“Conversation over a cup of tea”: The rise of gacha games using the example of various projects

Hi all! Another tea party, another rather broad topic for discussion! This time I would like to talk about gacha games in general, look at a few examples and discuss the near future of the genre, so pour yourself some tea, sit back and relax, and I think I’ll get started.

Choose – I don’t want!

So, gacha game. What project immediately comes to mind when you mention this term?? If it’s not Genshin (or Star Rail), then you’re probably too deep down this rabbit hole. A game that achieved previously unheard of success among its peers. A game that set a new standard for well-known companies and developers of similar projects and showed what successful gacha games should look like. And the same game that raised the quality bar too high. "Big and Scary" Genshin Impact is now familiar to almost every player. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is currently the most ambitious project in its too-arcade environment. However, before I touch on the consequences, let’s talk about what all this is boiling down to, without going into too much detail. And who does not want to briefly familiarize yourself with the list, you can immediately proceed to the next subheading.

First in line – Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, one of the most popular gacha games in Japan, constantly appearing, for example, in the top lists of monthly revenue in Sensor Tower reports.

What brought her such success?? Of course, the popularity of horse racing itself in Japan! Indeed, who doesn’t want to see their favorite horse in the form of a cute anime girl who also happens to be an excellent idol?. And their design is really attractive, no matter how you look at it, it makes you want to pull out all the cards for the CG scenes. The gameplay here is also quite simple, but extremely addictive: you take the characters you have and send them to train in order to later show off to others, distracted by the plot and often interesting mini-events. The same cannot be said about the gacha, however. I think I won’t be mistaken if I say that now almost everyone (maybe I’m exaggerating) Japanese gacha games use two types of currencies for their gacha – premium and regular. You most likely guessed which one is paid, right?? This is not to say that this is unfair, because you yourself decide who to use and when to spend money, but the system itself, when compared with other similar ones, can be said… not particularly beneficial for the consumer himself, which is not surprising in principle.

The same policy is followed Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE, rhythm game with gacha elements in the form of cards.

If the two previous games were more niche and narrowly focused, then the next one is already more liberated, in many senses of the word. NIKKE: Goddess of Victory not only calmly survived a couple of minor scandals and a bad start, but was also able to attract a fairly huge audience with its equally outstanding merits.

If you don’t want too intense gameplay from the game and are looking for your share of fan service, then this is definitely the place for you. As a person who burned out from the local shooting range for a month, I can’t say much about it other than “sit and watch,” and the full depth of which was somehow revealed only in battles with bosses (although at high levels this sometimes turns into an automated “speedrun” to obtain Full Burst), let alone the lazy overestimation of difficulty by increasing the damage received and decreasing the damage dealt in proportion to the difference between the recommended and current numbers. However, it is worth asking whether complex game mechanics are needed in this game in principle? The main advantage, as you can understand, is the local characters. I probably won’t describe their “advantages”; it will be enough to look at the recent summer event, or better yet, try to play it yourself, because many say that behind the mask of content for cultured people there is a rather interesting story, which I personally would describe as “Girls’ Frontline, only simpler”. Gacha, on the other hand, does not spare, and if you are unlucky, then you are unlucky in a big way, which also works in the opposite direction. A real random that you can’t find anywhere else! And I won’t say anything about dividing banners into premium and standard, it’s the same problem as with pony girls, but at least it’s not so difficult to get duplicates.

And not far from the topic of fan service, we meet the well-known Blue Archive.

If you are familiar with this project firsthand, and even more so with its community, then congratulations, you have reached the conditional bottom of this abyss! Nothing captures the established fanbase of gacha games quite like Blue Archive, and it does it very well. First of all, the people behind it know their community very well because they themselves are part of it, which means they actively follow the works of fans and create content that they themselves want to see in their game. This ultimately results in a whole bunch of different interesting and funny ideas and solutions, be it creating a trash can for Miyu, directing scenes for some L2D animations, or the entire image of Miki. Also worthy of praise are the little girls, the overall design and animations of their chibiks are always surprisingly well-designed, let alone their L2D version, which is opened after a series of personal stories. If at the beginning it was branded “another Nexon product”, now the game is more alive than all living things and is only growing, both technically and financially, with minor drawdowns. Truly a real island of serenity among the endless stream of scandals, closures and other things, and only one thing separates you from it – gameplay. Looking from above at chibiks moving from cover to cover and sometimes testing their skills doesn’t sound that interesting, does it?? As in most cases, you will either accept it and love the game like no other, or quit it on the spot, not understanding how you can even enjoy it (or if you have a severe allergy to Spanish Shame, in which case please stay away from any game related content for your own good). Unfortunately, there is no golden mean here, and if you have already decided which side you are on, sooner or later you will reach its edge. The gacha here also jumps from side to side, especially with the ungodly increase in the chance of dropping an event girl. As a result, there may be a very real situation where you are unlucky 10 times before you finally get a character, and this could easily cost somewhere around 200 of your precious spins. Its only and most important advantage is the good chance of getting 3*.

So, we’ve dealt with two narrowly focused and two fanservice games, now it’s the turn of more… "standard" types of gacha games, where one thing is not put at the forefront. And the first great example of this would be Punishing: Gray Raven.

Developed by already relatively well-known Kuro https://casinomagius.co.uk/bonus/ Game, it was a success not only among fans of the ARPG genre, but also people far from it, and for some it even replaced the old Honkai Impact 3rd. The battles here are staged at an acceptable level – colorful combinations, parries, well-built movesets of late bosses that force you to constantly be on the move, and in general a fairly convenient layout (I can’t vouch for the official PC port) help you enjoy the process. The plot plays an important role here, but it certainly can’t be called a masterpiece. Clichés upon clichés and another post-apoc setting are not impressive, although the last chapters of the main plot set the quality bar higher and higher each time, the development of the characters here varies from one to another, and reading their personal stories was, let’s say, boring. On the other hand, the lore and atmosphere make up for most of these problems, successfully immersing the reader in its world, although I personally lacked something in the spirit of Artery Gear: Fusion and its scale in the early chapters. And the music here… Vanguard Sound Studio, I am ready to bow to you for each of your OSTs in this game, be it the recent Echoes from the Abyss or my beloved Exorcism, which gives me goosebumps every time, and it is simply impossible not to mention the same Sie liebten sich beide (in fact, as well as for tracks for other games, like A Moment of My Nightmare). I won’t say much about the gacha, only that it is divided into characters and weapons, and that players can feel more or less calm without worrying about skipping a character and/or weapon for the sake of some other.

And, perhaps, the last, but no less interesting example – Path to Nowhere, where we play as the Chief of a maximum security prison, who monitors the so-called "Sinners" (Sinners), possessing skills that are dangerous to themselves and others, such as pyrokinesis, telepathy or natural magic.

It’s also a play, also not without standard clichés, but the narrowly focused setting here is immediately set, roughly speaking, non-standard, albeit with many familiar rules, and the game manages to very cleverly weave very interesting stories into this setting, and add various visual additives to these stories. For example, the event with the character Etti was a real board game based on the D&D principle, and the Serpent event changed the scene from time to time thanks to traveling through the “dreams” of other people. This actually quite well dilutes the established and quickly boring gameplay in the tavern defense style, and the addition of unique event mechanics only fueled interest in the passage. The character design here is at its best, it cannot be called extravagant, but it can definitely be called “eye-catching”, which also describes the entire design as a whole. Gacha, unlike some modern products, is very generous, which in turn is compensated by a strong increase in copies of this or that character, which is never needed for the main content, but if you want to take All awards from everyone modes, then be kind enough to have a pumped-up character or learn to microcontrol units like never before (applies only to end-game content, of course).

Now that we have looked at the most popular and illustrative examples, we can continue from where we left off. In truth, MiHoYo’s significant contribution to this entertainment industry cannot be underestimated – who knows how much longer the development of this subgenre would have been delayed, provided that companies such as NetEase, Netmarble, Yostar, Nexon and Tencent are still in the market. And if it weren’t for their most popular project, we most likely would not have appeared to this day..

"Assassins of Genshin"

We are all familiar with this term. As soon as the next “AAA anime game with a gacha element” appears on the horizon, it immediately receives such a nickname, and it doesn’t matter whether it is similar in principle to Genshin or not. So, what kind of collective image is this and what exactly desirable qualities are inherent in it??

Well, we have somehow decided on this, do we have an example??

The first such honor was given to the well-known Tower of Fantasy, and quite respectfully.

Oh, Tower of Fantasy… There’s a lot to say about this game, both good and bad. The idea of ​​combining gacha mechanics with MMOs at first glance seems, if not crazy, then at least very risky, but the developers managed to integrate them so that they work harmoniously enough not to irritate. And the start, traditionally, on the global was far from the most successful, and if we delve into the details, then with an abundance of bugs and overloading of some servers. Despite this, the game was received quite warmly, there was still something to praise for – an interesting design of locations with visible divisions into certain zones (and I’m not talking about the most obvious ones, like forests and snowy deserts), transport (. ), a good implementation of gacha in the form of weapons, albeit with a separation of banners and, accordingly, twists for them, surprisingly varied gameplay, in particular the combat system itself, entertaining lore and relatively good music, which cannot be said about the plot, which seemed to be written by ChatGPT, and banners. Not only did they come out too quickly for such a voluminous game, but the characters also seemed to be hand-crafted just to feel fresh upon release. And the further into the forest… The servers began to empty over time, which is why activity on some dropped literally to 0 (however, they were recently merged!); More and more donuts appeared; There were no fewer bugs, but this is not surprising; The natural gap between donors and regular players continued to widen, but this is also not surprising, for obvious reasons; PvP? No, thank you, when even on bosses the game sometimes throws you from side to side in such a way that it’s easier to go to an empty server and pick it there alone or just stand on the sidelines while other players take it apart in literally half a minute, let alone a local co-op.

Perhaps the most succinct description of the game would be “The Genshin That Couldn’t”. Indeed, Tower of Fantasy had a chance, if not to compete with Genshin, then at least to become its decent third-party copy, but in the end it turned out to be an ideal example of a project that bit off more than possible, which did not have enough funds or strength for the correct implementation and subsequent support of such a complex game. Although, perhaps this only applies to the global version, since the Chinese version, according to other people, feels a little better with much greater rewards and much fewer bugs. But even though ToF is not going through the best of times now, the situation with the latest updates is better than it was before them. At least update 3.0 brought to the game a plot that is not poor in its simplicity (the entire first arc in Esperia with an unclear narration and part of the second arc in Vera, where all this lore seems to be scattered in incoherent pieces) and a vast location for exploration, as in previous updates after the incredibly burdensome and empty Esperia.

What is the role of such projects?? The most obvious and simple thing, which we have said more than once, is that “Assassins of Genshin”, in theory, should have become (or will have to become) competitors in the market in response to such a sudden and successful breakthrough of MiHoYo, allowing a not very stable and very dubious genre to develop further. Reality, however, does not work according to such harmonious rules: few of the current well-known companies are going to abandon the “cheap production – big revenue” system and take risks with the development and release of such an expensive project, as MiHoYo themselves did in their time. On the other hand, little-known and new developers suffer more than before because of this. Relatively speaking, now, in order to stay afloat and not go bankrupt in the shortest possible time, you have to either get sophisticated with some elements of the game, adding something unique, or come to terms with the new rules of the game and follow the trends, be it another gacha game based on anime, some of which are still closed in the area from 3 months to several years, not counting F/GO, or the transition to 3D instead of chibiks and dolls. Thus, a sad fate befell the ECHONOX 24/36 development team, whose ambitious project was beyond their capabilities, which is why they closed it after the last PTA.

Everything is ahead

Phew. Inhale-exhale. Okay, we’ve sorted out some visible problems, it’s time to discuss the further development of the genre. And the first topic in line is AI!

Out of the frying pan into the fire! It is no secret that the development of AI in terms of creating images will undoubtedly affect such fertile soil as gacha games. Already now on the Internet you can find a countless number of similar projects created on the knee, consisting almost entirely of AI art, which they, in fact, do not hide, flaunting them in their advertisements. This is also used by the developers of “adult” gacha games, which erolabs is full of, but more on that some other time. On the other hand, large publishers and developers also do not hesitate to use images generated by a neural network as collaboration backdrops in their teasers and promotional videos, as Rayark did. Speaking of this company, which gave us the wonderful Cytus and DEEMO, there was a rumor that they fired the staff of their artists, replacing them with AI, which, of course, has not been proven and has been denied by Rayark themselves. So, if AI art is so easy to identify, then why do large companies resort to such devices?? Well, this may well be the whim of the artist himself, who completed the order, erasing clearly noticeable moments, and the employees simply had no time to sit with a magnifying glass and look at the picture, which most likely happened in the case of NIKKE, or a banal lack of time, money or effort, which depends on the situation. Be that as it may, at the present time, using AI where people literally spend money on pictures of their beloved characters is more expensive for themselves, but black PR is also PR, right?

And yet, is there a future for this approach to the production of gacha games?? It’s difficult to say at the moment, but I think quite. However, the gacha games themselves, built entirely on this, will soon depreciate, dropping in revenue to the level of Higan: Eruthyll, because the stream of indistinguishable and uninspired character designs is unlikely to attract sufficient attention or continue to maintain it for a long time. Moreover, with the current trend of rapid development, in any case, they cannot compete with even the simplest 3D gachas in their form, such as THRUD.

And I could go on for a long time about my opinion about AI in gacha games, but we have an equally interesting topic ahead – Unity!

Unity… How many events have unfolded around him lately. This, of course, also affected mobile projects and will affect them in the near future, even with the recent “mitigations”. And new games are unlikely to be left out – large gacha game developers (except HoYoVerse, I suppose) will have to switch to UE, as Kuro Game did with their Wuthering Waves, or suffer from a thousand and one ways to use the emulator to record the number of installs during rerolls. It’s good that this won’t affect MICO Team, haha.. Hmm, In any case, the news, you understand, is far from rosy.

As the third and final topic for today, I wanted to briefly talk about the upcoming major releases, however, it seems to me that I have already stretched out the already long text, so more about this some other time, if you are interested, of course. In general, wait! Or don’t wait.

Happy ending?

No matter what anyone says, when the question arises about at what point in time this genre began to gain its current popularity, I confidently answer that with the release of Fate/Grand Order. Since that moment, we have had many projects known to everyone and everyone who are firmly rooted in this swamp: Girls’ Frontline, Azur Lane, Arknights, a bunch of games from Cygames and many others. F/GO itself is also more alive than all the living and is not going to die for as many more years, which is really surprising, given the current trend of closing one project after another. And now the second such turning point, as you already understood, was the release of Genshin, which now shook up not just a small base of players who accidentally came across this or that product, but no less the entire Internet! Dozens and hundreds of headlines about the success of MiHoYo attracted the attention of a new layer of players who were ready to actively donate to other gacha games, and the developers could not miss this opportunity. Someone simply decided to profit from someone else’s success, advertising their recently released games with all their might, as Tencent and bilibili exclusives did, while others were in a hurry to release their analogue like Tower of Fantasy. The former, to some extent, managed to break out into the masses, including thanks to word of mouth, while the latter, like the latter, still have not reached any kind of balance.

And, you know, 2021 and 2022 were, in my opinion, very fruitful for successful releases, just like the gacha games listed at the beginning of the blog, and it was also the best time to join them. This year, on the contrary, turned out to be more disappointing, even if it has not yet come to an end. Loud scandals (I was especially upset by the situation with Limbus Company, which reached local TV channels), another wave of closures of various gacha games even without the inevitable collab with Persona 5, very crude releases and transfers and, in general, a small number of worthy projects, of which only Brown Dust 2 can be noted, which I will talk about later, the upcoming Reverse: 1999, there will also be something to say about it as soon as it comes out, and Snowbreak: Containment Zone, not counting, of course, the brand new Star Rail.

Hats off to the BD2 developers, truly the perfect balance of non-irritating fan service and great art

And since I have undertaken to judge everyone and everything, then I can tell you about my experience. I rarely stay in any gacha games for long, with a couple of exceptions – Arknights and Path to Nowhere, and not because I have any special passion for tavern defense – so I don’t get too attached to them, and am happy to try new ones. Nevertheless, I continue to follow projects that interested me at the time, so that I can sometimes drop by during major events or anniversaries. I just started such a complicated relationship with Blue Archive. My immense love for the work of artists and especially animators fades when I go beyond the main menu. And it looks like this list will only grow..

Thanks to everyone who read the blog! I hope you have already found something to your liking or are interested in this far from noble genre. Share your experience and opinion regarding this or that topic or correct me if I missed something or made a mistake somewhere. The main thing is to remember that you are still playing gacha, and take care of your wallet!