Let's Talk Gacha Games (X% IS A LIE)

[Fumuki]

I'm resurrecting a thread a bit but I kinda wanted to talk about gacha games

First I think I'm kinda on Isis's camp on the fact I respect the opinion of it being a "predatory model" but don't really share it, personally (and it may be different for Isis), I think the system can be predatory but it's not predatory by itself. As in, the cases where it's predatory happens when someone that already has an issue with over-investing or getting too attached to things comes around. It's not even something from gacha specifically but any game that doesn't have a "hard cap" of spending (you can't possibly spend more than a set amount of money on buy-once games for example).

If the problem of those "predatory" cases were really gacha itself, you wouldn't see similar or even worse cases in some F2P games that don't have lootboxes but only "energy refills" or direct purchase of units by topping up in the game currency, skins, etc. In my opinion the game are enabling some people bad behaviors/unhealthy mentality, not causing them. Also, there's just people have much more wealth than the average, so even though what they spend on those games may look like a lot to us, it's not a big deal for them.

I think my biggest issues with gacha games are:

Spoiler:

1) Some games used to not have very clear disclosed rates or pity system, there was even a infamous incident on GBF (fraud accusation) I think, although nowadays it's more standard to have those systems

2) The budget for some of those games, the price they sell it for, and the return the company gives the game can be a bit troublesome. I think many gachas try to make a quick buck by making a really cheap game, and set the prices much higher than they theoretically should be, but worse of it all the revenue some of those make is barely invested back in the franchise which is kinda sad.

However I also think there's positive things on the gacha model:

Spoiler:

1) For example people like to talk that game companies job situation should change but it'll hardly ever change without game companies having more predictability, if the game does well there's gonna be a small bonus on those companies, and if the game does bad they'll do mass layoffs. I do believe that F2P games/gacha can make that aspect at least more healthy, because there's a more stable source of revenue/predictability, also I imagine it's not exactly that simple to completely change the writing team, programmers and art team in those companies because it's a live-service game, it's not a one-time deal and you can make something else from scratch as a "sequel" (which devalues the workers positions).

2) Production budget can be much higher and the game much more polished if a company wants. The F2P monetization system works, and some of the highest revenue games nowadays are mobile/F2P, and they are live-service. On buy-once games the company doesn't want to over invest in a single game, polish it too much or etc. They want to rush it out which also creates the bad crunching habits on these places. However since gacha games are live-service, the company can take their time polishing their product and even have an incentive to do so since the amount they can profit with the game is much more high-stakes, for smaller companies a single game of this model can keep they going for at least 5 years.

I do believe that the reason we haven't seen that is because the gacha model is so, so lucrative that not many companies feel the need to put a lot of effort into it, it's just cheaper for them to make the cheapest game possible and sell for as much as they can rather than taking their time to do a good, solid product, even if the model/system itself may tell them the contrary, that in the long-term it's better to do it properly.

There's a reason there's many novels/shows about big, super immersive mmorpgs with very high budget values but in real life the mmorpg genre is "dying" (even though it's kinda of such a classic). It's because the MMO model isn't very lucrative compared to the other options, so not many companies invest on it, but they could kinda gacha-fy it and maybe it would be lucrative, and able to make really high production games that people would enjoy.

I don't think the gacha model itself is necessarily bad although it does have potential to enable bad behavior from both companies and players. It's just not inherently bad in my opinion and it could even be a good alternative to the current models of some games/genres if done properly.