You've Gacha Be Kidding Me
Level 4. With mobile gaming, it used to feel like the sky was the limit. Now, it's as if the air has been sucked out of the room.
"Did you win your game?" I couldn't hear the words over my headphones, but I could feel the muffled sounds as I looked down in my airplane seat. I pulled my headphones out and turned to the flight attendant. "Water, please." I said, not really looking up from my screen. What else could she be asking me? "Did you win your game?" She asked again, and I realized she was referring to me. It's 2008, and I am a legal adult of drinking age, but I felt like a small kid. "Uh, yes," I stammer, not wanting to explain that I am playing Final Fantasy IV and that I was hours away from "winning" the game. Suddenly, I really needed that drink of water.
A lot has happened since 2008. With the proliferation of mobile devices and platforms, including iOS and Android, we watched as Facebook went from a niche site for college kids, to a culture-changing force to a vestigial organ. Tablets went from a luxury item to something toddlers drool on at a table at Applebee's. In this maelstrom of technology and screen time, there have been many digital blessings bestowed upon us. But at what painful and exacting cost?
iOS Gaming Gateway
Try telling this to a teenager, but cell phone games existed prior to iOS. Before June 2007, the game most likely played on cell phones was Snake, included on the Nokia 6610 and onward through 2016. According to some estimates, over 400 million copies were included on native devices. There were handheld gaming options, although in the United States it was generally limited to the Game Boy and then Nintendo DS. Other handheld consoles were either unreleased in the West (Wonderswan), released to limited fanfare (Sony's PlayStation Portable comes to mind), or abject failures (Nokia N-Gage). The face of mobile gaming would change with the release of the iPhone.
The app store launched on July 10, 2008. From business software, maps, and chess games, there truly was an "app for that." Who can forget memories with Angry Birds, Words with Friends, or even a little Flappy Bird or Infinite Blade? While Apple was already becoming a giant in music sales, they parlayed that success into the market for phone software, with over 10 million downloads in the first 72 hours. Apps were either free to use/play (F2P) or cost money, with no in-between. Developers could offer a paid version, as well as a "lite" version with limited functionality, requiring users to download a separate app if they wanted the paid version. That would change two years later when Apple would again shift the ground under the feet of developers and consumers alike when they implemented in-app purchases (IAP).
Apple was playing catch up, so to speak. The Xbox 360, released in 2005, included support for downloadable content (DLC), mostly for character skins and other cosmetic items before eventually expanding to include story content, patches to improve performance and address glitches, and more. Sony released the PlayStation 3 the following year, including native support for internet connectivity. This was a huge improvement from just the prior generation of consoles, when Sony sold a separate hard drive and modem in 2002 for limited online functionality.
DLC for You & Me
From here, developers took off running. If just a few years ago there was an app for that, well now there was an optional download for it, too. Nintendo was slinging their decades-old games back to consumers via the Virtual Console, and if you were a fan of Rock Band, you could spend over $9,000 buying all the DLC for the franchise. That sounds extreme, but imagine being Jessica Johnson of Wilson, Connecticut. Her son spent over $16,000 on in-app purchases on Sonic Forces, of all games. This type of story is surprisingly common, leading the FTC to require refunds from tech companies.
With the advent of IAP and DLC in the West, Japan also saw the rise of games featuring the gacha (toy vending machine) mechanics in the early 2010s. While most of these games are free-to-play, they include a gambling mechanic that requires players to use in-game currency in order to draw random units or characters to use in-game. These games are typically generous to new users, providing ample currency or extra rolls to procure rare and powerful characters. As the in-game currency begins to wane, players may then spend real money through in-app purchases to obtain in-game currency to access more draws from what is essentially a virtual toy machine. While a typical gacha (borrowed from the trademarked term gashopon) machine in the real world may provide an item or trinket, these games are providing a virtual asset to be used during the life of the game.
These games have been criticized for being addictive and tantamount to gambling. While initially unregulated in Japan, various scandals eventually gave rise to some regulations, including disclosure of odds and other consumer protections. As the gacha business continued to prosper, developers saw record profits based on daily expenditures from "whales," or the small percentage of users who spend freely on the game. Although the games required frequent updates and server support, a well-nourished user base would continue to return.
Predatory Spending
Between IAP and DLC, gaming experiences were monetized like never before. Suddenly, grandmas and office managers across the world were playing Farmville or crushing candies. Except now they were spending .99 for a gold bar or some Willy Wonka-esque nonsense so they could clear the stage and continue on to another level, wincing only when they received their credit card bills. Should anyone be spending $2,600 in a single lifetime on power up bundles?
Gamers were no longer deciding between physical and digital copies of their games. We've been barraged with deluxe editions and digital deluxe editions, and spammed with opportunities for new costumes, skins, or storylines. Tales of Arise - a 2021 JRPG I enjoyed very much - would practically advertise the DLC on sale during the game, a salesman-like feature that was eventually patched out. Arise didn't just include costumes either, the game sold buffs for additional experience points, items, and other content to make the game easier. Bandai Namco was quite literally taking the pay-to-win mechanic to the next-level. Soul Hackers 2, released in August 2022, included paid storyline DLC on release date.
More frequently, games are released with bugs, or clearly unfinished with patches later to address the issues. Final Fantasy XV features an entire "season pass" of a handful of DLC packages meant to augment the main storyline, with no justification as to why these were not included in the base-game. Early adopters are now penalized for picking up a copy of the game on release date. The game will be on sale soon enough, and not long thereafter, the inevitable "Game of the Year" edition will release, including all DLC released to date. The "Royal Edition" of Final Fantasy XV is a markedly different game than the Final Fantasy XV myself and millions of other games loaded up in late November 2016.
The notion of DLC "Season Passes" has also evolved in another attempt to further extract value from consumers, morphing into distinct "seasons" of games. Games like Fortnite are free to play, but cycle through various seasons of content for gamers to experience. Fortnite in particular helped popularize the concept of "games as a service," (GaaS) wherein content is periodically or frequently updated or cycled through to provide additional incentives for purchase and playing. Prior to Fortnite, gamers would typically encounter GaaS when playing subscription based-online games, like World of Warcraft. After Fortnite, studios were hungry to capitalize on the trend. It seems that live service games are running into their own challenges in 2023.
Live service games have their own predatory practices, including the over-reliance on gacha-like loot boxes, a tactic which has led to bipartisan calls for legislation to address what is seen to be a predatory practice in attempting to entice minors or disproportionately affected persons to essentially gamble. These are concrete and disparate experiences provided by these GaaS that typically include a fully realized base game with optional purchases.
The Gacha Problem
I was cleaning snow from my driveway the other day, shuffling through some video game music. But a few songs into the chore, I heard a familiar tune, but couldn't quite recall where it was from. It was the battle theme from Terra Battle, released in October 2014 for iOS. This was my first gacha game, and it had an alluring pedigree. Produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi with music from Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame, it was a tile-based tactical role playing game, with units represented by collectible cards. The game was beautiful, challenging, and successful, including a sparse, text-only storyline and in-app purchases. The game continued for nearly six years, until the game and it's servers were shut down in June 2020. It outlived it's sequel, Terra Battle 2, which barely made it to a year. A third game, Terra Wars, was cancelled after six months in Japan and never made it to the West. None of these games are accessible or playable at present.
Terra Battle was one of only a handful of lengthy experiences I had with gacha games. Another one, Final Fantasy Record Keeper, was released in 2015 and only recently ended global service in 2022, with Japanese service continuing. Record Keeper had all the trappings of a great gacha game: a bountiful, pre-existing intellectual property with hundreds of characters to peruse; beautiful sprite graphics and decades of Final Fantasy music to include. Fans are still lamenting the demise of the game. I certainly understand their pain, as it is frustrating to know these game experiences have no way of being preserved. While I can empathize, I cannot relate: two years ago, I made a decision not to waste my time and money on these endeavors.
Profitable, Yet Bankrupt
For gacha games, enticing players to spend their money is the raison d'être. These titles frequently rely on existing IP and leveraging the fanbase as one method to draw players in. The advertisements practically write themselves. Paper thin plots disguise the gambling aspect, frequently explaining that your series favorite characters have been pulled together due to a time paradox or some other Macguffin used to justify the game's existence. Any new characters are typically in service of the plot or service as a cipher for the player.
Showered with gems or other currency, the first few pulls yield rare characters who are likely super-powered. Gamers will encounter stamina mechanics, or other artificial barriers that can be waved away with the click of a button. The button costs a dollar. Even without these mechanics, players will soon run into a difficulty spike, or yet another access barrier. Guess what you can do to bypass it? After a certain point, the game encourages pay-to -win or other monetized avenues of progress.
Gacha games can be exploitative and short lived. If the game is not profitable, it's gone - there is no physical copy of the game that can be loaded up, and even if you kept the game on your device, it will be inoperable. There is value in preserving these games, in either an offline form that can be purchased or in some other method of allowing the game to be played, even if through emulation. There are gacha games based on Final Fantasy, SaGa series, Nier, Shin Megami Tensei, and many, many, more. Nintendo has seen some success with gacha games as well since the release of Fire Emblem Heroes in 2017. Others may remember Dragalia Lost, a Nintendo exclusive gacha that earned more than $100 million dollars as of July 2019. Even Nintendo isn't impervious to the gacha model, as Dragalia Lost ended service late last year.
Other titles from quieter series came and went in a blink of an eye: both Star Ocean Anamnesis and Valkyrie Anatomia hardly lasted a year in the United States before succumbing to a digital death worldwide the following year. The narratives are typically poorly written, the gameplay systems can usually be reduced to auto-equipping and auto-battling most encounters, and the user interface for most of these titles are atrocious. I never worry about breaking the gacha vow, because I snap back to reality each time I am faced with a hyperactive home screen, with thirty seven buttons and banners fighting for my attention.
So what's the natural end point? Consider Apple Arcade. The subscription based service - $5 a month - provides access to a curated selection of games that are completely devoid of in-app purchases. There are some exclusives to Apple Arcade - Fantasian is a fantastic JRPG that comes to mind - as well as some versions of titles that are included in the general iOS ecosystem, just without ads or opportunities for my child to incur a mortgage payment's worth of accidental gem purchases. There is no better tacit admission of the predatory nature of most mobile game design than paying for access to versions of games that have them disabled.
Even Netflix sees the values in offering full game experiences, as subscribers have exclusive access to a host of solid gaming experiences, including a mobile port of Shredder's Revenge and Into the Breach. What we are hopefully seeing is developers wise up to the types of gaming encounters players of all stripes are looking for.
*****
Last weekend, I took my kids to a local arcade. We ate ice cream, played Mario Kart, and tried our hand repeatedly with UFO catchers. As we were gearing up to leave, I saw a cabinet of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was looking forward to playing the game and introducing my kids to an old-school game without in-app purchases, optional gems or other attempts to extort money out of me. We finished the first stage but quickly ran into a difficulty spike. Soon enough, a game over was flashing on the screen. There was something else underneath it, written in small print. My daughter pointed to it and asked me what it said. I leaned forward to read the pixelated font on the screen:
Insert coins to continue.
