By: Narah Faigal
After getting recognized as the most talked about game on Twitter Gaming, as well as it’s release of new game features, Genshin Impact has made its impression to gamers all over the world.
Genshin Impact is an open-world and action roleplaying game created by miHoyo. It is a game where you get to fight different enemies and bosses, unravel different stories, and collect beautifully designed characters and weapons.
Although, as exciting this game could be, the hidden possibilities of “whaling” and spending for these games are slowly becoming a problem. With the scarce release of limited characters and the throwing of luck, gamers cannot help but spend their money on these types of games in order to acquire the best of their favorite character.
Genshin Impact is also known as a gacha game. A gacha game is wherein people bet their game currencies and luck, in the hopes of getting limited-edition characters and weapons of the game series they are playing. It is a digitalized version of the ‘gachapon’ or ‘claw machine,’ where chances of winning a prize are based on the amount of money you spend.
This is where the concept of “whaling” comes in.
Whaling, in the context of gaming, is the excessive spending of money for more chances of winning the gacha. With a lot of character and weapon releases, passionate gamers of the series tend to get into these practices, spending hundreds and thousands of dollars, just to get six copies of their favorite characters, to fully upgrade their skills and talents.
While the game is free to play, a lot of players have started to incline to whaling activities, due to the want for the latest characters and weapons. This is slowly becoming a problem to gamers, especially towards the younger audience that Genshin Impact caters.
Recently, miHoyo has released its biggest update of the game, widening its open world systems, as well as adding a lot of characters and weapons in their gacha banner. This motivated players to grind harder and spend more money, in order to get the latest five-star character, Ayaka, and test her out in the new world that Genshin Impact is presenting.
Do you think there’s satisfaction in spending actual money over non-guaranteed chances of a new character in an online game’s gacha banner? Why or why not? Let us know!