Yes, Genshin Impact controls my life, but it’s consensual
Logging on to Genshin Impact, I immediately go to my fallback activity: picking flowers. To do that, I choose my anime-esque character with his black-and-teal-colored hair, and we fast-travel to the sheer, jutting peaks of the mystical region of Jueyun Karst. I jump from one slope to another, gliding along while the notes of a stringed instrument accompany my platforming. I pick a white flower called a Qingxin off the top of a neighboring cliff.
On screen, the moment is quiet and serene. But as I pick the flowers, my mind races. I know my total collection of Qingxin will hit 45 flowers that day, so I can level up my character. At that point, I should shift gears toward collecting an entirely different set of materials that can be used to level up specific attacks. At that point, I should check in and see if I’ll have enough money to actually use the materials. But then I notice a friend is online, so I should see if they can run the weekly boss that I’m not quite strong enough to beat yet. An otherwise beautiful moment becomes riddled with the anxiety of Genshin Impact’s never-ending to-do list.
Genshin Impact is not a flower picking simulator. It’s an open-world free-to-play game created by the Shanghai-based studio Hoyoverse (previously known as Mihoyo). Hoyoverse first released Genshin Impact two years ago, and while the core of the game remains the same — you explore, pursue quests, and collect materials to improve characters — it has received several additions of varying sizes. As of the 3.1 patch, the game has just about any sort of gameplay you can imagine: four giant regions to explore, an entire realm dedicated to decorating, a consistent churn of minigames, dozens of lengthy story quests, and an extensive
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