I use a lot of TikTok, which means I tend to see a lot of ads on the platform. Most of them are harmless, while others are users trying to flog mediocre products in pursuit of a commission.

We’ve seen things like this on social media platforms for decades now, but the ways in which video games are advertised on TikTok makes them feel like pyramid schemes featuring blatantly obvious acting, dodgy framing, and an aggressive frequency that turns me off when games like Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail deserve so much better.

Hoyoverse Knows Exactly What It's Doing With Zenless Zone Zero On TikTok

Hoyoverse’s slate of titles are glorified anime girl slot machines when you break it all down. I love the combat systems of Genshin and Zenless, while the execution of the visuals, gameplay, and everything else is spectacular. But everything you do is in service of earning currency used to have yet another pull of the chain. Most of the time, you’ll get little of value, but there is always a chance of something better. So you keep on playing, and will jump at any opportunity to get extra rolls that don’t require you to spend real world money or grind endlessly.

This is where the TikTok advertisements come in. Not a single one has bothered to describe what the game is about, how it plays, or even what the most basic concept is. It’s all focused on free pulls, cool rewards, and other bonuses you can only earn by signing up early as you directly interact with the ads being forced onto your feed. It makes use of actors who clearly read from a script with the enthusiasm of a brick wall, reading out random jargon and making use of popular filters and sounds that have nothing to do with Zenless Zone Zero at all.

@spectrexgaming Don’t miss out on Zenless Zone Zero! #zenlesszonezero #Zenless0704 #tiestozenless #sanzstudio #ZENLESS #ad @Zenless Zone Zero ♬ ZENLESS - Tiësto & Lucas & Steve & Silent Child & Sān-Z

But it must work, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing so many of them for so many games. Low budget mobile shovelware has long employed the technique, but the past few months alone have seen AFK Journey, Wuthering Waves, and Honkai Star Rail use the same approach. They’re so grating they push me away from games I both know already and have yet to play because these ad spots are treating me like an idiot.

Why would I, or anyone, fall for annoying paid actors and canned voiceover just because they’re thrown at me often enough that I give in out of sheer curiosity. Zenless Zone Zero is a free-to-play mobile game at the end of the day, and in spite of its massive production values and cavalcade of brilliant ideas, it consistently acts like one.

Zenless Zone Zero Shouldn’t Need To Sink This Low To Find Success

Imagine if The Last of Us Part 2 or Baldur’s Gate 3 were being flogged on TikTok with awful zoomer actors reading from a script to users with the attention span of a goldfish. We would never hear the end of it. Thankfully, as full-fledged blockbuster releases, they would never stoop to such an embarrassing level. Neither should Zenless Zone Zero, Genshin, or Honkai.

It’s an attitude I wish would change, so games of this ilk would be treated with more respect. This reduces the character designs, narrative themes, and actual act of playing the game to background extras in lieu of brief rushes of dopamine that come from rolling a character you’ve been yearning for.

This also speaks to how mobile games have adapted to modern platforms, and how we’re constantly in search of quick hits of serotonin on apps like TikTok, which provide neverending streams of videos that we can scroll through at our leisure.

Advertisements need to grab our attention within seconds, and what better way to do that than offering free stuff? To promise, if we install Zenless Zone Zero or Honkai Star Rail, we will immediately be rewarded with cute anime girls to play with. By that point, we’re a part of the wider ecosystem, and that’s exactly what Hoyoverse wants. If one in a hundred people stuck around, that’s a massive success.

I just wish it didn’t turn a game I’m already on the fence about into something I’m now awfully tempted to ditch altogether. All these adverts show is that its intentions aren’t about wanting me to enjoy it or become invested in its characters and mechanics, but to grind it out and spend money. In this day and age, I have better things to do.

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Zenless Zone Zero

Action RPG Systems OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 75/100 Critics Rec: 69% Released July 4, 2024 ESRB T (Teen) - Suggestive Themes & Violence Developer(s) HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo) Publisher(s) HoYoverse Engine Unity
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DIGITAL

Zenless Zone Zero is the next game from Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail creator Hoyoverse. An action RPG game with hack-and-slash mechanics, you play as a Proxy - battling to protect the city of New Eridu from the dimension-hopping Ethereal.

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