When a new addition to the roster, like ice-archer Ganyu, pops up, MiHoYo is trying to make her as desirable as possible on multiple levels. It's a subtle but important shift: Beyond selling characters, MiHoYo is also selling the ability to build a relationship with them. 'We asked ourselves why we would want to pay? It’s because we love a certain virtual character that we become willing to pay for her,' Liu said at a Chinese gaming conference in 2017.

Liu Wei, one of three of MiHoYo's co-founders, has said previously that its monetization model is all about 'paying for love.' It was an intentional departure from the pay-to-win microtransactions so prevalent in many of China's most popular free-to-play games. It's also exactly what developer MiHoYo intended. Sandwiched between a game that's both extremely fun to play and mostly devoid of in-your-face microtransactions, Genshin Impact is an easy game to fall in love with. They each have distinctive personalities carefully revealed through every catchy one-liner, idle pose, and funny bit of quest dialogue. They're not only beautifully drawn (and rendered in-game), but also given a lot of life through voice-acted story quests and written biographies that cover everything from their childhood to their favorite foods.

If you've played Genshin Impact for even a few hours, it's easy to see why players have forged such strong relationships with these characters.

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