Just when fans started to cool down,Genshin Impactriled players with a bizarre decision to publicly court controversial entrepreneur, Elon Musk. The lucrative gacha game recently suffered a huge review-bombing backlash over developer miHoYo’s anniversary gifts, with community ire stemming from a lack of in-game rewards proportinate tothe billions of dollars miHoYo madein its first year. The faux-pas of “jokingly” rewarding fan support with the prospect of a live billionaire-to-billionaire hand shake inspired fresh criticism of miHoYo’s relationship with their audience.
In order to promote their Creator Spotlight side account,Genshin Impact’s social media team pledged to follow Elon Musk on Twitter if said account received one million followers. Three million followers, and they’d go out on a limb and invite Elon Musk to stream their free-to-play game. At a whopping five million dedicated viewers ofGenshin Impactfanart, miHoYo would extend Musk’s invitation all the way to their headquarters. This tweet was live for only a few hours before deletion — and probably would’ve faded into background noise if Musk hadn’t chimed in with a tweet of his own, immortalizing the situation in the media.
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Elon Musk’s Connection to Genshin Impact
Engaging with Musk at all struck fans as way out of left field, but there is some narrative context to acknowledge here: NPC Ella Musk. Ella is a very smart, curious child studying the language of Hilichurls (Genshin Impact’s monsters), occasionally employing the player in a few light-hearted schemes tobetter her understanding of Hilichurl linguistics. Ella’s namesake isn’t a Westernized mistranslation as some assumed: The characters in her Chinese name are shared with Musk’s, so the connection is canonically deliberate. NowGenshin Impactplayers are wondering what exactly that connection could be, and why it matters.
The most obvious correlation is a passion for mastering communication.Elon Musk is purportedly developing neurotechnologythat would render human language “obsolete in as little as five years,” though he thinks humanity might still speak “for sentimental reasons.” The next is a misunderstood genius trope: Ella, because her interests are so against the grain in Mondstadt, and Elon, for those who view him as a groundbreaking thinker alienated by those groundbreaking thoughts.
Ella is the only character presented inGenshin Impactthus far who directly muses over the likely intelligence of “creatures” the protagonist eliminates on a daily basis, despite evidence of most humanoid enemies having once thrived as regular people. Their civilization was destroyed and population turned monstrous after pursuing forbidden “god-like” knowledge, and are now historically villainized as “sinners” forpushing the boundaries of technology.
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The PR Baggage of Elon Musk
Introducing Elon Musk toGenshin Impactwas not exactly a move that resonated with the community. The biggest issue with miHoYo engaging with Musk is what happens when any celebrity engages with the neutral face of a company: an inheritance of guilt by association. Musk’s lack of social responsiblity does not mesh with the youngerGenshin Impactaudience, largely part of a generationkeen to issues of social justice. There’s a few examples in which Musk falls below the standard of decency:
Musk has enough moneythat he could resolve pressing humanitarian and environmental crises, yet prioritizes fliratations with a galactic legacy over the experiences of individuals who suffer right now, not hypothetically in a starbound future. Some fans feel this parallels miHoYo’s out-of-touch engagement with its audience. Attempting to promote community hype with the involvement of the richest man in the world after widespread accusations of corporate greediness less than a month ago isn’t doing miHoYo’s reputation any favors.
The Benefit of Indulging a PR Stunt
WhilemostGenshin Impactfans reacted somewhere between renewed outrageand head-scratching confusion, others can’t believe a “joke” is being blown so out of proportion: It’s obvious no one, including miHoYo, expected its fanart Twitter to even touch the first one million follow benchmark (it started at 200,000). However, coming from a company with over two million customers, even a joke is a decision that juggles through several conversations over severals days among several people before it sees the light of Twitter — if a marketing scheme survives a process, it has an intention.
Genshin Impactis available on Mobile, PC, PS4, and PS5.
