Once again, playing and following Genshin Impact has brought me psychic damage. The English community for developer HoYoverse's open-world action RPG was surprised to see two of its best-known characters, the Anemo Archon Venti and male Traveler protagonist Aether, abruptly examined in a recent news segment from Turkish channel Ülke TV. Needless to say, gacha gamers did not take this lying down.
In a November 21 broadcast (about 72 minutes in), Ülke TV hosts and apparent panelists discussed Genshin Impact as part of a segment on (according to machine translated descriptions) "children's exposure to digital games," screen addiction, and "digital identity issues." YouTube's auto-generated English subtitles line up with translated clips circulating online, suggesting the segment boiled down to a conservative interrogation of the gender politics of the game and the masculinity of Venti and Aether.
