The Future Core Competence of Anime Games

Notice: This conception was originally commenced on 1 August, 2024 and the writing job was postponed due to transferring to Singapore.
Declaration: No generative AI tools are used during the whole writing job of this article.

Perspective as a player

In the late July, I failed the interview in-business applying to miHoYo. It was no big news because I completely have no practical experience in the type of work. I was answering questions with my imagination (even though it is absurd that the company/market requires a student should have become a skilled technician before going to work). One interesting perspective I experienced at the interview was that the examinee is recommended to behave in different roles in gaming, e.g. a professional gamer, a project planner, a full-stack tester.

Throughout the entire interview, the most interesting set of questions to me were:

1. So you have been a Traveler for a considerable period. In your perspective, what is the most unsatisfying issue you encounter?
2. Thinking that you are acting as a gameplay designer, how to solve the problem you just illustrated?
3. (Implicating) Your solution will receive great importance by the real designers and is very likely to be implemented in game, but this does not mean that your idea will make you succeed in entering the company.

My answer was: Currently (in version 4.8), the most unreasonable part of the game is Imaginarium Theater. My opinion behind indicating this component is that it is not friendly to the newbies, because it requires more time, energy and especially tremendous in-game materials to level up characters to Lv. 70, under the consensus that the new players are pursuing the complete pass of this hardcore gameplay. Compared to Spiral Abyss, Imaginarium Theater (the interviewer: you mean the new abyss) has been replaced half of the time period and Primogems which are originally from the former. More specifically speaking, the new abyss requires more than twice of the characters (18), compared with the old one (8), only to start the process, despite the possibility of failing halfway. To address the problem, I have noticed that there is an entry to temporarily borrow one character owned by other players, and this borrowing number be increased to allow a specific higher ratio of players to join the gameplay, the accurate added number can be retrieved from the experiments, simulations and decisions of the designers.

In fact, I am very acquainted with those game players willing to pay large amount of money, also known as bosses. So my news heard from them is that they feel actually the same as normal players about the Imaginarium Theater, because of its tedious handling procedures and team build-up inflexibility. My answer also fit well with the announcement of the developers because this gameplay has been criticized by the players of all payment classes.

Despite of the failure of the possibility of personally improve the gameplay, this does let me reflect over that such arrogance and ignorance still takes the first place of the anime mobile game market.

Emerging structural problem

There exists a control of designated online communities to make players inside information cocoons, creating an illusion that all elaboration of marketing has no defects and all decisions of miHoYo are absolutely correct and should be supported unconditionally. I was really curious about the company’s point of view on this issue but it gave a stern rebuff. Based on this silence, it is worth trust that these circumstances are deliberately created to maintain the fad of the game discussion.

On the other side, just like all business, the company has the ambition to expand their product applicability from ACGN lovers to general public, and from male youngsters to all genders and ages. Definitely, the pain of doing so is less anime characteristics and more social conventions. However, the structural problem of the players has significantly emerged. Far apart from the enthusiasts’ community in a small-scale field, the larger community means the more discord. Take our old friend, gender issues, as an example. Some criticism even sees the community as a unisex toilet because the game is hobby-specific. Regardless of its original target customers, otakus, a more public-friendly game product would have lost the both sides. We can (but will not, due to business restrictions) prove that to change the 80%-otakus and 20%-others consumer share, the overall willingness of recharging will wane and less players accept that themselves are the main group the game wants to aim at.

What makes the situation worse is that because of increasing strife among the player community, less outsiders are planning to play the games under this community, hearing bad reputation.

Treacherous listeners

As Brother Wei said on Yuanshen☆FES this year that they (“the developers”) should sink their teeth into distinguishing what speeches are genuinely from the players, while some criticisms sound very sharp, the executive decision makers should (even if would not) bolster confidence of the vociferous players. But it is becoming tougher for this huge enterprise to react expeditiously due to its complex personnel, also known as big company disease.

Is it unhypocritical that they cannot effectively collect information such as what the principal part of target customers actually need? Irrespective of the responses from alternative teams, I have already asked people around me (of the same age group, both genders) why they have withdrawn from Genshin Impact. Their answers can generally be summarized as follows:

1. Ill-favored quest plot. The plots of the newer patches become less attractive than the older ones, and more similar to fairy tales. This indicates that the following storyline needs deepening. And to deliberately prolong the dialogue between players and characters, some introductory sections (such as leading players to a new open area) are overextended. Moreover, potential failure of personae setups makes audiences less excited, during generalization of the target market.
2. Bored of exploration. The game features an anime-style open world environment and an action-based battle system using elemental magic and character-switching. As the supplement of new patches, this open world environment becomes fairly large, and if the players cannot follow up the additions to the map, they gradually feel bored during the long travel among regions. Therefore, some newly issued games try to solve this occurrence of tediousness by lightweight designs, with particularly notable solution by Honkai: Star Rail.
3. Too much expenditures. Massive contents produced by the company requires high demand of players’ time, energy and money. In fact, the price to pay for complete gaming experience is very high, and is beyond the expectations of the most players. Like I said before, those have completely achieved financial independence do enjoy this vast virtual world, but in the real world, most people don’t.

From the reasoning above, we can see many possible improvements to make players more satisfied just in the topic of gameplay, let alone their dazzling sensationalizing.

Core competitiveness

As people believed, to win acclamation of a work, writing it in a book is enough. People would not complain lack of complete information to some extent because there must be appropriate room for imagination is crucial. The same applies to anime games. The more the company insists its position as a technology company but not a media franchise (Chinese: IP; Japanese: media mix) oriented company, the less approval comes from the player community. It is sad that people have been forced into subdivided job categories, but have lost their creativity for overall content production.

Anyway, we are expecting a new atmosphere where people show their respect to others, throwing aside prejudices, and finally establish the state free of flippancy, impetuosity and involution. This is also my ideal and behavioral philosophy.