Gacha Games: Unpacking The Apex Predator of Mobile

With the release of Genshin Impact, Gacha has finally broken into the mainstream. Genshin Impact is miHoYo’s most profitable game, earning USD 245 million through in-app transactions on mobile alone. Player-wise, it had 17 million players on launch, the highest for a Chinese game.

Naturally, anyone reading this in a boardroom with a zig-zagging chart behind them is probably salivating at the thought of these numbers. The game’s free, yet it makes money! What’s more, anyone who wasn’t already familiar with how that works out would be surprised to learn that it’s been its own industry for years now.

Pressure Game So Good You’d Swear This Was EVO

Despite that, those with even a morsel of ethics might consider how these games got so profitable. As I watch Iron Saga play itself in the background, I can assure you this wasn’t a meritocracy. Instead, gacha games make money by constantly pressuring users into spending on them.

The big problem with Gacha gaming is that its inherently predatory. Everything about them is built to prey on impulsive desires, from limited “banners” with special rates, to the casino-like abstraction by having you buy gems instead of buying pulls directly.

In fact, you don’t even have to get into the mindgames of things like abstraction. The biggest success of gacha has over lootboxes is that almost every Gacha game happens to also tap into humanity’s sinful pursuit of waifus. I can promise you, no one jumped into Fate/Grand Order for tactically engaging gameplay.

The Thrill Of The Pull

That’s not even getting into the act of pulling itself. The fanfare when you pull, the delay between hitting the pull button and finding out if your waifu came home, these are all big parts of keeping you hooked. Dr Luke Clark talks about how a lot of these are present in gambling, and what exactly hooks people in.

The most relatable part would be his passage on the near-miss. Imagine, you get the rainbow card or gold star telling you an SSR is on its way. However, rather than getting Venti or whoever, it’s a rare item instead.

Dr. Luke explains:

“Near-misses occur when the outcome is close to the jackpot, but there is no actual win. Near-misses are common in many forms of gambling, such as when your chosen horse finishes in second place in a horserace. A moderate frequency of near-misses encourages prolonged gambling, even in student volunteers who do not gamble on a regular basis. Problem gamblers often interpret near-misses as evidence that they are mastering the game and that a win is on the way.”

What he’s saying is that there is absolutely an impulse to spend more every time we come just shy of getting the card we want.

He also talks about the impulse that makes you continue gambling even after a big loss, describing it as a part of “problem gambling”:

“Over time, these distorted perceptions of one’s chances of winning may precipitate ‘loss chasing’, where gamblers continue to play in an effort to recoup accumulating debts. Loss chasing is one of the hallmarks of problem gambling, which actually bears much resemblance to drug addiction. Problem gamblers also experience cravings and symptoms of withdrawal when denied the opportunity to gamble.”

Targeting Impulsiveness

Of course, you don’t *have* to spend money in a Gacha game. I play several, from Skullgirls mobile to Iron saga and have remained steadfast in my free-to-play life. However, if you see a shiny new waifu and your first instinct isn’t to put on a sailor’s cap and go whaling, you’re probably not the intended market.

Walther et. al (2012) talks about how people with gaming and gambling addictions tend to have issues with impulsivity. That is to say, they might not always stop to consider decisions when suddenly forced to make one.

Now, look at any Gacha banner, with its fancy waifus and conveniently limited time, and ask yourself: do you feel the smallest spark telling you to start spending?

You probably did, even if you’ve learned to ignore that. But not everyone has, and things like how convenient it is to buy things on the App store don’t give them nearly enough roadblocks to make them consider this.

What Gameplay?

That’s to say nothing of the actual gameplay of most Gacha games. Games like Food Fantasy practically played themselves, and 90% of the actual gameplay experience was just making sure your well-endowed PNG had better stats than the game’s bosses.

When it comes to Gacha games, the design philosophy tends to be more of “Find a vehicle to push Gacha sales”. This usually tends to come in the form of stupidly resilient bosses, meaning you’ll need the game’s SSR equivalent to start tearing up enemies.

One of the most profitable Gacha games, Fate/Grand Order, does this by mixing a laughably high bar with a laughably terrible Gacha rate. It’s not enough to get the SSR, you see, and you’ll need duplicates to make them reach their full potential.

Even with boosted rates, 5-stars (the best rank) Servants only have a 0.7% rate remember, that’s 0.7% across every 5-star, so in reality the actual rates of getting the dupe you want are much lower.

Fate and other Gacha games get away with this by targeting whales. Not the cetacean, mind you. Every article you read about a person spending thousands of dollars- that’s the true target audience. Every time you feel like you’re having fun but hit a roadblock, that’s by design so the game can check how much of you is an aquatic mammal.

SSR Ebenezer Scrooge

Remember how I said you could technically go without spending any money? You do this by collecting in-game currency to fuel your gacha rolls. This is entirely possible.

Except get ready because the game will drastically change when it realizes you’re not DTS (Down to Spend). It suddenly becomes a slow grind, with you doing one 10-pull every month or so rather than the game’s preferred “whenever we ask of you”.

Genshin Impact is particularly bad at this, trickling out the game’s gem currency so stingily you’d swear it was bitcoin. Recently, the game had a referral event where getting two friends to Adventure Rank 15 would get you little more than a single pull’s worth of gems.

Again, this isn’t carelessness. It’s by design, so that you get frustrated and start spending your real-world money. After all, why spend 40 hours on one roll when you can just tap your fingerprint on the app store and get 20?

Consumer Responsibility And Smoking

Of course, there’s arguments to be made about consumer responsibility. After all, where does it end? If games aren’t allowed to trick you into having a gambling addiction, will they soon not be allowed to be hard? Is the gacha-control movement really secretly the Easy Mode In Dark Souls camp in disguise?

They’re stupid arguments for sure, but not entirely without merit. Those who know they have impulse control issues should probably avoid gacha like it was coughing on the bus.

But with Genshin Impact bringing more blatant Gacha into the mainstream, it’s important to start thinking about the reason so many triple A games have emulated it- it presents itself in a way that’s psychologically engaging, and financially gratifying for companies.

Of course, we play things with parts we hate about it all the time. I’ll still say that DOOM Eternal is one of the best games that came out this year, despite the fact that the platforming section makes me curse id Software’s name. But it’s important to think about your relationship with these things, especially when your side-purchases start tallying up to premium game prices.

My point is, Gacha is an inherently bad mechanic. But knowing the industry, we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. So instead, the best we can do is start thinking of how to minimize exposure to it.

Think of it like cigarettes or drinking. While it’d be great if no one did it, the reality is they’re a part of our life. And if you’re the type of person who’s vulnerable to being over reliant on it, you should probably take some responsibility for yourself and stay clear. But it doesn’t deny the fact that they only got to their mainstay status with aggressive marketing.

Long story short: Gacha responsibly.

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