Gacha, Loot Boxes and Online Gambling Posted Oct 13, 2021
We’ve been living with the trend to put loot boxes and pay-to-win mechanics into video games — mostly from Japan — for a while now, and the critique has been high. Some say they are akin to gambling mechanics and should be banned. That is a damning criticism, considering many of them afree to playre specifically aimed at children and teens, with games like Fire Emblem Heroes or Genshin Impact. What’s the deal with gacha games?
What are Gacha Games?
Theoretically, gacha games can be all kinds of genres or game mechanics. A gacha game is a gacha, as soon as it has a loot box mechanic that lets you collect… well, something. In the aforementioned games, it’s characters you can then use to fight. Generally, the items come in boxes with differing probabilities of containing the loot a player would want. Often there are multiple quality levels of the item or character you want to own, like gold or bronze star versions.
Typically, the gacha games are free to play. You don’t have to pay any attention to the loot box mechanic, or can use the free pulls the game offers from time to time. We know these kinds of deals from online casinos. Here, casinos usually offer a bonus that is supposed to draw in new users. Often, they need to deposit money to be allowed to take advantage of the bonus. But there’s also sites that allow playing with no-deposit bonus. They draw you in with the hopes you will spend money once you’re hooked on the game.
The History of Gacha Games
Gacha games come, like so many things in gaming, from Japan. The concept it is based on is gashapon, which got shortened to gacha eventually: little vending machines with capsule toys. On the front of the machine is usually a sticker that lists the possible contents you can get when you toss in a coin to pull one of the capsules. Those might me little toy figures, rubber balls or other toys.
Which sounds like a cheap thing you’d find in a mall or at a street corner is a huge thing overseas. There are whole stores with multiple stories all filled with gachapon machines. Their contents are surprisingly high quality and are aimed to be collector’s items so people will keep spending money in hopes to get the right item.
From Toy Machines to Mobile Games
The profit incentive in Japanese gaming is high. No wonder, Konami eventually picked up on the opportunity to turn gacha games into mobile games. Since there was no government regulation about the monetization of games Konami put casino strategies into the 2010 mobile game Dragon Collection, a kind of RPG dungeon crawler with card game elements. They added a lottery that let you win powerful cards if you bought a ticket for real money.
That strategy, which included having to win exactly the right items to create other ones, is called “complete gacha” and was later banned from mobile games in 2002. Gaming companies found their loophole in “box gacha” that provides an array of items with clearly stated probabilities. Since that made it easier to estimate how much you would have to spend to get the desired item, this new gacha version was allowed.
Is Gacha Just Gambling for Kids?
There are two sides to this. Clearly, the gaming companies encourage spending. They offer free play but make probabilities of getting the best cards higher, the more money you spend. They do so by raising the probability with each pull or allowing you to see some of the items you will gain if you’d pull the next box.
On the other hand, they offer free high-quality games you’d usually spent up to 60 bucks for, and you will never have to spend any money if you have the willpower to stay away from the paid loot boxes. And that’s where the critique comes into play. Gacha is a form of gambling, and it has made many children and teens spend hundreds of dollars of their parents’ money. That’s why it needs proper tools to protect them from gambling addiction and debt. At the very least, it needs to educate its players about the dangers of gambling.
Conclusion — Gacha Needs Regulations
Online Casinos are actually a great example of how to do these right. They follow strict regulations that force them to implement gambling addiction protection. There are limits set on spending or slot pulls, there are tools that analyze a player’s spending habits and warn them, there are also hotlines and informational websites linked to help anyone that is developing a problem. It’s these kinds of (youth) protection protocols that are needed in mobile gaming.
