Myla Held

My project focuses on Genshin Impact, a global free-to-play multiplatform online game that has faced both praise and backlash for its story, characters, and presentation of cultures. There will be a focus on neurodivergent Indigenous players, a group that is largely missing from the literature in neurodiversity studies. How Genshin Impact depicts race, sex, gender, and disability will be analyzed to provide the audience the geopolitics presented by the game’s developers, HoyoVerse. Gaming interviews will ask participants to play Genshin Impact to observe their interactions within the game, including characters, regions, modes, story, and other players. Genshin Impact’s fan culture (fandom) allows for players to use various digital spaces to connect, share opinions, art, and observations. This includes fan observations of possible neurodivergent characters. How players observe race, sex, gender, and disability within Genshin Impact and interacting with community spaces will be probed to inquire about representation and online communities.