It’s been a few weeks now since Arknights: Endfield was released. Since then, I’ve played the game pretty regularly (if you don’t count the week we had no power due to a huge ice storm). I enjoy it. In some ways it’s similar to my usual food. Otherwise it isn’t.

The big difference is of course the factory simulation part of the game. I play factory simulations and have a lot of fun with them. But I don’t usually play them as part of my girl-collecting anime RPG games. In Endfield, the factory simulation portion of the game is not only an important part of the game; it is necessary. If you want to progress, you will build and upgrade factories in the region you are currently in. If you don’t do that, you won’t get very far. Do you want equipment? Do it better. Medication? The same. Need money for something. I have to make items for refugees and help them build their settlements. Otherwise, you won’t be able to buy gifts for your employees.

Basically, you will spend a lot of time in your factories. And you’ll reach points in the game’s story where you’ll simply have to stop and return to the factory (or Endfield’s giant ship, where even more production is taking place) to progress.

But here’s the thing. You can’t do it 100% alone. Yes, you move through history as if you were the only final minister out there. But as you explore Talos-II, you’ll come across certain useful facilities set up by other players – mainly things like ziplines, tower weapons, and storage facilities. You can use these shared facilities to navigate your world. That doesn’t mean you can avoid publishing your own, as the titles that appear in your version of the game may change over time. So if you want a consistent system, you have to put in a lot of work. But it can make building your systems easier.

Natürlich, since this is a factory simulation, facilities can wear out, be attacked by enemies or creatures, and generally need repair. And you often come across that, including in the community facilities. Realistically, these facilities are not your problem. You didn’t build it. You could use them until all of your own are in place and then forget about them. Jedoch, you have the option to fix them for yourself and other users. And I find that interesting.

Arknights: Endfield, like most gacha-style ARPGs, is a very minimal social game. Yes, in any of these games: Genshin Impact, Sturmwellen, Honkai: Star Rail, usw. You may have a reason to cooperate with other players. In fact, some games try to encourage this even more by adding events where players have to team up to get all of their rewards and the like. But in most cases, if you don’t mind not getting the treats, you can ignore them completely.

Even in MMORPGs, games based on the idea of ​​sociability and collaboration, players may choose to ignore each other or content that requires interaction with others. Jedoch, it can easily be argued that this is not the point of playing MMORPGs. Supposedly, players take part in these games to do something with other people.

But gacha games and factory simulations are very often solo affairs. For this reason, I think Arknights: Endfield and other solo games that allow players to interact with each other in subtle ways say some interesting things about the gaming community as a whole. The fact is, if I come across your zipline and it’s on its last legs, I don’t have to use my materials to repair it. I could just walk by. I could build my own and maintain them. And players certainly don’t have to leave each other messages explaining how to find a hard-to-find treasure or warning each other about danger. But they do.

Another non-Arknights example: Genshin Impact’s Lantern Rite is underway. If you’re a Genshin player, this is a pretty big deal. There is a major quest that impacts the game’s story, and there are activities that typically take the form of mini-games. The quest is solo and the mini-games can be a mix. And when there is social content, the game typically only requires players to contribute a small amount to receive all the rewards.

But then there are the lanterns. It is the Lantern Rite, after all. Therefore, players will receive Xiao Lanterns and the ability to use them to send messages to other players. Admittedly, HoYo doesn’t let any of us write what we want. If we want to be weird and scary, we can just do it in co-op chat.

Instead, just like the messages sent in Endfield, the game has set phrases that players can compose into a message. And they are all designed to fit the holiday. But like all things social in the game, we don’t have to put in that much effort. Drop five lanterns and you’ll have earned your rewards. Trotzdem, they give us 20 lanterns to spread news in Liyue, and we can purchase more. Every time I log in, new messages are floating around in the port waiting to be picked up.

Basically, players just leave nice messages for each other because they want to. Being social is simply not a requirement to progress in the game.

In Arknights, players benefit a little more from being social. There are things like hints that players can send to each other, and also an exchange-like system where players have to search their friends for the best buying and selling prices. Again, in some ways the game requires a bit of social activity – more than your standard gacha RPG. But there are things that aren’t necessary that we do anyway.

It can benefit us in some ways, such as repairing existing zip lines. But mostly I think players just do it because it feels good. In time I may stumble upon this hidden treasure on my own. But once someone drops one of these notes, they’ve saved me a lot of trouble.

I’ll be honest. I don’t even really use other people’s zip lines. The ones that come up often don’t lead to where I want to go. But when I come across them and they need repair, I do it. It just seems like the right thing to do. And it requires so little effort on my part – certainly less effort than optimizing my own factories.

Speaking of optimizing factories, the game has a system that allows players to share blueprints of their factory facilities with each other. This is another one of those things that requires effort (though not much) outside of general gameplay. A player must choose to create and share the blueprint. Just a few weeks later, there’s a website full of blueprints for people to look through and use. I’ll probably never talk to the people whose blueprints I might want to use. But they upload them anyway.

It reminds me that despite all the negativity and nastiness we see in the gaming community that often breaks containment, gamers (like everyone else) can be very nice people. (Yes, even the gamers, who sometimes seem to spend more time being negative about the games they don’t play than the games they do play.) Sometimes it’s easy to forget that. Here is your reminder.