Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn't be so widespread
Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn't be so widespread
As someone who grew up playing games like World of Warcraft and other AAA titles, I’ve seen how the gaming industry has evolved over the years—and not always for the better. One of the most disturbing trends is the rise of gacha games, which are, at their core, thinly veiled gambling systems targeting younger players. And I think it’s time we have a serious conversation about why this form of gaming needs to be heavily restricted, if not outright regulated.
Gacha systems prey on players by offering a sense of excitement and reward, but at the cost of their mental health and well-being. These games are often marketed as "free to play," making them seem harmless, but in reality, they trap players in cycles of spending and gambling. You don’t just buy a game and enjoy its content—you gamble for the chance to get characters, equipment, and other in-game items. It’s all based on luck, with very low odds of getting what you want, which leads players to keep spending in hopes of hitting that jackpot.
This setup is psychologically damaging, especially for younger players who are still developing their sense of self-control. Gacha games condition them to associate spending money with emotional highs, which is the exact same mechanism that fuels gambling addiction. You might think it's just harmless fun, but it’s incredibly easy to fall into a pattern where you're constantly chasing that next dopamine hit, just like a gambler sitting at a slot machine. Over time, this not only leads to financial strain but also deeply ingrained mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and a lack of self-control when it comes to spending money.
Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have already banned loot boxes and gacha systems, recognizing the dangers they pose, especially to younger players. The fact that these systems are still largely unregulated in many other regions, including the U.S., shows just how out of control things have gotten. The gaming industry has shifted from offering well-rounded experiences to creating systems designed to exploit players’ psychological vulnerabilities.
We need to follow Europe’s lead in placing heavy restrictions on gacha and loot boxes. It’s one thing to pay for a game and know what you're getting; it's another to be lured into a never-ending cycle of gambling for content that should be available as part of the game. Gaming should be about fun, skill, and exploration, not exploiting people’s mental health for profit.
It's time for developers and legislators to take responsibility and start protecting the players, especially the younger ones, from these predatory practices.
It’s time for developers and legislators to take responsibility and start protecting the players, especially the younger ones, from these predatory practices.
They're making fucking bank with these practices. It will have to be stopped by government regulation. Self-regulation of industries has literally never fucking worked once in history. Look at Boeing, which has had the FAA basically glad-handing it for 50 years and it's falling apart at the seams (sometimes literally).
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
-Upton Sinclair
I mean, look how fast the ENTIRE industry shifted to battle passes (and still gacha) and away from “loot boxes” the very moment the first country said they’d consider regulation.
At least with battle passes its all laid out and its more a case of putting the play time in.
Even the ESRB, another example of gaming industry self-regulation, hasn't stopped gaming companies marketing M-rated games to kids or really slowed down sales or access to such games to underage players at all. If anything, they use the M rating as a direct marketing tool to kids: "your parents wouldn't want you to play this so you totally should".
EDIT: autocorrect is dumb
Ah yes, the ESRB, the group built to avoid actual regulation.
I mean, I get it, to an extent, the MPAA was and is absolute dogshit and filled with weird right-wing Christians who don't like things that show women's sexual pleasure and a lot of other weird censorial decisions.
Like how Hillary Clinton wanted to ban GTA because of the Hot Coffee mod, when the actual "Hot Coffee" minigame wasn't available in an easily accessible way.
So, to that extent, I can understand why they built that system to avoid idiot fucking puritans taking over the ratings sytem, but I generally agree, it's become more of a taboo thing just like the "PARENTAL WARNING EXPLICIT LYRICS" just made people want that version more. (That really worked out, huh, Tipper Gore?)
Without actual enforcement, it becomes something cool for kids to get.
I wouldn't say self-regulation has "literally never worked once in history", but yes, not often. I would point to the ESRB as an example of self-regulation working in the games industry and being a positive for both the industry itself avoiding government regulation and for players. There are other examples too, but yes, they would be rare wins in general.
Anyone saying it works is lieing. Even if they have examples. Most of the time when companies self regulate it is to maintain control and avoid regulation. It’s a delaying tactic that allows them to exploit the mechanisms longer and minisme the impact that proper accountability would bring.
If self regulation was feasible we would never even be discussing it. It wouldn’t be a concept we would have to think about. It would just be the way things work and have always worked.
You're like 5 years late on this realization. Unfortunately not much is changing.
It seems the EU is moving on this issue with their usual tectonic speed.
Let's hope they also hit with their usual tectonic force.
Without being a gacha game, World of WarCraft is guilty of a lot of the same stuff. You probably know people who flunked out of college due to the addiction, or have heard of parents who neglected their child over that game. It preys on a lot of the same impulses that Diablo and Diablo II seemed to have found by accident, before they were monetized by subscription fees and then microtransactions. And you can see a lot of the same in games like Destiny.
Haven't played WoW in awhile, but do they now have 'you can spend unlimited money' mechanics? Previously it was just stuff like mounts and character transfers and stuff. I know you can also sell tokens for gold, but I thought gold kind of becomes irrelevant at some point. The best gear is bind on drop right? Theoretically I guess you can pay gold for boost runs, which probably counts as an endless money sink.
I kind of have a mental separation in my head between games with unlimited money sinks (like games with energy mechanics) where you can spend and spend and spend and it never stops, vs games that have a finite of things to buy.
It can still be way over priced, but there's a maximum amount of money you can throw at the game. Even Diablo 4, with a relatively huge and highly priced number of cosmetic items has effectively a maximum price (though every new cosmetic increases that price). Vs Diablo Immortal allowing you to spend 10s of thousands of dollars and still need to keep spending. I think unlimited money mechanics should be outlawed or at least fully classified as gambling and regulated accordingly.
I think keeping you addicted so as to continue to paying a monthly subscription is bad on its own, and I don't think it needs to be qualified by how much you spend overall if they're still knowingly capitalizing on that addiction in an unregulated environment. But also, while I don't know the answer to your question for a fact, I would imagine that they do have ways to spend unlimited money in that game if you're so inclined.
Without being a gacha game, World of WarCraft is guilty of a lot of the same stuff.
I'm not a fan of trying to poison the well on this discussion by trying to bring in a lot of secondary issues and try to broaden the issue to the point of uselessness.
The biggest issue with gambling is the ability to lose your money.
Sure, you can waste time with World of Warcraft. But I can also waste time playing too much Baldur's Gate 3, or Civilization, or by binging shows on Netflix.
But none of those allow me to spend thousands or tens of thousands by gambling on mechanics within the media itself.
How about we focus on that issue first?
Because I'd say the addiction is the issue. The biggest issue with gambling is the addiction. If you're not addicted, you're not spending time or money beyond your means. So I'd rather not broaden it to how much money it sucks out of you when the addiction is the issue. It all relies on the same principles that we know to be worth legal regulation when it's acknowledged as gambling. I don't know anyone who got addicted to Netflix, but they'll "binge" shows because we no longer live in the era where we can only watch shows according to a broadcast schedule; plus sometimes, you just want some background noise while you're doing something else, including a show you've seen a million times.
I agree with you, to an extent. I would say it's a lot more complicated than that with World of Warcraft, which is an MMO, and does not revolve on gambling except in the aspect of random number generated loot. This is probably the majority of looter shooters out there today as well and a large number of other games. Pure chance in just the loot and rewards. Personally, World of Warcraft did not affect me adversely, because I have very strong self-control, and was able to develop very strict limitations for my own personal life which was important in college.
But I think there's something you're definitely missing. Sure, while World of Warcraft can be blamed by some people flunking out of college or high school due to its addictive and fun nature, Have you considered the fact that the world we live in is simply so boring that they don't want to pay attention to those things? Over a 20-year time span since I have graduated, high school and college has not evolved. It's the same boring ass mess that it was when I went to school. Unnecessary classes, study only for the test and never use that information ever again, very rarely are their projects and when there are, they are silly group projects in which two out of the four members of your group are lazy and don't want to do a damn thing. You also are faced with constant demoralizing facts thrown at you from the media and the outside world that your college degree won't help you get a job, you won't see any student loan relief, the wealthy elites are in positions of power and rising faster in companies than you ever will be... Reality is so disappointing. So I can understand why these people have trouble paying attention in school and want to turn to stuff like World of Warcraft, theme park MMO that has so much fun and enjoyment in it
But when we're talking about a gacha, This feels so much more insidious. Every aspect of the entire game, not just the loot, is gambling, and you're gambling with real money. Not your time. In World of Warcraft you don't get a drop, oh well, try again next time. You still paid $15 for that entire month, so you can try as many times as you want on as many characters as you want. But when you pay 50 bucks for Genshin impact and you get nothing, you know what that money goes towards? Absolutely nothing. You lose that money forever. Now you are mentally afflicted with that, and you're already considering whether or not you should pay another 50 bucks to try and get it again with the gamblers fallacy in the back of your mind that if I pay another $50 I'm already $50 in, so I have a much better chance of getting it now. It's sickening
I agree with you, to an extent. I would say it's a lot more complicated than that with World of Warcraft, which is an MMO, and does not revolve on gambling except in the aspect of random number generated loot.
The way that the drops are is literally the same approach as a slot machine but with more steps to take up your time with boring shit and require more of your life to be dedicated to it so that there is less risk of you getting distracted by things like hobbies or games with finite stories with quality writing. A one-armed bandit might snag a handful of whales that spend all of their time feeding the machine. The Wrath of the Lich Bandit gets a much larger percentage of its users in front of it for a larger amount of their time, increasing the ratio of addicts/whales caught. Add in expansions, real money auctions, etc and you've got something much more fucked up than anything on a Vegas casino floor.
This reads like "the only moral Skinner box is my Skinner box."
Also sounds like you haven't played in a while. The addition of real currency to gold trading creates an even more direct pipeline from one's wallet to in-game gear dice rolls. Guilds selling raid gear is even more common now, and with crafting orders, a whale can spend to reroll secondary stats on crafted gear.
With the way Warcraft is throwing currencies at players now, it's clear Blizzard has taken more than a few cues from how gacha and other live-service outfits are doing things these days. Plenty of opportunities for ruinous, addictive behavior.
You could throw most of this same argument back at gachas. They're just gambling because the world sucks, or something...
No, my understanding is that the reason people get addicted to this stuff is that we evolved to gather finite resources when they're available, even if it's rare, so we're prey to systems like this that can control that rarity. WoW absolutely did this, just without putting a price on each interaction.
Don't gamble please for the love of fuck, all gambling is mathematically designed to never pay off for the one gambling
It's a lot easier to design when the only payout are pixels on a screen.
Excuse me but I heard that the real problem with gamblers is that 99% of them quit before winning big.
You are 100% sure to win if you play long enough.
Quite a few years ago now I went to my nan's house for Christmas.
My cousin, I think he was about 13, had got a £50 Steam voucher for some games. Him and my other cousin who was a couple of year older went to Steam, swapped the voucher for something, and then took that to a gambling site. I don't know if they're still a thing. It was something to do with Counter Strike drops I think. Heavily advertised by YouTubers who ran them, with a bunch of videos showing them winning. The sort of thing they'd be sent to prison for in any right thinking society.
They took that £50, put it in, and clicked. The younger one went "what now?" and the older one just went "oh, nothing. It's gone." A couple of games worth of money, gone. For nothing.
He looked like he was about to cry, and only didn't because he was going through that acting tough phase.
He's an accountant now, and plays crown green bowling. I like to think that was a relatively cheap lesson in why not to fuck around with gambling.
That's so devastating. I feel awful when kids are let down like that.
At least that lesson cost mere £50 and not thousands of pounds if he won and wanted to chase that dopamine hit of winning.
It sucks, but in a world we've chosen to litter with landmines, it's a relatively harmless experience.
I would be more worried about the kid winning and internalizing the feeling of instant gratification.
Seems about right. CSGO skin gambling was all the rage 10 years ago.
Sure, but, technically, without Gacha games I would t have discovered my ex wife sexting another dude. Because she was attempting to hide the money she spent in credit cards I didn't have access to, then wanted me to pay.
Which led me to digging around, discovering the unaltered statement, then she got drunk and the phone was open in her hand playing some stupid virtual bingo and a snap popped up and wouldnt you know it
True
Assuming "we" is the US, write your state and federal representatives, not Lemmy. People might agree with you, but you're preaching to the choir.
How about both? Writing your elected reps is definitely smart, but will be much more effective if there are numerous people calling for the same. I appreciate OP sharing their views, and catloaf sharing a specific action step all of us can do it we are concerned about this matter.
I worked for a few years as a gambling addiction counselor, and these types of games definitely prime people for addiction to gambling. Also, it's worth noting that the demographic with the highest rates of gambling addiction are young men, aged 18-24.
Anyone that's been to a casino can attest that major video game companies also make slot machines. The industry are aware of what they're doing.
I was a young idiot making minimum wage and I spent 500 dollars in a gacha game over a three month period. It's been years and I still wake up at night, remember this and feel the strongest remorse.
I’m sorry, it really sounds like it turned into an addiction for you. Very happy that you got away from it. Be careful with addictive substances or activities in your life, some people have a predisposition for it.
Thank you! I very much have that predisposition. I've noticed that I have addictive behavior towards sugar and caffeine as well (I'm fine as long as I don't have any, but if I have some I'll continue to crave more at shorter and shorter intervals until I go to sleep and it resets), and recently celebrated my third month nicotine free after about four years total smoking and then vaping.
Addictive proclivities are a personal defect normally. But when you exist in a context where there are people whose job it is to get you hooked on things, they become a handicap.
I spent $800 on Fallout: Shelter
Fuck, my condolences.
I don't allow myself to play any mobile games anymore. Spent like $300 on one of those idle games. Not worth it. I refuse to play any free to play titles at all, no matter the platform these days.
You escaped addiction (hopefully) without too many long-term consequences, hopefully that remorse will help you avoid similar situations in the future :)
If it helps me to avoid something even worse later on, maybe it was even worth the 500 bucks! Hopefully I'll never have to find out.
I watched a documentary on Darksyde Phil. He managed to spend 44000 on a Wrestling gambling game per month.
I think the bright side is that you learned something even tho it was a 500 dollar lesson.
I used to work with a guy who was super cheap. Like i sometimes payed for his coffee or whatever, because i always did that with friends and co workers, and sometimes they would pay too. He never did that. One day we talked about video games and spending habits. He said he doesn't play video games, but he played clash of clans. I didn't really know what clash of clans is, aside from seeing some screenshots and seeing memes. He said that he spend 500-800 dollars a month on the game. It kinda blew me away, because i knew that whales often spend a bunch of cash on games, i just was a bit shocked about the amount and that it was HIM. He looked at me and said, oh that's nothing, you should see what my girlfriend spends on candy crush.
Yikes. At least he's dating someone with similar interests?
You're right about the lesson learned. A silver lining.
But the industry said you whales were rich gamers that had too much money and didn't know what to do with it! /s
Damn, I've never thought of myself as a whale before but I guess for a while there I was. I wonder how many of the people we see in these games with all the premium characters and skins are like me, struggling. I always thought of them as having more money than sense but maybe they (we) lack both.
As someone who plays a gacha game (Genshin Impact) I 100% agree. This shit should be kept the hell out of the hands of kids until their brain has at least matured to the point we'd let them go actual gambling.
That said, there's certainly a spread of abusiveness in the games: some are very reasonable and could be played with no money or very little money because they're generous with premium currencies and others are doing a sexy little dance while they steal your wallet.
Regulation around how much you can spend in a month would be reasonable, no kids would be reasonable, requiring clear and published probabilities and what those probabilities mean in terms of how many pulls would be a good start.
I can assure you most gacha players cannot tell you how many pulls you'd need to make for a 0.5% chance pull.
Also maybe outline estimated costs for winning wouldn't be awful, but that's maybe not feasible since there's a lot of variability?
Knowing the odds doesn’t stop children from developing a gambling habit.
We were on the way to banning gambling a couple decades ago, it was illegal online and it was hard for new casinos to open up. Sports betting was illegal.
Now we’ve got FanDuel and gacha and loot boxes and crypto casinos and shitcoin shoveling influencers all this awful shit. And if you look around, the biggest shitbag bullies are the ones who are promoting it, because they know they’ll get their bag and their fans will never turn on them.
You know, because they might win next time.
These people are child predators, just not (always) the sexual kind. Fucking ban it all.
Knowing the odds doesn’t stop children from developing a gambling habit.
Agreed, and this is why I'm firmly on the no-kids side of things.
If you can't go to a casino until you're 21, why exactly should you be able to gamble online (in any form!) until then either?
Gacha can be moderately acceptable if the math is fully documented and enforced. If you know it will take <= 180 pulls to get Raiden Shogun, and each pull costs $3, then it's just a $540 DLC with extra steps and the tease thst it might be cheaper if you're lucky or have banked pulls.
But transparency is key-- the developer should be expected to offer a calculator or lookup table for any RNG item, especially if it's some combination of multiple drop mechanics or hsrd-to-convert currencies that dissuades back-of-the-envelope estimates.
Even in Vegas, the slot machines are required to disclose their payout rate.
There's also significant differences in the gacha appeal factor. If there are no leaderboards or PvP, and the game mechanics can be completed with F2P only, that is inherently less pressure to spend then on a game where you regularly get your ass handed to you by a someone with a Black Amex and all seven-star limited banner units.
Agreed on P2P gacha games. Those are just gross as fuck, since as you said, they're explicitly pay-to-win.
Genshin does, for the most part, provide very clear percentages and how the math works out, so you can actually do that but they're certainly a rarity. I will say, though, that while they do provide that information it's also in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a 'beware of the leopard' sign.
You can find it if you know where it is, but your average user isn't going to know the magic things you should click on to get from the wish screen to the page on the website where they outline specific odds and pull rates, which eh, not a fan of making that so obscure.
Also: not a fan of the sell you a currency you have to convert to another currency to convert to a 3rd thing that then can be used for gambling thing. There shouldn't be more than one level of obscuring between your money and the final item you need - Genshin goes from Crystals to Primogems to Wishes, and that's almost entirely to be sure to confuse people how much that wish actually cost, since you've got a lot of math to do to get back to what you orginally paid for the Crystals.
Yes, I'm on the camp that lootboxes and gacha should be for adults only since it preys on the same desire, also I know card games are like this too and it was wrong that they got away with it for so long BUT you can at least sell your cards.
It's funny that you mentioned Genshin because it's probably one of the most predatory of all. Star rail isn't really that bad, has much more generous pity. The new game that Hoyo just put out, however, zenless, is fucking terrifyingly predatory. They removed the pity reset or modified it entirely to make it even more disheartening and impossible for a regular players because they weren't spending enough. In Genshin, your pity will not reset If you get a lower rank character, for the higher rank that you're trying to get. In zenless, If you get a higher rank character, it will entirely reset your pity on everything. Lower rank and higher rank. This is designed so that if you're trying to get a lower rank character specifically, to make it even more impossible. Add to that the fact that you get some sort of pity currency that can be used in several ways, all of them that look like some store or shop for you to spend money on. It's crazy, these games are more elaborate than an actual casino where you just pull lever and spin something. Star rail even has slot machines in the divergent universe! It gives you three free spins, you can get negative effects, very rarely you'll actually get something from the slot machine. That affects your entire gameplay experience for the rest of the divergent universe encounter.
In terms of kids versus adults, I would say that the distinction between them became much less clear after COVID, since some kids didn't even get to finish high school in person. They went right into the adult world and started doing online learning. It was as if two entire years of their childhood was stripped from them and those learning experiences taken from them. Plus, hitting the age of 18 doesn't magically make you wiser, or less susceptible to a bunch of things that can completely destroy your life. Like, that's not how it works. It's not like you turn 18 and magically you go "oh okay now I'm an adult, now I can mess up my life entirely, people are allowed to prey on me now since I'm no longer a kid anymore!" Young people are still so inexperienced in life and don't understand that every decision that they make teaches them how the rest of their life is going to go. You spend 3 years playing these gachas, Now you're much more likely to play another one that comes out like wuthering waves. Completely reset the cycle and start gambling again on something brand new.
From a completely humanitarian perspective, I think there should be strict limitations on what kind of predatory tactics you can include in these games for that reason alone. If you have such heavy monetization gambling, shouldn't be considered a game anymore. Should literally have the word gambling in it. Just because these companies desire infinite amounts of money does not mean they should be able to muck up society and mess people up psychologically in my opinion
Wait, what do you mean about the pity system? It's identical for between Genshin, Star Rail, and Zenless.
I think it's, what, like 90 for 5 star, 10 for 4 star. Standard and Limited banner tracks their own counter. Pulling on one doesn't reset the other.
Oh I wasn't meaning to say it wasn't predatory, merely that it's honest about what it is. A LOT of other gacha/lootbox games are far more obscure about what's going on and how you're getting screwed and Genshin at least has it all clearly outlined and easily (ish) understood.
Also, I was mentally using 21 as the gambling age since I'm an American and we don't really trust those shifty 18-year-olds with anything other than being shot at in a war.
I take your point, though, but at some point, you have to shrug and call someone a full-fledged adult, and let them shit up their own life.
But call it gambling, regulate it under the same legal requirements as you would any other form of gambling, and keep the kids out.
You are very confused, the pity is only for the S rank characters, getting an A rank does not reset it, and every game resets your pity when you get a S rank, they being the new one from the banner or someone that's been in the game for a while, but the second time you hit pity will be the banner S rank, just like genshin and star rail.
Government should set up a site where companies using loot boxes have to open a tax box to know what tax they'll pay that month, to keep things exiting, with the option to buy more tax boxes for a few million per box.
That's hilarious. Unfortunately that is what is happening already. Large corporations are buying ridiculously low taxes by spending a few million up front.
At least make all gacha games R18, no kids should be exposed to this stuff.
Curious to see what that would do to the industry as a whole. But this is not entirely our of line with what countries like Korea, China, and Japan have already been fiddling with.
We had to convince my brother in law (13yo) to not spend his birthday money of £85 on Genshin impact skins. Kids are fucked by advertising man
I'm no stranger to people paying for skins and all, but when i first heard that kids want vbucks as a Christmas gift my stomach kinda turned.
It's the same formula in damned near every game now. Pay2Win has made even the most chill JRPG a wall of ads and notifications to spend more money.
Same, World of Tanks is the first game that comes to my mind when people mention pay2win mechanics. I am quite happy that I don't play that game anymore.
Report that shit to the EU or your government. At least in Europe they care....
China has announced a ban on Gacha game mechanics (and lootboxes, predatory discounts, and gambling) which should hopefully ripple out to Europe and the US soon.
A lot of these mechanics were adapted from the Chinese gaming market and I think the same will likely happen in the reverse.
It’s a small measure, but I’d really like to see a law where gacha games need to publicly advertise their odds and allow independent verification.
The biggest effect it would have is, the odds would need to be static. Many gacha systems have been accused of putting a hand on the wheel, assuring someone “so close to their needed item” must keep going through a series of failures.
This is already a thing in most gacha games due to laws that already exist in certain countries.
The way the gacha works is very public knowledge for every popular one, and can be verified by the players.
the only gacha i play is limbus company ^(glory to project moon)^ so i dont know if this is true for other gachas but yeah, in limbus you're always just one click away from seeing the % chances of getting a specific identity/ego, although this is done in compliance with some korean laws about online gambling (its the first thing you read when you open the probabilities menu)
publicly advertise their odds and allow independent verification.
The biggest effect it would have is, the odds would need to be static
i mean, genshin kinda does this?? ingame on the wish screen they tell you about their pity system, where 75-100 'wishes' is a guarenteed top-tier drop
I don't really know a lot about gatcha games, the only one i played was some DBZ game, because i wanted to get back into DBZ, and shiny things. I never payed money for it, because honestly i didn't really see the point, aside from it being an obvious waste of money, and at the end of the day, i never felt like i missed out of anything, because of maybe luck or just grinding or not caring enough.
anyway, i'm pretty sure they said what the odds are of pulling a specific card, and that it's like in the 1% or 0.5% or whatever. But i don't think that helps at all, because people who gamble like to game, no matter the odds.
Without spending money, a lot of these games simply become boring and deeply repetitive over time.
The system for farming "free" in game currency feels more like a chore than entertainment. The benefits of each upgrade is more marginal while the adversaries progress rapidly.
There's a "git good" angle to this kind of game, as it drifts from an FF-on-easy-mode to Dark-Souls-on-Legendary. But if I want that experience, why not just buy a copy of a Souls game?
Certainly Eldin Ring is worth a few hundred hours, has a much richer experience, and won't immolate my wallet inside a month.
I swear the post sounds like an LLM so much, but if it isn't, congrats to OP on the writing skills
indeed. completely different writing style than the rest of OPs posts/comments as well
Also it should be required to display prices in local currency. I spent 2.99usd on that fox card game. Ended up costing me 5 bucks canadian
Look at the mobile game industry if cancer could manifest as a software this industry is spreading it like oil and gas.
World of Warcraft and Diablo are gacha. Every time you play, you are "pulling" and hoping for a good drop(item). What modern gacha games did, is take that gameplay/psychological feature and directly monetize it(instead of indirectly monetizing it through a subscription/1 time payment).
But both are gambling. I am ok with having age restrictions but we need to be honest with ourselves. And what is "fun" is whatever makes neurons activate. Gambling(ie rpg elements) has always been a core mechanic for many games.
But both are gambling.
Nah, they are not comparable in a meaningful way. Sure, at a high level, you can apply aspects of "gambling" to both examples. But the biggest and most important point is the ability to spend actual money for additional changes at "winning".
People are against gaming because of some deep-seating fear of Random Number Generation by itself. They are against it because of how easy it is to lose money.
It depends on if you value your time or not. That's what you gamble in WoW. If you don't get your drop at the end of the raid, you lost time. When a new expansion obsoletes your gear, you lost time.
Oh wait, you literally have to buy play-time to even do the raid in the first place and roll the wheel. Not to mention the (sub)time it takes to level up and gear up.
Yeah. Just because you are not pulling out your wallet at every kill doesn't mean you aren't gambling and losing, both time and money.
I stopped playing WoW because it didn't value my time. There is a limit to how much you can spend on WoW. Sure, you can buy gold, but it honestly won't help you that much. The upgrades come from the weekly content, mostly.
And then there's the mobile stuff where whales rule the day.
Modern gacha games are more exploitative and effective. But there is a reason why almost all conventional games have "rpg elements" nowadays. I am an old gamer and i remember when this happened.
Game devs realized that if they have "number goes up" mechanics in their games, those games will be more popular and they will sell more. Thats how all games, including multiplayer competitive games, started adding temporary progression(session based, ie buying items between rounds in counterstrike) and then permanent progression(unlocking attachments and prestiging in call of duty).
Quake and unreal didnt have any progression, yet they were very popular multiplayer games. Many people blamed the lack of "parallel progression" systems in starcraft 2, for its failure(sc2 eventually added more parallel progression). Mechabellum, an autobattler(the modern equivalent of an rts), has like 3 different numbers that go up, on top of unlocking unit abilities and skins.
The mobile game market is very competitive and game development is extremely fast and iterative. So they leapfrogged ahead of conventional gaming when it comes to all kinds of user metric manipulation(addictiveness, engagement, etc). Dont hate the player, hate the game.
Funnily enough, the most popular mobile games atm are by Hoyoverse and they arent even that exploitative. They are AAA games, with decent story, graphics, gameplay and the gacha is just there for the more vulnerable/rich people. IMO playing them as f2p is not only viable but actually more enjoyable(ie challenging instead of rolfstomping everything).
If only there were more conventional games as a service that could pump the amount and quality of content that Hoyoverse creates for their games. But Hoyoverse is a private company, probably funded by the chinese government, so they can afford to reinvest all those billions back into the game development, unlike other games. And it shows.
So ultimately, gacha is kinda like real life gambling. I am kinda ok with it, as long as it isnt promoted and its profits go to a good place(funding education or creating decent games).
World of Warcraft and Diablo are gacha.
The original versions of the game wouldn't allow you to simply spend real money for in game benefits.
That's since changed, as in game marketplaces have given users the ability to buy up their level, their gear, and their various grindable ranks.
But this is a relatively new iteration of the franchise. They also don't use the "stars" power curve, wherein characters need to spend exponentially more in game currency to achieve linear power scale.
I'm quite sad that most games for smartphones are either gatcha-hell, or add-ridden messes.
What good options are there? I tried OpenTTD for Android, but the UI is really not optimized for such a small screen.
there's still good games on the app store, you just gotta pay. Stardew is good on phone
Here are games I like that are just mobile ports without ads or micro transactions:
Slay the spire
Monster train
Mindustry
Mini metro
Honorable mention to Vampire Survivors which is mostly a simple port, but it does incentivize you to watch ads for extra lives.
I started playing one of the Gacha games a few months back now, Watcher of Realms, I think the only reason I started was because it showed jiggling boobies in a trailer. The name is goofy and the story is almost non-existant, the gameplay isn't terribly deep, but has some nuances to it, it's like a tower defense RPG game. It's kind of dumb as a game because it records your playthroughs of scenarios that you can then use later on to "Auto-fight" for you as you frequently have to grind for different shit. So you basically set the game on auto-pilot and stop playing the game. I've been playing for something like 6 months now, but I've been committed from the start to never pay a single dime for it and I've stuck with that the entire time. Granted, I've put way too much time into the game and, if time is money, I've wasted a bunch that way, but I've never actually paid for anything in currency. Cheap skate 4 life. I honestly don't know why I keep playing, knowing what the game is setup for, but I still log in day after day.
I can definitely see how it encourages players to spend money, there's so many mini-currencies within the game that obfuscate what you need to do to earn this or that hero or get whatever thing you're trying for, but ultimately the incentive is to buy shit to get further along. In this game though, the rates are so goddamn ridiculous that you'd have to be an impatient jackass to pay the rates they want for simple things that don't even give any guarantees of better performance in the game. On the one hand, I thing games like this are evil for trying to take advantage of people, but on the other, if you're that stupid and that rich that you have money to burn on a game like this... maybe throwing your money away on digital stuff isn't the worse thing you could be wasting your money on (like real world drugs or donating to Trump or something stupid like that). But yes, for kids who haven't mentally developed yet, there probably should be some sort of protections for them, since they'll pay for dumb shit at the drop of a hat.
I remember being pissed when I got shitty cards from a YuGiOh booster pack when I was a kid, never bought new packs again. Only got stuff if I knew its value first. The fact that kids these days are actually falling prey to these systems shows how much more advanced and predatory they are.
The interesting thing is that although I've almost never spent money on a gacha system and haven't played much gacha systems recently, my brain subconsciously craved for more but in a safer way.
That's why I created the JavaScript weighted playlist for myself: A random selection of songs from my music library where some songs play (much) more than others. Getting a super rare song is akin to getting a top tier drop. Additionally, the playback rate is randomized to a normal distribution, giving the tiny chance that a rare song can play with a wild playback rate. And if that wasn't enough, some Geometry Dash related songs can randomly skip to the next song, simulating watching someone try to beat some demon level.
I've created a skinner box for my brain that sometimes causes me to waste hours just clicking on the "next song" button to see what shows up next. My wallet was not harmed in the process (although it might soon be because I want it to work on a portable device, but that money would go to some niche open source hardware thing rather than a greedy gacha publisher).
This is extremely interesting and in general kind of touches on a point that I heard that's kind of funny... People are just bored, and all of Good and bad things that we do in this world are a result of that boredom. Gambling, our hobbies, picking up another job. If it cures your boredom there's nothing wrong with it
Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have already banned loot boxes and gacha systems
Did they really? I certainly know that the lootboxes aren't allowed here (rip my TF2 weapon paints), but I still could spend 10 euros on Genshin Impact, even if I had to use MasterCard.
I have zero interest in paying for lootboxes or other gambling crap paid with real money in games.
But games like Lost Ark were banned in The Netherlands and it took me a while to figure out why it didn't show in my Steam store.
I wish there were other means instead of just outright banning games from stores (like Diablo Immortal for mobile also isn't available in The Netherlands). It didn't take me much to get around the ban and install Lost Ark anyway, so I figured if I can do that, then what's stopping people with gambling problems from doing the same as well.
Also it seems wildly inconsistent when games are and aren't allowed for us to download. Why should I be limited to the regulated games accessible because of other people's gambling addictions? Feels like half the Steam library could be Thanos-snapped if it were just for lootboxes and transactions being present in games.
Is roblox a gacha game? My little 7 year old nephew wants to play but I'm not sure if it's appropriate (as the gaming liason in the family)
I wouldn't call Roblox itself a gacha game. That category is the ones where you are trying to collect all the heroes in the game and level them up with rare loot. AFAIK they generally, if not always, involve loot crates that you have to purchase.
Roblox has its own problems. As spelled out by People Make Games in these two videos.
https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ?si=ngjtGwhA5JH5FcEL
https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY?si=u1z_LYfOYrOMlUDd
Roblox claims to teach kids how to make their own games. At this point from what I've heard, I would suggest Unity Engine before Roblox, and I wouldn't recommend Unity after their pricing debacle.
Watch the videos, and have a serious discussion with his parents about it before you get him that game platform.
Don't know if there are gacha mechanics but Roblox has been widely criticized for basically using child labor. The majority of content is user created. Don't know how exactly it's monetized but i can't imagine it's good.
Roblox is not a game, it is a game platform where users make games. Roblox games, especially ones that are mildly popular at 500-5k active players usually have reasonable monetization and no gacha. Some have lootboxes.
The problem is the new wave of gacha games are really selling you on characters and Hoyoverse isn't even hiding it anymore: The more money you pour into Zenless Zone Zero, the less clothes the Proxy wear in the unlockables. And they have characters for every sexual preference on Earth at this point.
While I definitely have a lot of issues with how fast people said "Gacha and loot boxes are okay if it is Genshin Impact", I have the same general reservations I did back when it was about loot boxes in Overwatch or nu-Battlefront 2.
Yes, it is real shitty and a great way to pad out a game into a grind. And the goal is obviously to encourage RMTs to bypass it.
But also? It is like people for got ARPGs and MMOs and the like. The common refrain among older "gamer" Millennials is something like "I almost flunked out of school because of WoW/Everquest" and the like. And a lot of us have stories about staying up all night doing Bhaal runs to get a specific drop in Diablo 2 and so forth.
And, at the end of the day, it is the same thing. It is a way to artificially increase engagement with the option to RMT your way out of it. Studios have found ways to pull all those RMTs into the game itself (so that they get a cut on every legendary sword sold) but it is still the same skinner boxes.
Not to mention games like Balatro or Vampire Survivors that take massive inspiration from casino and slot machine design and mechanics. Yes, they don't have additional purchases (DLC aside) but there is something to be said when EVERYONE owns a ten dollar game because everyone who touches it can't stop gushing about the flashing lights and bells.
And, much like with loot boxes, I am really hesitant for any "We passed some random ass legislature. Mission Accomplished(TM)". When the underlying skinner box concept is still the basis of so many games.
Thanks for calling them out for being Skinner Boxes (also known as an Operant Conditioning Chamber). When my friends were having addiction issues with WoW 20 years ago, I called it out as being addictive because it was a glorified skinner box. Nothing has changed, it's just become more exploitative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
For anyone unfamiliar, it's a science experiment. There's two rats in two boxes. One rat has a lever that, when pressed, drops food to the rat. The rat only presses the lever when it is hungry. In the other box, the rat has a lever that randomly outputs food, but never consistently. A lot of the time, it produces nothing. The rat in that box spends all day long pressing the lever. Since it has no idea when the food will come, it panics and never stops trying to get more food, unsure if it will starve if it does not.
This is Diablo/World of Warcraft and the "Epic Loot" problem. People are clicking on the games endlessly looking for that top tier loot drop. It's the same thing, because the results are inconsistent, people get addicted to the grind of trying to find the "best" item.
Also, thanks for pointing out that it doesn't matter what game it is it's still not okay. It wasn't okay when it was WoW, it's not okay when it's Genshin Impact.
While I understand and agree with your premise to a point, aren't you advocating for the removal of all randomness in videogames? As long as random factors are tied to outcomes, games will always be playing off that desire that the Skinner Box highlights. I'd argue that the entire modern rogue-lite genre is predicated on the fact that sometimes you will get "better" powerups, upgrades, etc., which leads to better outcomes. Auto-chess games are similiar, where hitting good random rolls leads to high powered teams and easy wins.
Mastery of both these genres requires both a wide birth of knowledge, and flexibility as you make due with what you are offerred, rather than simply always having the best things at all times. These are skills that are fun to have tested and build master in, and I don't really think we should eliminate that from games. I agree that the worst offenders are simply trying to feed off human addiction rather than build are emergant gameplay situations, but any rule that targets the addict chasers is likely to catch other games with randomization in the crossfire.
but there is something to be said when EVERYONE owns a ten dollar gam
Because it's the game of the year.
...and because literally every mechanic in the game is random. The whole game is a skinner box. I say this as a fan of Balatro.
To quote myself from elsewhere in the thread: The blinds are random, the jokers are random, the store is random, the planets are random, the tarot cards are random, it’s all random.
That's literally what gives Balatro an addictively replayable quality.
While there certainly are problems with other games, at least every game you mentioned is fully transparent about the price tag. Balatro doesn’t exploit whales by concealing how much it'll cost to get anything.
True, and I say this as a fan of Balatro...
...but the core of Balatro is literally in its random presentation. The blinds are random, the jokers are random, the store is random, the planets are random, the tarot cards are random, it's all random. World of Warcraft didn't need you to pay money to get epic loot either, but I still had friends ruin their lives over chasing epic loot in WoW. I haven't had any friends ruin their lives over Balatro yet, but I also don't think it's impossible for that to happen. Obviously Balatro isn't "gambling" in the sense of taking a risk with actual real money, but otherwise it still fits the definition of a skinner box.
Because at their core, when a massive amount of the gameplay revolves around random chance, it's very easy to get addicted to it.
I think the fact that people treat them different is the argument that, when the company themselves are taking a cut of that RMT, they have a financial incentive to design systems that would make you want to use it, even more so than when it's something done against the TOS.
It's why Diablo 3 had to remove it, the grind got much better after it was gone.
I'm so tired of this shit. I don't care if people can't handle their shit. Their problem, not mine. If I want to gamble I can gamble. I don't care if some shitty parent is letting their kids gamble. Nanny state bullshit.
Gambling is heavily regulated in most countries, often including requiring the odds of winning being clearly listed and regulating the profit margin that The House can take (usually limited to less than 10%)
Many casinos and developers of addictive games will hire psychologists and other experts on human condition to help them find ways to make the game more addictive and make it easier to seperate players from their money. These "dark patterns" both make gaming worse and make it more dangerous for anyone unfortunate enough to develop an addiction.
In short, I welcome regulation on the worst aspects of the game industry to keep the worst aspects from become too financially successful to not implement (see the $60 AA and AAA games that launched with lootboxes and predatory micro-transactions like this one about 10 years ago before some countries announced they were investigating regulating such practices)
Do you think seatbelts should be banned because you're a careful driver? Do you think use-by dates should be removed because you've never got sick? Do you think stupid people should suffer because you're more clever than them? Are you an empathy-lacking sociopath?
I do empathize but your mental health isn't my responsibility. If you don't wear a seatbelt I didn't give a fuck. But let's take your strawman a bit further, video games have been shown to cause agressiness and anti social behavior. Do you support banning them all? What is, in your opinion, where the state should step in to protect people from themselves.