You get in, you get a taste of gameplay and narrative, then you are bombarded with deals, events, messages, and systems. I remember I bounced off the gacha genre for a long time because this is fairly standard for most gacha games. On top of all this, each log in after the tutorial always starts the game with multiple pop ups announcing new events or gacha deals. Not to mention, there is an entirely separate base management game that the player has to keep track of. There are three different resources, multiple notifications in the top left, and a lot of buttons on the righthand side that are a bit hard to keep track of. Then, once the player finishes the first chunk of narrative they are dropped into a menu that looks like the one above. The game starts with a narrative and introduction battle which are fairly standard designs in games. Rather, I want to use it as the kicking off point for the common idea of the “gacha as storefront” and the challenging literacy required to play them. I am gonna start off strong with one of my favorite games on this list, Arknights.īut I don’t want to just use Arknights as an example of a gacha game I have enjoyed.
![gacha life game common sense media gacha life game common sense media](https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/screen-shot-2018-05-02-at-2-59-07-pm.jpg)
By making a list covering a few of the gachas I have enjoyed, and the things they have me thinking about. We haven’t attempted to reflect on our ever-developing ideals in relationship to the genre.īut it just so happens, dear reader of games lists, that I am in the perfect position to make some suggestions to how we can do as much together. We haven’t tried approaching the genre with new ways of playing. That’s what keeps bothering me with the reaction to Genshin, that we haven’t found new ways to read gachas. However, what I find frustrating about this opinion is the lack of development in reading the genre as texts in their time of popularity. Then they design discounts, events, and reminders to persuade you into believing that maybe, if you spend a couple dollars, that will happen again soon. So high you think you may just be transforming into a vessel of flight to transport the 5 star green haired vampire lesbian you just rolled on a 0.2% chance. They are designed for the lows to feel so low, that many times you may tell yourself that this is the last time you will log into a gacha ever again. As other writers have noted, the business practice of gacha games are reliant on the irrationality of commodified emotional attachment. And yeah, that’s a very good reason to find distaste in a genre. On top of this, most of the time when I find conversation around gachas come up on general game forums, the opinions always seem to come up negative.Ī lot of this comes from the sentiment that gacha games aren’t at a certain level of quality because of their manipulative business and development practices. It’s a cycle that seems to restart every time the audience size of these titles surpass a certain threshold. From my experience, I saw a lot of these same discussions at the release of Fire Emblem Heroes and Mario Kart Tour. Articles came out decrying the game for its predatory practices, making claims that this was the game that perfected the gacha genre, and voicing disdain from non-gacha players who seem to hate the whole genre. However, along with this influx of gacha players I noticed familiar discussions around the game. It was fairly apparent that this genre was beginning to reach a larger scale than seen before. My friends were tweeting about it, students in my class brought it to discussion in a Zoom call, and my housemates would even bring it up on occasion. With one of the biggest launches in the genre, I saw many of my various spheres flock to the game on launch.
![gacha life game common sense media gacha life game common sense media](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7Ca-M3ZFZ1o/maxresdefault.jpg)
I’m specifically thinking about how the release of Genshin Impact is interesting to me not as a game to play, but because it’s surfacing so many American player opinions on the gacha genre.
![gacha life game common sense media gacha life game common sense media](https://i.redd.it/ktauzwt8ud741.jpg)
I have seen so many different versions of this sequence in different games from the genre, but somehow it continues to make my heart quiver with every roll. A hole opens up in the sky, 10 crystals shoot down, one glimmering purple to indicate a rare drop. I’m thinking about gachas as I pull a Barbara from my wish roll in Genshin Impact.