The way these studies are phrased feels gross and seem to only serve to perpetuate these problems by shifting the blame of systemic issues on the individuals suffering from them instead of the powerful people benefiting from wealth inequality that cause this kind of desperation.
The US is guilty of this too with our “Financial Literacy” propaganda.
Almost as if capitalism was specifically designed to shuffle all wealth from the bottom to the top in a neverending ratchet of human degradation and exploitation
someone help me understand what gacha is and what it means to these folks in simple terms?
Games with casino style gambling to unlock characters or skins or whatever. Often times you’ll have like 1/100 chance to unlock a character you want when opening a “box”.
Hugly mobile popular games run like this with new more powerful characters releasing monthly
Another comment explained what it is but to explain where the name comes from, you remember those capsule machines where you had to collect all the toys? Those were called gachapon machines, often shortened to just gacha (i might be slightly wrong on a little bit of the words, but they are the capsule machines)
I saw so many people in another instance relating this to shaming people for avocado toast rather than these games exploiting gambling addiction.
It’s definitely a psychological issue where these games are designed to slowly bleed their players without them noticing. The most I’ve ever spent on a gacha was $40 over 6 years and I regret that so much. It takes a wakeup call and education to stop people from being suckered in.
I knew this was a fucked up industry when I heard they were successfully diversifying into women-centric gatcha games where the game is also centered on gooning over various character designs but the gatcha pulls correspond to specific romance scenes and interactions.
Japanese companies really have minmaxed exploiting every demographic. They have this garbage for the young people and pachinko parlors for old people and rural folks.
The widespread deregulation of gambling in the US is heading that way too.
Funny thing is I know more women playing these games than I know dudes. Which of course does not reflect player statistics. I know that. But it‘s probably more popular with women than you would think based on character designs. I think it has a lot to do with cutesy Japanese pop culture that‘s appealing to a lot of people. There‘s a reason many Chinese and Korean games are copying it recently.
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Unfortunately people needs to eat, to pay rent, etc.
When your only choice is to work for a shady company, you can’t be chooser.
I had an argument with a guy who was in a shared friend’s discord server about this. He was adamant that, if somebody spent too much money on a game, then it was all their fault. Despite me going over several (clearly manipulative) tactics, all he said was that people who fell for these must be stupid and that they deserved it
Yeah later on he was kicked because of other (Similarly dickish) reasons
Yeah American is a victim blaming culture
It is as much their fault as it is any addict’s fault, which is to say, partially but not entirely
I mean…
The unfortunate reality is that both parties, the customer and the game company, are culpable and both share blame
These gacha companies pay ridiculous amounts of money for psych profile info specifically to target vulnerable individuals, yet individuals don’t have that same kind of access or understanding
This is NOT a both sides thing.
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I mean, he’s not wrong. it is something within their power to control, and only they can stop the cycle.
addiction is a hell of a drug though.
companies that prey on the vulnerabilities of humans like that should be regulated no different than drug, alcohol, or firearm companies.
And if we were all smart people we would have far less laws. Sometimes laws protect us from ourselves. Anyone who has experience with addiction knows how hard it is to just stop. Instead of blaming people for their inability to stop we should emphatize and understand that this needs an intervention. If these predatory practices were illegal those people wouldn’t need to stop themselves because they wouldn’t be put in that situation in the first place.
Regulation of predatory practice. Taxation on the games to pay for rehab and support services for people that experience negative effects from it. It’s really easy to do, but every single gambling operation gets the big bucks from the heavily addicted. The whales are the entire business.
I agree they’re partially at fault, but to deny the part the company played by creating artificial FOMO, sales, and gates is barbaric to say the least
It needs more regulation, I agree. Particularly for premium currencies (which thankfully the EU seems to be doing something about)
Gacha is addictive as hell if you grew up with Pokemon and Final Fantasy both huge in Japan. I play a few as well for boredom and yes the weird atmosphere of whales (account with thousands invested) being awkwardly silent but have a following of pretenders.
I have spent thousands in gacha, though I’m more a ‘dolphin’ than a whale
Was #1 on server 10 and 11 in Memento Mori for a while, ran the top guilds there (NORTH and TRUE NORTH). It was really fun till one of our shift guild leaders usurped the guild and kicked half of the team on the night of our biggest Mass Combat push, losing us most of our territory. So I quit and got very, VERY bitter
That was 2 years ago and the only gacha I’ve played since is Pokemon Pocket tho as f2p this time (it is very generous)
If you want to know anything about dolphin/whale action in Memento Mori, Blue Archive or Reverse 1999 I’ll answer any questions
You guys spend money on games?
I’ve always wondered - what is the difference between a gacha game and ANY game with microtransactions? What is it that puts gacha games in a class by themselves?
The concept of Gacha predates lootboxes and started as physical real-world vending machines with surprise balls containing little toys or stickers, mainly aimed at kids
They noticed that the mystery drove sales and pretty much overwhelmed ‘normal’ toy vending machines in a few short years
While the concepts are similar, they had different origins.
I believe the difference is that gacha introduces an element of chance, so you spend an in game currency to buy a spin of a wheel where you may get different rewards. Microtransactions could be something like “spend $5 and get this new skin”, it’s a guarantee. Gacha will be like “spend $1 for a 10% chance at this legendary skin, spend $5 for a 70% chance, etc etc”
So in a lot of ways, it’s just the Asian term for loot box games, something that western games shied away from a bit after the Battlefront 2 controversy and EU attention, which Disney got embroiled in.
Yes. It’s from the coin machine that sells a random toy in capsule. Gacha is the clicking sound that machine makes when you turn the button to get a capsule.
Hasn’t Team Fortress 2 done that forever?
Yes, iirc Valve popularized the concept in the west with TF2, Dota 2 and CS:GO.
Ah, I get it. Thanks!
Generally but not always.
Microtransactions = I want the blue shirt, I can buy the blue shirt. The blue shirt can be cosmetic or have power boost.
Loot boxes = I want the blue shirt, I can buy a lottery ticket to maybe get the blue shirt. The blue shirt is just cosmetic. Maybe there is a way to get the blue shirt if I don’t get one in X boxes.
Gacha = I want the blue shirt, I can buy a lottery ticket to maybe get the blue shirt. The blue shirt has power boosts. Quite often, if I don’t get the blue shirt in a X tickets, I get a guaranteed blue shirt. Also a bit more often the blue shirt needs to be leveled up, using more blue shirts and/or other stuff you get from the lottery.
This is generally how it works, they are exceptions too it of course.
But that is why gacha is its own category, the lottery is required to progress the game and you need a lot of it. There is also usually multiple lotteries with different and the same prices at different % some you can play without spending money, some you need to spend money and some you can play onec in a while without spending money, but the good stuff and higher % are basically always looked in the two latter ones.
The way it is usually used and how upgrading stuff works, is very different between what country makes the game. I don’t remember exactly but the three big different ones are, Japan, China and South Korea.
The easiest different to simply explain is usually if you need more blue shirt to upgrade or if you just need more shirts or if you need shirt coins that drop from the game to level up, the shirt or if the shirt can’t be leveld up and you need a new shirt instead.
This sounds like every terrible mobile game I’ve ever played. Are gachas similar to tap tap games on mobile?
Now I have never heard the term tap tap game, so I might be thinking about different typs of games, but I think of those where you for example run forward and tap/swipe to dodging obstacles and when you fail you are prompted to buy powered ups/extra lives to continue and you buy tickets to get skins.
Aren’t those buy power ups and know what you get and lottery for cosmetics? Making it loot boxes and microtransactions.
Or am I misunderstanding what typ of games you mean? Perfectly possible as I haven’t heard the term, and I don’t play those games for long enough or often enough to remember any names.
gacha have element of chance, but usually speaking, gacha especially in asian games tend to also be tied to some form of power and is not purely cosmetic.
ao its not just purely, i want this character/costume/weapon because it looks cool, but theyres stats attached to it.
western game loot boxes generally sit more often as coametic, so the desire to pay isnt as bad (but can still be bad) but of course this doesnt apply to all western games either. an example of gacha based power is ultimate teams for sports games, which its gacha has players stats tied to them for team building.
gacha and loot boxes are fundamentally the same, but connotatively, gacha usually implies power and lootbox implies cosmetics, but technically not incorrect to use it either way.
if you want a dumb comparison, gacha is seen like trading card games, where power of the card also has value.
lootbox is sorta like sports cards where its collective in nature and really is about rarity/how the card looks
Headline doesn’t match what’s in the report. It’s not just gacha; the question in the survey is inclusive of other games that offer in-game purchases (課金 in Japanese). So we’re talking about skins and boosts in MMOs, MOBAs, and shooters, hints in games like Candy Crush, etc.
The report posted here last week showed just how much MTX spending there is on PC, of which gacha is still a small part. I suspect there is a higher rate of gacha spending in Japan than there is globally (outside of China, perhaps), but I’d be surprised if gacha even made up half of the spending SMBC is reporting on here.
but I’d be surprised if gacha even made up half of the spending SMBC is reporting on here.
I wouldn‘t. Gacha is vastly more popular in Japan than PC gaming and it‘s not even close. It would seriously surprise me if mobile Gacha didn‘t make up the majority of spending in microtransactions.
This is exactly the reason why I won’t play gacha games. First everyone complains about loot boxes and microtransactions and then a game-genre where that’s the core of the game takes off.
Just goes to show that the people that (rightly) complain about microtransactions cheapening gaming experiences were always in the minority and most will just keep spending like headless chickens.
Most people I know aren’t or don’t see themselves as gambling addicts. They’re “proud” about how much they spent.
Personally I don’t play any game with microtransactions.
I’m only interested in games I can purchase outright and then own*. If there’s large scale DLC that’s fine, great even, but if there’s some in-game way to spend money that isn’t restricted to a DLC button/section, then I’m not interested.
I want to play games, not be inundated by constant sales opportunities.
*I’m aware I don’t “own” most game due to the stupidity of licensing, and while I don’t love that, I can acknowledge it’s still a different and better thing that games that constantly push microtransactions
There isn‘t much of a contradiction there, I think. People complaining about it are mostly from an entirely different culture than where Gacha slop is developed and most popular. The former being the western world and the latter being South East Asia and players who have a deep fascination for it.
I play a gacha game and have spent $0 on it. But I can imagine that sort of psychological insulation is not quite so common.
I feel like that’s a hard thing to do. Most of the gatcha games I’ve interacted with hide core game mechanics behind gatcha pay walls.
The real issue in gatcha is that many games require money to make actual progress.
When that’s characters, I just accept it. Like, “Oh, I guess I don’t get to try out this character? I’ll level up others instead and see how well I can do.”
Played Puzzle and dragons for like 3 years when mobile games where booming and spend like total of 300€ to it.
Honestly it was pretty good and did not feel nearly as predatory as many other mobile gatcha games I’ve played after that.
But it did kinda red pill me on F2P games, gatcha, fomo, peer pressure and many other manipulative methods these games use. The fact that Gungho ended up closing the servers down in Europe making people lose their accounts also showcased pretty well how temporary these games are.
Now if I’ll ever again play games with gatcha I’ll do no gatcha “challenge” run. It’s pretty good for gauging whether the game is actually any good and how fast you’ll hit the paywall.
I played a gatcha game with a friend when we didn’t know what gacha was and we where trying to build our teams by just playing the game and there where always massive difficulty walls that couldn’t be passed. So we both ended up spending around $500 CAD on that game and farming with our phones open on the game 24/7. We stopped after we understood how predatory the model was.
Stopped playing Puzzle and dragons after clearing tower of gods for umpteenth time to “efficiently” consume my stamina so it would not get wasted.
Had this “wtf I am doing with my life moment” as I was no longer having fun and clearing the dungeon over and over was simply booring time waster.
Started ignoring daily login bonuses and only played when there was new content. Soon after that stopped playing all together.
1000 people is statistically shit.
Let me guess
- Anime tiddies
- Short skirts
- Long socks
- Ultra brain-stimulating UI
- Ultra brain-stimulating sound effects
- 9001 virtual currencies to mask the actual cost of everything
- Mystery RNGs everywhere
- Muh behavioral psychology
- More manipulative shit
Parents need to do their fucking jobs.
These gaming companies (parasites) need to lose all their IP protections.
There‘s a bitter irony in demanding parents doing their jobs because that‘s exactly why they don‘t have time for parenting. The cost of living is too damn high.
I wouldn’t mind microtransactions, gacha games and gacha mechanics if there were sane upper limits to spend.
I was trying to learn how different gacha games work and monetization in f2p games in general, especially obes for smartphones.
I was surprised about how similar all the methods across games are. Some were a lot worse than others though.
I think the monetization method is sometimes viewed as acceptable by some, because the games often have a lot of content and can be a lot of fun to play. The thing I really dislike is that it’s unfairly monetized. Some people pay the majority of the income, they are also known as whales. There are of course some people that spend small sums, but the whales is where it is at.
After Arcade games went out of fashion we had a nice long period in which players paid about the same for a game, and got the same experience.
Now vulnerable people are paying more than they can afford to finance the game for everyone, and still everone gets a limited experience.
Some of the games I enjoyed the most had terrible gacha mechanics. One of them had items and mounts with 1/500 chance per pull. Of course it is designed so that it appears as 1/10, but it is really 1/500. To justify this they had the PITY system. Yes, thats the actual name of it. The pity system makes it so that after buying 500 pulls ypu are guaranteed the mount.
The price for 500 pulls? 500$
After the free pulls you could play to get, about 480$.
So I actually can’t get the entire game for even 500$…
That was just one of many such instances. I could probably spend more than 10 000$ and still not unlock absolutely everything.
Was it purely cosmetic? Nope. It gave an advantage too.
Legislation that effectively adds an upper limit to unlock the entire game with a sensible maximum monthly cost for new content, is needed in my opinion.
