it creates a landscape that encourages a status quo view of the world as an endless resource that exists only for humans' profit. Some might recognize this as the grind, I call it an extractive mindset. Genshin unequivocally supports this mindset, which corporations and governments have maintained for years to prop up a capitalist system hungry for more investment, more raw materials, and more profit. Genshin succeeds because it creates a fantasy where this status quo is sustainable, even as we watch its negative effects weigh on us in reality. Predictability is comforting, and this game provides the ultimate solace in a turbulent, changing world.
I only noticed this extractive mindset in Genshin Impact because the game necessitates it- but it makes me wonder how other games treat their natural resource systems. Do trees sprout in the same places in a single Minecraft world? Do other massively popular fighting games like Fortnite incorporate a sheen of randomness to keep things interesting for players? Are there any games out there that have finite natural resources, that force players to make tough choices or suffer the consequences? I hope so, because video games and digital environments help us develop new ways of solving problems and connecting to one another- and while there's a time and place for fantasy, it shouldn't have to come at the expense of the real world.
Entry 12 - Reflections on “Hamlet on the Holodeck?” from Hamlet on the Holodeck (2016)
As a student, I’ve always struggled with writing powerful conclusions that don’t sound repetitive. Murray’s final chapter gives an excellent example of how to do it right. She lays out the key aspects of her argument once again, elaborating on how procedural authority, building on narrative traditions of virtuosity, and formulaic invention and originality all have a place in the digital stories of the future. She also suggests that individuals are still testing the waters of our new online media, establishing the formulas for a new Shakespeare or Brontë to epitomize in their work.
Murray reaches a powerful conclusion in stating that “We may come to think of cyberdrama in all its variations as an essentially collaborative art form.” She rejects the stereotype of the extraordinarily gifted individual creator, which mythologizes so many authors of our so-called “classic” Western canon. She understands that Shakespeare’s work required a community of interpreters (actors) to perform and realize it, as much as Brontë needed her siblings as a bouncing board for possible plot developments. Many internet users, no matter how surface-level their interaction with the medium, understand the fundamentally collaborative nature of the web (its interconnectedness lies in its very name!). Internet users from social media influencers to technologists recognize that online life depends on explicitly building on other people’s work, no matter how much companies try to impress colonial values of individualism upon digital space. Internet activists, who fought long and hard for a truly free and open internet, epitomize this collaborative spirit, as do the developers of Wikimedia Commons and the Creative Commons Licenses. Ultimately, the premier works of net.art and interactive creativity build upon the foundational work of others- and Murray predicts that the narratives that follow will embrace this essential aspect of the digital realm.
Abstract: “The CUNY of Our Dreams” represents the possibility of a free public university, in every sense of the word. The piece is an exercise in imagination, care, archiving, and wish fulfillment, providing a digital campus grounds to explore and spur action in the virtual realm and beyond.
Project Description:
I first arrived at CUNY as a bright-eyed honors student, fresh off a weekend of inspiring orientation sessions. Throughout my first year, I lived like a stereotypical college student: I stayed in residence halls, met one-on-one with an advisor, and used the flexibility of fifteen credits to explore any and all subjects that interested me, without a single hitch in registration. I worked as a tour guide at Hunter College, spouting optimistic tall tales and obscure facts to high schoolers. I dutifully filled out my FAFSA every year, and I never had to visit the Office of Financial Aid to negotiate my scholarship.
After a year at CUNY, I realized that my experience was closer to the depictions of college students often seen in mass-produced coming-of-age movies than that of my peers. For many CUNY students, academic and career advising are at best impersonal and at worst, unreachable. Accessing needed classes and financial aid can be a nightmare, as scholarships cover some of the cost of tuition, but never enough. Many undergraduate students juggle class full-time work, and many are food insecure. Additionally, departments that would uplift student experiences and local legacies (like Ethnic and Gender Studies) are notoriously underfunded, not to mention the fact that our buildings are falling apart. Instead of housing well-resourced counseling centers and student-run care spaces, CUNY spends millions on campus police and even permits the surveillance of students and their social groups.
Drawing inspiration from the visioning work of CUNY student activist groups past and present, as well as my own experiences as a former Hunter College tour guide, I aim to construct an opposing view of CUNY, the public university of our dreams, in virtual reality. After clicking through the title screen, which welcomes students to CUNY in the style of an acceptance letter, the player would arrive at an entrance to a stereotypical college campus (I’m particularly drawn to the style of Georgian classical architecture at Brooklyn College). As players approach, a high gate and security booth at the campus entrance disintegrate, revealing an open campus with NPC students, professors, and community members socializing. The main scene resembles a classic quad, with grassy lawns, a few trees, and building exteriors. From the quad, players can visit four interior areas: an advising/student care office, an urban greenhouse, an Ethnic Studies classroom, and a library. Each of these rooms offer just one of many possibilities for manifesting a new type of university.
These rooms could use a shared classroom template with different texture maps and 3D models applied in the space. For instance, the Ethnic Studies classroom might hold posters or a mini library honoring the legacy of CUNY alumni like Audre Lorde and Toni Cade Bambara. The urban greenhouse could have a scattered assortment of potted plant prefabs. In each room, a specific object (such as a single plant or open book) would be marked as interactible, prompting players towards an article to read or a video to watch. In representing a university, this project will be educational in its own small way. (As an individual, my dreams for CUNY are inherently limited, and I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew with this project due in 2 weeks.)
Lastly, I want to spur some kind of check-out before users leave, encouraging them to take action in building our dream CUNY. This might be triggered after a user teleports to each room, as a button included in a heads-up display, or simply in the itch.io project description. I hope to create a version of the university we want and deserve after a long year and a half of pandemics and uprisings.
Entry 11 - Reflections on “Digital TV and the Emerging Formats of Cyberdrama” from Hamlet on the Holodeck (2016)
In this chapter, Murray proposes several hypothetical media frameworks for presenting digital narratives which utilize the affordances she set out in earlier in the book. These frameworks include:
the “Hyperserial,” a TV show with its fictional settings extended online in greater interactive detail, allowing for more plot complexity and viewer interactivity with aspects of character’s lives typically hidden from view
the “Mobile Viewer” Cyberdrama, where the viewer literally remains mobile in the world of a television show, able to follow characters in branching paths and exploring different plotlines by physically traversing the cyberdrama’s world.
the “Authored-World” Role-Play, which marries a TV show with audience role-play, letting viewers create their own minor characters (akin to getting cast as extras) who can role-play and develop their own sub-plots alongside a show’s main plot.
In the 2016 chapter update, Murray identifies some of the ways in which these frameworks manifested across media over the past 15 years. “Hyperserials” show up as “blogs run by fictional characters,” livetweeting recreates the “mobile viewer,” and informational overlays on a show’s cast and development provide a new layer of interactivity in streaming services. Murray leaves out several key examples, like alternate reality games (ARGs). Often used to promote standalone movies or series and taking techniques from geotagging and scavenger hunts, ARGs can let viewers interact with the world of the media, immersing themselves in it before ever coming face to face with the characters or a new season (notable examples include the ARGs developed for Mr. Robot and Gravity Falls).
Sadly, no single piece of media truly captures the frameworks Murray dreamt of in the late 1990s. To do so, developers, directors, writers, and showrunners would have to abandon the comfortable frameworks of 2-hour movies and serial television/webseries to develop a completely new way of telling stories. Even in a digital era, these media are treated as time-honored institutions, while digital storytelling tools appear as mere add-ons or marketing stunts. Murray is asking a lot of storytellers in proposing these frameworks. For many writers and creators, visual/virtual worldbuilding is left to art directors and social media managers, treated as the unrendered environments just out of range in a video game. To ascend to these new art forms, these creators would need to rebuild their tools and stories from the ground up, planning far more in depth than the current media landscape requires.
(end note: I wonder if some viewers would become overwhelmed by the simultaneous stimuli coming at them in these new media forms. Murray argues that tab-hopping internet users are ready for more complexly layered/explorable stories, but I’m not so sure. for me, watching a movie is all about becoming immersed in its detail... not wondering what someone in my roleplay group will say after the fact.)
Entry 10 - Reflections on “Eliza’s Daughters” from Hamlet on the Holodeck (2016)
This chapter explores the history of characters developed entirely within digital narratives since Eliza, the Rogerian therapist bot who often fooled people into thinking she was a real therapist. Murray delves into several examples, from computer-generated MUD participants to virtual pet applications. The main difficulty in developing complex, reactive characters lies in using programming to calculate the “incalculability of life.” In the 2016 chapter update, Murray argues that the “building blocks” for procedural character creation lie in the prescripted, conditional dialogue and dynamic interaction interfaces of games like The Sims and Blood and Laurels (the latter of which seems like an amazing game but remains weirdly inaccessible to the average online user).
This chapter targets a very specific but important aspect of storytelling: character building. While most of this book remains devoted to discussing digital narrative environments, this chapter betrays the author’s infatuation with the richly developed characters of Victorian-era novels. Murray seems to crave the complexity of a Jane Eyre or Victor Frankenstein over a Sim, but I’m not sure that the digital space will approach character creation through such an explicit historical lens. The people that arise purely out of virtual narratives will likely take more from the internet’s own history than that of narrative writing overall. This chapter reminded me most of the internet art piece Petscop, a fictionalized “let’s play” series centered around one family’s trauma and interpersonal relationships, both reflected in the narrator’s character and the game he plays. The work clearly draws from the proliferation of family Youtube channels and “let’s play” series over the past 15 years, part and parcel of the internet’s history. Although there’s no explicit viewer interactivity, the easter eggs within Petscop videos and their manner of distribution created a larger inner life for the characters beyond the bounds of the videos (the delineation between the narrator and the “family” who controlled the Petscop Youtube channel informed viewers’ understandings of the main characters motivations and seemingly unimportant pieces of dialogue, greatly widening the story’s world).
This analysis barely scratches the surface of Petscop’s complexity in light of Murray’s chapter, but I hope it suggests that authors can tap into the “incalculability” of two decades of online life as much as they can traditional literature.
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“I hope this project can plant a seed, which may sprout with feelings of discomfort, and bud into doubts or questions only to finally result in a thriving thoughtful garden in which the norms of society can be positively challenged.”
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