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genshin impact and compassion for gacha gamblers

7 june 2022.

something i've come to notice is how damn disdained genshin impact is on the principle of it being a gacha game. and you know what? i get it! the gacha model of video game monetization is predatory as hell and has most certainly ruined people's lives before, being damningly adjacent to gambling, if not gambling outright. however, there's just something about the way i've been talked to, as someone passionate abt the game, by people who have never played the game themselves about how they think i love the game.

and i guess i should probably talk about that upfront, before we move on: i like the characters and story of genshin impact, and i love the memories and connections i've made with others because of it. i am, embarrassingly, one of those people who gets way too invested in the fictional lives of made-up people and dedicates an unholy amount of their life to writing essays and making up stories about them and the world they are set in, and i have friends who will happily indulge my lunacy.

to an extent, i even owe the game my health— i started playing it when recovering from the plague, at a time when i was no longer coughing enough to keep me from speaking altogether, but definitely enough to keep me from trying too hard. playing genshin meant hanging out in vc w/my friends for hours every day, giving me reason to exercise my chest and lungs more, and considering the terrible rate at which my cough was waning before i started talking every day, i don't think i'd have recovered as fully or as quickly as i have w/o it.

genshin impact is not about rolling to me. i know that it's a part of the game, and yes, rolling is an undeniable part of the experience for me, if only because rolling is part of its system. but it is not the defining aspect of genshin to me, the way it is to some people, and the way people seem to think it must be to me.

i shouldn't have to say this, but frankly, it seems like the only way i can get people to take me seriously and realize i am speaking lucidly: my family has a history of addiction, on both sides. from the cousin who lived on the streets from drug addiction, to the great-aunt who went blind from alcoholism, to the great-grandfather who gambled nearly all his farmland away, i'm sure you can understand why i, the one diagnosed with wicked adhd and is therefore much more susceptible to addiction, would pay careful attention to what kind of behaviors i have around reward systems that feed me societal constructs instead of tangible, real-life benefits in exchange for the things i need to live.

there's this sort of haughty, holier-than-thou attitude that from people outside the gacha community when they talk about the genshin impact fandom. not the game, its fandom. stories of scams, theft, and embezzlement; of bank accounts drained and evictions from unpaid rents, all in the name of the gacha surface. people who have never touched a gacha game in their lives, have never known anyone who has been even in the peripheries of the gacha community, laugh at the poor fool who is too stupid to realize they are spending their life savings on pixels, on something they cannot truly own.

"these people are so stupid," they say. "are they even really human? i think they might really be another species!"

are you people fucking listening to yourselves? are you truly more of a human being, more deserving of compassion and respect, just because you're not an addict?

and the way people go,

" 'oh, but it's not gambling!' *rolls eyes*"

in mockery of people who try to justify the existence of gacha are just as guilty of looking down upon gacha addicts as those who literally dehumanize them. i'm not here to justify the existence of gacha— i have absolutely no interest in defending it, despite participating in its system— but you can't just roll your eyes at the very people you're trying to convince are addicted to it.

there's a shame to being a gacha player. not even necessarily addict, but player, simply bc everyone assumes you are an addict. even if it is a personal or moral failing and therefore the fault of the addict for financially endangering themselves whilst whaling, should we not be gentle and kind when they realize they need help with their addiction? why should there be shame to recovery?

we're human, goddamn it. have you never felt the Hunger? the part of our very human cores that is supposed to hold our meaning of life, the point of our existence, yet is by default empty void?

no one is born knowing anything; of course there will be people who fall into unhealthy, self-destructive behaviors like gambling and addiction to cope with that! just because you've managed to reach across the void and make a connection with another vulnerable soul and therefore feel fulfilled or understood or whatever doesn't mean you've never searched for a way to fill that void, satisfy that hunger yourself!

to scorn an addict for their addiction is to deny them human connection and understanding, to deny them the thing you yourself use to keep your void from yearning the way theirs does. and to that, i can only conjure two words for you:

how cruel.