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One of the most ubiquitous game genres in the past decade has been the gacha game. With a name derived from Gachapon, the blind capsule toys you can find all over Japan, gacha mechanics have been prevalent in all sorts of games, becoming almost mandatory for the free-to-play market.
These games make their money on the game’s gambling-based core- get more of the game’s currency to get more rolls, allowing you better odds at the prize you want.
To talk about gacha games we had a roundtable of the GamerBraves staff. This panel is joined by Muse, our resident gacha expert. Also joining us is our one-and-done gacha player Lucas, as well as me, someone who dips their toes into many gacha games but never too deeply.
Of Gacha And Marine Mammals
While Lucas and I both fall into the category of more casual players, Muse’s significant contributions have given her a title. “A dolphin is someone who puts a decent amount of funding into gacha games, but not spending on every banner, And limited or whatever. I do save a bit of free currency to pull,”
We pressed her for more details, and a “Decent” amount goes between MYR300-500. For context, the rest of the panel is sitting on MYR15 for Lucas, with me spending none.
If you’ve ever seen Star Wars, you’ll know there’s always a bigger fish. Muse warns that she is far from the top of the gacha food chain. She references Leviathans, gamers with big wallets who spend every chance they get.
“Online they call themselves leviathans because they just really spend crazy amounts of money for no reason whatsoever,” she says.
Elsewhere, these players are also known as whales. The behavior patterns are almost identical, so it’s best to assume that whether or not you’re a whale or leviathan is just down to personal preference.
Gambling Addicts
So are we gambling addicts? That seems to be the popular depiction of gacha games. By forcing you to either complete the game’s busywork for a free currency or shell out your credit card to get it now, the genre is definitely targeting some sort of compulsive weakness. After all, anyone with more resolve than sense of self-preservation could easily blow large chunks of money trying to get a roll they want.
While that’s definitely true for your first gacha game, what about more seasoned ones? The entire panel has years of gacha under their belt. Lucas’ RM15 bill is along a storied 4 year career in Fire Emblem Heroes. Despite my own nomadic trek through gacha games, I haven’t spent any money in them.
The Thrill Of The Gamble
Are we, perhaps, being strung along by our compulsive desires to gamble?
“I don’t really spend on gacha games I don’t like” Muse says. She has many games under her belt, but is mostly focused on Arknights and Granblue Fantasy. She also plays Princess Connect Re:Dive, but has no money put aside for it.
Considering the rest of the panel hadn’t really spent on the game despite our histories, we clearly weren’t after a certain prize. Naturally, you’d wonder if it was because we simply enjoyed the thrill of rolling.
So, the panel was posited a question: would you play a gacha game where you just roll for boxes?
“Not at all, unless, if the boxes were hot,” says Lucas.
Muse throws her hat in the ring too, saying that art style is definitely the deciding factor for gacha games. However, it’s not black-and-white either, as gameplay still trumps the pursuit of waifus.
Weirdly enough, I found myself being the strictest in terms of art style. The visual experience was the most important, and the more interactive the better. Games like Revue Starlight and Honkai Impact went so far as to have characters directly interacting with the player, doing things like wishing them good morning. For me, these were all sticking factors for a game.
The Actual Gambling Part
Reasons for playing a gacha game aside, it’s still impossible to ignore the gambling-rooted nature of the gacha game. Many games now disclose their drop rates, due to lawmakers applying gambling regulations to them. Muse is keenly aware of the rates for good cards in gacha games, even going so far to have calculated her own observed drop rates.
“Granblue has a 3% base drop rate for SSRs” she says, referring to the most valuable cards in the game. “However my own personal rate is closer to 2.3”.
According to her explanations, 3% is the more generous end of drop rates, with her other mainstay Arknights going closer to 2%.
Lucas also adds that Fire Emblem is far to the generous side of gacha, with a 3% drop rate for its SSR-equivalent, sometimes touching as high as 8%. The 8% is a side effect of special in-game events, where cards can have their rates boosted.
Meanwhile, Revue Starlight, my main poison of choice, has a 1.2% drop rate for its own SSR-equivalent. I had to look this up, because personally, I try to not look at the numbers. That way, all expectations are totally random, and I won’t have to jump into a limited banner knowing that the math is against me. This behavior is totally a form of hyper-denial, and is not recommended for players with impulse control issues.
The Big Takeaway
Having talked to everyone about their gacha experiences, its interesting to see how much more nuanced the discussion around gacha mechanics can be. The contrasting opinions here show that it is entirely possible to engage with gacha mechanics in a healthy way.
” I really do manage how much I spend in the ones I spend on”, Muse says. “The ones I like I doubt I’ll drop it out of nowhere”.
Similarly, us free players have also found ways to cope with our games. According to Lucas, he’s managed to place in tier 19-20 of 21 in Fire Emblem Heroes’ PvP mode, despite not spending money on rolls.
The takeaway here is that while gacha games can be fine to play, they require some responsibility on the user end. Players will need to take responsibility and either be okay with not seeing all the content in a game, or limit how much of their money they’re willing to throw.
