An Open Letter on Open-World Gaming
By Niko Adams
Over the course of almost a year in quarantine, many teens and adults have taken to gaming to pass the time and interact with friends without the need for physically meeting up. And despite there being a tidal wave of diverse, new games that hit the market this year, among the most successful is a single thing: the ability to co-op.
Let’s take things back all the way to early spring of 2020, when Animal Crossing: New Horizons took the internet by storm, invoking nostalgia in old players, and curiosity in new and younger switch owners. The game’s feature of traveling to other players’ islands made it an easy way to connect with others during the first and long stretch of quarantine. We also see this in almost all of the other games that have boomed in popularity: Minecraft, Among us, Valorant, and League of Legends, to name a few. But the one I have to talk about in particular was the much-anticipated release of Mihoyo’s new open-world game: Genshin Impact.
Following the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, open-world games have fought to compete with Nintendo’s smash-hit, and none have really come close to the same fantasy-RPG experience that the iconic The Legend of Zelda series has given players over the course of over thirty years.
Mihoyo’s Genshin Impact goes head to head with Breath of the Wild. With its stunning graphics, fantastic character animations, (addicting) gacha, and deep enriching storylines. The catch? There is none, it’s totally free to play the game. Despite this, Genshin Impact brought in almost sixty million dollars in the first week of its release, highlighting the immense success of a free-to-play game that depends entirely on in-game-purchases. Personally, what I love about the Genshin experience is how easily customizable it is to fit your play style. Do you enjoy tearing through the ranks to become stronger? Congrats, but you’ll have to put in the hours to get there. If you’re a more chill player, with a love for good soundtracks and collecting (me), Genshin Impact makes it incredibly easy for you to run around the map for hours collecting berries or cooking food. The open-world experience mimics the real world and provides us with a sense of the “outdoors” even if we aren’t truly there. It’s also an amazing opportunity for companies to show off their graphics and even pushed Genshin Impact towards its winning title of “Game of the Year”, which many see as a deserved success for the company’s major comeback since Genshin’s predecessor: Honkai Impact.
And among all of its incredible exploration experience, Genshin Impact has its very own co-op feature, which allows you to invite other travelers into your world. Not only does the feature make it easy to interact with friends, but it also provides an experience that a lot of us are searching for in this pandemic: easy connection with the people we can’t see in person. With Minecraft servers also skyrocketing in popularity since the game’s player count decrease in 2017, it has become clear that in order to be successful, games will have to start implementing better online gaming, as seen with Nintendo’s wildly successful subscription.
But for now, the up-and-coming maps for Among Us, and the increasing popularity of Minecraft, paired with the new Genshin Impact experience will have to suffice.
