Sign this petition to show your support for the Artistic Freedom and agree that artists do not have an obligation to reflect all aspects of real life or face accusations of cultural appropriation. We ask our brothers and sisters who support the other petition to consider the points below, and join us in making a constructive impact without making misguided accusations.

Background

miHoYo is an emerging game development company with a growing global footprint. It has recently gained vast popularity among a global player base with its debut of Genshin Impact. Genshin Impact is an open-world RPG game which features 7 regions (5 of them already released and 2 more planned over the coming years), with each region inspired by real-world regions and their cultures.

Recently, with the upcoming release of a new region called Natlan, there has been a renewed accusation of whitewashing, cultural appropriation, and racism, which led to calls for boycotting, because certain groups of people feel that the lack of dark skin tones in the game is ill-intentioned. This sentiment against Genshin Impact and other miHoYo games, has grown strong enough to turn into a petition on Change.org platform.

The Problem

While the sentiment is understandable, we believe the accusation, while well-intended, is misguided and actually harmful to Artistic Freedom, especially given that there have been cases where people who work on the project, including voice actors/actresses, have been harassed on social media (or even worse), due to these accusations. Further, these accusations fuel disagreements and divisions within the player community, ruining it for everyone.

Let's be clear: Genshin Impact is fictional. It has been clear since Day 1 that the story is completely creative and not trying to represent the real world. While there are elements in the game that are inspired by real-world cultural and historical fragments, these elements don't automatically oblige miHoYo to recreate the real world with pixel-perfect accuracy. On the other hand, developers and creators of Genshin Impact should have the fundamental Freedom to create an art that works for them first. Genshin Impact features a color palate that may look better with certain color combinations. If the artists feel that looking good is a priority, they should be free to make that choice without being accused, threatened, or otherwise diminished. We the audience do not own the choices the artists make, and therefore should not be self-righteous about some choices we would make but the artists didn’t.

Therefore, the lack of dark skin tones is not automatically whitewashing or cultural appropriation. In fact, many people of diverse cultural backgrounds have reported that Genshin Impact goes deep into the cultures they reference, and incorporate those in a way that don’t feel out of place or otherwise misrepresentative. For example, I still remember the shock when I watched a deep-dive analysis of Zhongli's character design (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1uQ4y1f7g9). My shock came from the fact that there are so many elements included in Zhongli’s design that reflects elements of my own culture, but as a Chinese national I never knew about them myself. Likewise, there is a video commenting on Sumeru's design and the video creator thinks highly regarding the level of details and representation Genshin Impact incorporates into the region (https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Mg4y1J7vb). For instance, did you notice that the "Land of Lower Setekh" is above the "Land of Upper Setekh" (even though former says “Lower” and the latter says “Upper”)? Spoiler alert: That's a cultural reference right there.

As such, culture representation should not be minimized to the mere act of implementing a full range of skin colors. We understand that skin color tones are diverse. But we should also recognize that the way to respect and appreciate a culture can be diverse too. For a team of developers and creators mostly of a Chinese background, to spend the time and effort reaching into cultures vastly different than theirs and diving that deep, and building it into the visuals, music, and other aspects of the game, sufficiently demonstrates that they respect the culture that they reference with no disrespectful intent. The other petition says "No cultural appropriation" to miHoYo; we say "No cultural minimization" to them.

Cultures form not from skin colors, but from ordinary people getting together, working through life's ups and downs, while still managing to make life extraordinary. In a way, Genshin Impact is already a culture of its own. While no culture is perfect (in fact, what does a perfect culture even mean?), we the participants in this culture can make a positive impact and shape its future.

How?

• Respect the people who worked to make Genshin Impact happen and the trade-offs they make. Do not automatically call deficiencies a crime. You can ask for more skin tone representation (or other representations) without accusing, hating, or even harassing the people who made this game a reality in the first place.
• If you have a specific culture you want to advocate, you can leverage Genshin Impact contents to grab attention, start off with what Genshin has, then move on to introduce what Genshin hasn’t, just like the other videos I linked. This is just one way - we are sure you can come up with even better ways to support the culture you care about.
• If miHoYo does not or cannot make everything work for everyone, it’s still fine. We have doujin culture; we fill in the gaps with our own creativity. miHoYo is relatively open to fan-made contents. Create the contents. Support the contents. Make them so good that they are featured on the next Genshin concert. The Genshin Impact culture is not limited to a mere game binary. You can influence others (and maybe miHoYo directly) positively. Together, we can build a better culture.

Final words

I appreciate you reading this far. Remember, hating is easy and loving is harder. Don't do what's easy - Do the hard thing and make the world a better place. Sign this petition to show that you agree.