Honkai: Star Rail is a big deal. It’s the next big thing from Hoyoverse, who made billions from the success of Genshin Impact. With unrivaled production values and millions of players jumping into the game across mobile and PC, it’s already safe to call this new venture a massive hit.
Except you wouldn’t think so when scrolling through TikTok, where cringe-inducing, almost bootleg-feeling advertisements are being used to promote the game to users. Terrible actors can be seen blatantly reading off a script, like they’ve been forced to regurgitate marketing spiel at gunpoint. I don’t know who these people are, if they’re famous influencers, or why they are selling this game instead of more traditional sizzle reels and trailers. If anything it presents Honkai: Star Rail as a potential pyramid scheme ready and willing to steal my credit card details.
Little floating heads in the corner of the screen with dead eyes laser-focused on their script spout phrases like “AMAZING CRAZY!” before listing off gameplay features included in the official press release. It’s so weird and alien, similar to dozens of mobile ads seen on the platform that sadly understand you need to be fast, absurd, and to the point to have any chance of standing out amidst the algorithm. It’s like those Top War where awkward presenters are spliced alongside clips of gameplay that clearly aren’t real. It’s nonsense designed for virality, so maybe its absurd delivery is the entire point. Hoyoverse wants me to react with this exact kind of disbelief.
None of these people seem to have even played Star Rail, and I know that because I’ve seen them advertising a bunch of other games with similar amounts of apathy. These ads must be produced by a third-party agency or something, since they’re a stark contrast from pretty much everything else Hoyoverse is putting out. Official trailers and the game itself are absurdly polished and gorgeous, presenting an RPG that easily rivals similar paid alternatives on home consoles. Advertisements like these on TikTok cheapen its image though, and make Star Rail look like yet another copycat mobile game with awful ads that inadvertently make it seem like something not worth your time. Even Genshin managed to avoid this pitfall, or at least didn’t lean into it so shamelessly. Now it’s on another level.
It’s a shame that selling games like this requires such minimal effort, and leaning into that mediocrity is precisely what pulls players in. There’s a subversive nature to it all, and proof that we’re more likely to interact with advertisements that play into absurdism or buck social media trends in ways that make us stand up and take notice. From that perspective maybe it’s kinda clever, but so damn depressing. Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail are both games with gorgeous visuals, imaginative character designs, and clear passion invested in their creation, and here we have adverts treating them like a Flappy Bird clone. It’s clearly working though, so what do I know? Video games just deserve better than this, or at least promotional materials that better represent them, instead of soulless corporate TikToks.