The ever-increasing popularity of Japanese pop culture, especially things that are related to anime, has brought us something that many people enjoy too; video games. With the growth of the popularity, companies and studios have started thinking of a way for many people to enjoy their products and making sure that their products are easy to access, and this thought marks the invention of mobile games with social features. Fairly said, they succeeded in creating and maintaining their products; they come in free and are easily accessible for so many people despite some region-locked contents. But by imagining, how can they maintain their games for so long for so many players while are still free-to-play? The answer to these is the mechanic implemented to almost every free-to-play mobile games available, and that is the gacha mechanic.
Gacha, or originally known as gashapon, is the mechanic in which you are presented with a box of capsules filled with souvenirs, where many of them are common items and few are rare items. In order to get the rarest out of them, naturally, you will have to roll or pull while betting of the chances. Originally found in souvenir machines in many places of the market, or even arcades at Japan, this mechanic has also been implemented on mobile games, with the differences here and there. This method has become the favourite of many developers dealing with free-to-play games, backed up by the fact that it has a big monthly revenue like Arknights, who earned a total of $38.8m worldwide in February 2020.
If you decided to play on mobile games, especially those published by Japanese and Chinese developers with an imprint of anime culture in it, you will find these mechanics on even the most unrelated genre of the video game, like puzzle games, multiplayer online battle arena (or widely known as MOBA), all the way to rhythm games.
With big games, comes big community and that’s for sure worldwide, specifically talking, in Indonesia. Almost everyone introduced by the anime culture has ever tasted at least one of the gacha games, further proving the success of how well the games have reached its targeted audiences. In this report, I will be talking and taking examples of what the community has in heart for these gacha games and talking about their habits in dealing with such games. But first, we should dive deeper onto what is actually gacha and how well they were made to engage.
Gashapon (ガシャポンin katakana) or Gachapon (ガチャポン in katakana) is the original term from the later shortened term gacha (ガチャ). This term is known for the souvenir-vending machine usually found in Japan and since its globalization, in many parts of Asia and some parts of the world. The term was based on an onomatopoeia of the sound when players crank the lever in the machine and the sound when the prize capsule came out from the box. Usually, in gacha boxes, players will be presented in a box full of souvenirs encased in a capsule, and players can earn one of them by spending coins. This will enable players to pull the lever and get one of the capsules in the boxes. In the boxes presented, there is always one or more items that are unlike the rest of the others, and there are even items that are licensed to their favourite video games, manga (Japanese comic books), and even anime (animations). This particular rare item is always the main prize of the box that is advertised on the front of the boxes. Earning this usually brings joy to many, hence why players will usually always do more than one pull in hopes of getting the rare items that they will feel proud of later.
(gacha vending machines, picture courtesy of livejapan.com)
This successful mechanic is later brought into digital life in video games, especially in video games that are free-to-play and in mobile games. Emphasizing the point that I have mentioned above that these games have a social networking feature, this is what the mechanic wants to aim, the achievement of having things that involve luck. Ever since the implementation of the mechanic back in the early 2010s in many of the social games Japanese game companies have made (for example, Idolmaster social game series created and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment), developers realized that this is good for those who wanted to reach more audiences, and gacha mechanic has been a part of almost every video games originating from mainly Japan and China (Heinze, 2017; Luton, 2013). The success of the mechanic and the market potential behind it made the mechanic stands out until now, where there are so many good quality games out there implementing the gacha mechanics.
Remember what I said above about Arknights making $38.8m in February 2020. Note that Arknights is a game that was just released globally around February 2020, making a grand picture of how big the gacha game market can be.
In video games that implemented the gacha mechanic, usually the items that are contested and being put into the “vending machine” are the characters, cards (for digital collectible card games), all the way to special and even game-breaking items. Video games with gacha mechanics would also sometimes present a limited pool of gacha consisting of items mentioned before. These items are usually presented in a limited time event frame. By this, the mechanic is also considered successful in creating games that may won’t progress if you do not own certain in-game items that are obtainable only through the gacha mechanic.
There are also several methods that companies have taken for the mechanic, making it variative. But in this report I will be using methods that has high rate of usage in games that I have been played, and they are:
1. Complete gacha, the oldest popular method and the now-banned method in the market system. This method, being popular up until 2012 only, forces us to complete a set of item and combine them in order to get the rarest of them. Normally, as the pool gets smaller after getting most of the items, the rest of the items are harder to get, and so are the cost of getting rarer items (Toto, 2012). Plus, most of the company doing this method rarely ever show their probability so by theory, companies can put any number close to zero for the probability. With the cost too high, and the risk being labelled as illegal gambling, this was then banned after the controversy first being highlighted by Yomiuri Shinbun at 2012. (Hillier, 2012; Toto, 2012). This method was usually seen in the early generation of social mobile games.
2. Box gacha, the most popular and the most used method ever since the ban upon complete gacha method. Deemed as the fairer method by the players, this method of gacha makes you pull an item you get from a certain pool. For example, there is a limited character for Christmas event, and companies will put this limited character in a separate “box” of pull, making the probability makes more sense (Toto, 2016). This method can be seen on very popular gacha games like Fate Grand Order.
With so much money going around the game’s fairly new mechanic, things are also bound to controversy, naturally. The main controversy that is going around the gacha mechanic is its similarity to gambling. But is it really it? According to “Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana” (KUHP) or Indonesian Book of Criminal Law Article 303, these are definitions of gambling:
1. There is a hope of winning
2. It is based on luck (although later there are several more factors to be considered)
3. There is an incentive for the winner
4. The chance of winning is higher if there is an element of intelligence or agility
While gacha fills this all, there was never a good parameter on whether it is totally gambling or not. Mentioned and implied in points above that in gacha, any of your pull will guarantee something, even if it is not a rare item. By this, the definition of winning cannot also be implicated clearly because there is always something we get from doing gacha, unlike gambling, even though these two matters are similar in a grey area. (Wibowo, 2017)
Knowing what gacha is, how big the scene is, the implication of gambling, and how much they created an opportunity for a market, let us dive into a smaller proportion of the market community.
Beginning with a question about how well does the game with such story impact Indonesian anime culture fan, especially those who played the gacha games, I tried to ask 8 people. 4 from my own “clan” of ‘Princess Connect! Re:Dive’ players which I managed, and 4 more from my circle friends whom I believe has played a lot of mobile games considering their behaviour on social media.
I started by surveying and interviewing them directly through the platform Discord, doing voice chat-interview on what gacha games they are playing right now, where the most answer being Princess Connect Re:Dive (as the most obvious fact since half respondents are those who played the game), followed by Idolmaster series (Shiny Colours, Starlight Stage, Million Theater), then Arknights, Bang Dream!, Honkai Impact 3rd , Fate Grand Order, and followed by games that are unique, where it has only one respondent like Revue Starlight, Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross, Granblue Fantasy, and God Eater: Resonant Ops. All of them agreed that all the games on the list have gacha mechanics.
When asked to tell their most interesting experience in playing gacha games, these are their responses presented in keywords:
- >Getting in-game items with only one roll/pull
- >Struggling with drop rates
- >Getting the rarest items or the most unlikely items to appear
- >Not getting rare and wanted items even by spending most of their currencies
- >Getting rare items they don’t really want but not getting rare items they wanted
The personal experiences are all different somehow even when they were presented in an almost same way of delivering the question. Interestingly, when they were being asked about what is the most regrettable experience they had on playing gacha games, they all answered the same (or at least similar); they all pulled based on their lust and did not do anything enough to plan their in-game currencies used for the gacha ahead of time, making them lose the opportunity to get the actual important gacha-only game items.
Another interesting response came from the question asking about if they are addicted to gacha or not. Six from eight of them answered with ‘yes’ while the other 2 says ‘no’ about how addicted are they to gacha.
These questions asked are from a personal perspective as players, but what about how these players played their role in the community?
I ensured the respondents that it is impossible for them to play gacha games with all their social networking feature by not engaging with anyone else. The fact that half of them are in my ‘clan’ and the other half of them realizes that they are being a part of a community somehow is enough for me to ask about whether they are being active in their community or not, to which 6 of them answered ‘yes’, and the rest of them answered by ‘no’. Respondents that said ‘no’ were further asked by me if they are watching their community at times, to which all of them are saying yes, fully realizing that they are not or seldom in any way, communicating things with their community.
After recounting their gacha experience and confirming that they are, in the very least, have been in contact with their communities, I asked them about if there is anything that they are doing specifically in order to get a good result on gacha, considering the random results too all, making a situation where no one could actually see things coming. I also clarify that this could mean if there is any myth surrounding the mechanic, to which respondents suddenly had a storm of ideas coming; and these are all the special things they did, and also the myth, in keywords:
- >Waiting for any good premonition (i.e. hunch, sudden good luck, etc.)
- >Saying prayers before pulling
- > Pulling right after the game’s maintenance phase, midnight, or server day reset
- > Doing single pulls only (since most of the games are actually offering bulk pulls)
- >Doing the pull in ‘sacred’ places (toilet, Mosque, cleaned up room)
Interestingly, there is only one respondent saying that there are no actual special deeds you need to do in actually getting good results and that this specific respondent did not actually believe in any kinds of myth regarding gacha.
Another question that I asked is how their communities handled the gacha games while seriously considering the need for people to show off their results. They all answered the same, since they are hauling from Facebook and Discord as their main communication platform, there is always one thread or channel dedicated for this, and there is always the same interesting pattern of recorded behaviour in gacha games community according to the respondents. These are the habits, ranked from the most to least seen:
- >After one presented their results, there is always more than one people griefing on how they could not get the rare items and such
- >One tagging their friends and peers when they got the rarest and best possible outcome (good result).
- >One calling out their peers when they don’t have the characters that the latter wanted.
- >One praising one another when the person gets a good result.
- >One that is never actually showing off their result but ends up unintentionally showing them off when they are being asked for technical question for the game’s progress, or when they were just being asked out of habit.
While these responses are only from 8 experienced people, the diversity and the picturing of the habits may present an objectively good representation of the habits of the Indonesian community in dealing with gacha games. So to conclude, after seeing all of these habits and experience presented, actually none of them are objectively bad or unhealthy habits, and it seems that the point that the game actually succeeded in reaching those with interest in anime culture has been a great success, in the best ways possible, at least for now.
Resources
Heinze, J. (2017). How gacha can benefit Western game developers. Retrieved from https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-07-18-how-gacha-can-benefit-western-game-developers
Hillier, B. (2012). Kompu gacha freemium systems banned in Japan. Retrieved from https://www.vg247.com/2012/05/18/kompu-gacha-freemium-systems-banned-in-japan/
Luton, W. (2013). Free-to-play: Making Money From Games You Give Away. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.id/books?id=QIXNquWvB2oC&pg=PA88&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Toto, S. (2012). “Kompu Gacha” Social Game Mechanic Is History, Here’s How It All Went Down. Retrieved from https://www.serkantoto.com/2012/05/09/kompu-gacha-dena-gree-history/
Toto, S. (2016). How Japanese Mobile Game Makers Go After Whales: 5 Popular Gacha Mechanics. Retrieved from https://www.serkantoto.com/2016/03/14/gacha-monetization-japan/
Wibowo, A. (2017). Loot Box and Gacha in the Eye of Indonesian Law, Is It Gambling or Not? Retrieved from https://www.gameprime.org/2017/12/loot-box-indonesian-law-gambling-legal/
Will Luton (2013). Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games You Give Away. New Riders. p. 88
Hillier, B. (2012). Kompu gacha freemium systems banned in Japan. p. 1.
Retrieved from https://www.vg247.com/2012/05/18/kompu-gacha-freemium-systems-banned-in-japan/
Retrieved from https://www.vg247.com/2012/05/18/kompu-gacha-freemium-systems-banned-in-japan/
Toto, S. (2016). How Japanese Mobile Game Makers Go After Whales: 5 Popular Gacha Mechanics
Retrieved from https://www.serkantoto.com/2016/03/14/gacha-monetization-japan/
Retrieved from https://www.serkantoto.com/2016/03/14/gacha-monetization-japan/
Heinze, J. (2017). How gacha can benefit Western game developers. Retrieved from https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-07-18-how-gacha-can-benefit-western-game-developers
Klepek, P. (2017). Nintendo’s Mobile “Fire Emblem” Is a “Gacha” Game, Here’s What That Means. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnn834/nintendos-mobile-fire-emblem-is-a-gacha-game-heres-what-that-means
Wibowo, A. (2017). Loot Box and Gacha in the Eye of Indonesian Law, Is It Gambling or Not? Retrieved from https://www.gameprime.org/2017/12/loot-box-indonesian-law-gambling-legal/
