These are all the rage now in the gaming space. Just about any action RPG or even gacha game in general can be hailed as the next Genshin Killer and if it doesn't meet those expectations, it's then deemed a failure. So I figure maybe we could dissect exactly what a "Genshin Killer" is.
The term of course comes after Sept 2020 when Genshin Impact released globally. The game took the world by storm and has set several records so far like most pre-installations, most downloads, game of the year, fastest game to earn a billion, fastest game to earn 5 billion etc. As a result of its monumental successes groups that thrive on controversy came out of the woodwork to find anything they could say against its progress. One of those was the Genshin Killer, propping up any game to release after it as if the newcomer would overtake its success.
On the one hand though a "Genshin Killer" isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as it isn't trying to do what these groups keep suggesting, a game that can take up such a mantle can become healthy competition. Digimon back in the day became a competitor to Pokemon for example.
The problems arise with these groups because they begin doomposting. A doompost is when you speak as if the new game will end the old one, for example that all of the old game's players will abandon it in favor of only playing the new game. This even happened early on with Genshin itself which was considered a "cheap copy" of Nintendo's Zelda Breath of the Wild. In this version the doomposting was done in reverse, suggesting that miHoYo was trying to "steal" players from Nintendo with their "underhanded" tactics. While Zelda of course didn't lose any of its loyal players and miHoYo was never trying to take them Nintendo did end up feeling the negative effects. In 2019 the sequel to BOTW was set to release but was delayed due to Covid-19. However after that when Nintendo was able to release several other games, BOTW 2 was still getting delayed. The likely culprit is growing pressure to outdo Genshin because the doomposting had persisted and it seemed that any Zelda game to release after Genshin must be able to keep up with the "cheap copy." It would take Nintendo 4 years since its original 2019 release to debut Tears of the Kingdom. To Nintendo's credit they were able to distinguish the new game from Genshin and therefore silence most of the doomposters, even helping Genshin finally move away from it even if only until the next controversy by these groups.
Similar to Zelda, games like Tower of Fantasy and Blue Protocol were relentlessly compared against Genshin and touted by these groups as the Genshin Killer. As a result of such pressures and the high expectations it created in potential players these games eventually didn't hold up and fell off. At the same time miHoYo didn't make it out unscathed either despite being the supposed winner in this war. Genshin has continuously received criticisms based on the supposed merits of these Genshin Killers. Any time their producers are more generous or provide easier ways of progressing in their games compared to whatever system in Genshin these groups compare them against it's suddenly a fatal flaw in Genshin, something for their devs failed to improve upon and therefore are reasons why Genshin's players should abandon the game. Over time it's actually stunted Genshin's growth and currently it's regressed down to under 60 million players which is where it was over two years ago.
Currently the "Genshin Killer" is Kuro Game's Wuthering Waves. The same old story is being told again with it too. There were ridiculously high expectations about the game before it even launched with content creators and game news articles hailing it as being far more exciting to play than Genshin. Several players took those early comparisons and did actually abandon Genshin. Then Wuthering Waves actually released and unfortunately it severely lacked polish. Mobile gamers could barely even play the game due to the lag, frame drops, bugs and inability to adapt to poor global internet connections. Other gamers also felt the effects and complained to the extent that Kuro Games had to apologize, provide compensation and patch the game several times. Doomposting then went to work against both games, pretending to side with miHoYo by saying that Wuthering Waves was dead on arrival or pretending to side with Kuro by saying they were far more generous with their rewards and that their devs listened to the players, both persistent criticisms they've used against miHoYo.
In conclusion, I think we just need to engage our brains. There are people out there that crave negativity. If they can breed controversy, they can feed on it for a long time. Negative emotions like anger and disappointment motivate reaction much more readily than positive ones. This has been used by news agencies for decades in what's called yellow journalism. As long as the "Genshin Killers" are just competitors that can keep both game companies on their toes everybody benefits. It would be great if Kuro could continue to learn from miHoYo but also push miHoYo to stay on top of development for their games. Players then benefit from having all the options at our fingertips and an endless supply of gorgeous characters to fiddle around with and optimize gameplay.
What do you guys think? Is the "Genshin Killer" a healthy term to have around? Even if it isn't, is there a way to use it properly? What other examples of new products being touted as the killer of an older product (like Digimon to Pokemon or the DCEU to Marvel's MCU) can you guys remember?
PS: Wuthering Waves actually makes a point of it in game as part of the world building is that everything is made up of waves. Emotional waves can manifest into different things and especially negative ones result in the major enemy of the game, the Threnodians and Tacet Discords.
I actually have a whole theory discussion about that so if you like discussing the storylines of games please click here to check out Hive Gaming Theories!
