Gacha games

Gacha games, alternatively known as mobile hero collectors, mobages, mobile MMOs, are a mobile game genre where the gameplay revolves around summoning and evolving heroes from a rarity that spans across from 1 star to 6 stars (or in some games, 5 stars). Back then, in the early era of gacha games with some examples being Hello Hero, Brave Frontier, Summoners War, and many older gacha games, gacha games were seen as a niche thing. However, as of late 2018 when the likes of Epic Seven and Dragalia Lost gave gacha games a bigger push, gacha games became even more relevant to mobile game players in the US and around the world, with Genshin Impact raising the bar of newer gacha games when it took the industry by storm in 2020.

While gacha games date back to 2011 with early Japanese ancestors with Puzzle and Dragons back in 2012 and Cygames's Rage of Bahamut which started out on a platform called Mobage (hence the term "mobage" was used to call a gacha game back then) and then hit iOS/Android in 2012, it wasn't till around 2013 when Korean devs started making their own gacha games when games took over, with Hello Hero launching in 2013 as one of the earliest ancestors of Korean gacha gaming that also inspired Seven Knights and many older Korean gacha games. However, as gacha games (which, at the time, people called them different things as they didn't know the term "gacha game) progressed, it has reported that many gacha games failed to captivate players and ended up shutting down pretty quickly, usually in around 2 years or sometimes even less than that.

Common types of gacha games

• Idle/autobattler: One of the more common types of gacha games, where you run 5 heroes and they all attack at the same time while charging up their super attack. Earlier ancestors include Soul Hunters and Heroes Charge. Most gacha games that aren't action-focused usually have an "auto-battle" option where all players need to do is watch the AI take control of their heroes.
• Turn-based: This is a very common genre seen in games like Epic Seven, Honkai: Star Rail, and Raid: Shadow Legends, where each hero has 2-3 skills in their kit and only one attacks a a time. Usually like in most turn-based JRPGs, who gets to go first is determined by the SPD stat. Usually ran with four heroes.

Why most of these games fail

NOTE: Many of these factors are not limited to Japanese gachas, but also both Korean and Chinese gacha games as well.

1. The biggest issue is that like most mobile game trends, gacha games usually follow each others' trends and adding very little to improve on it. While currently, the most copied gacha game remains Lilith Games's AFK Arena where its the portrait mode (where the game is played vertically instead of horizontally) 5-hero team where one hero attacks at time with the idle lobby because of how AFK Arena became huge in China to the point where most gacha devs would make gachas based on AFK Arena's gameplay given how easy it was to copy AFK Arena compared to other gachas. Aside from AFK Arena, some bad examples of copying include the following;
   • Jewel Dragon - Puzzle & Dragons, the former being a complete copy of Puzzle and Dragons that died with very little fanfare and was only available on the iOS App Store. Puzzle and Dragons later ended up inspiring two Korean knockoffs by NHN PixelCube, Kill Me Again: Infectors and Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which both games ended up shutting down in less than 2 years. One knockoff that managed to survive was Legendary: Game of Heroes, where instead of making one piece move across the board, multiple diagonal moves are made at once.
   • Artery Gear Fusion - Epic Seven
   • Eternal Tree - Granblue Fantasy, the former shutting down in only one year in Japan in June 2023 after launching in June of last year, because simply put, the Japanese gacha players just preferred Granblue Fantasy anyway and saw Eternal Tree as a knockoff. It eventually shut down in Taiwan later that year with very little fanfare, which launched in late 2021, therefore only lasting 2 years.
   • Winning Derby - Uma Musume Pretty Derby, the former being a bootleg-quality game that utilizes AI artwork combined with poor production values. Common traits of "bootleg" gachas include not only copying the gacha game's gameplay as is, but also including things like copypasted character kits and lazy production values, especially when AI or sometimes tracing is used for the character portraits.
2. Many of these gacha games rely on the philosophy that only the highest rarity heroes (SSRs, nat 5s, uniques) are relevant gameplay-wise. This not only makes the lower rarity heroes entirely useless, but it also makes the highest rarity ironically the most common. Some games even went forth to make it to where very few heroes are usable endgame-wise while everyone else is virtually useless. This further limits the incentive for whales to spend when the only answer to the endgame becomes "use the right heroes". Games such as Revived Witch have shown that this philosophy is not needed and all it does is hurt the overall gacha game's lifespan and possible revenue from gacha game spenders, especially when it ended up to where the highest rarity heroes are either too broken forcing players to pull them to progress the game's story or are too useless for story content. For example, Summoners War avoids this trope where in the PvE content including dungeons and Trial of Ascension, even the 3* and 4* monsters/units, including free units/monsters can get the job done as it was one of those gachas where despite its very low 5* rates, it made it to where dupes don't really matter unlike most gacha games that are more generous when it comes to summon rates.
   • In fact, some gacha games that have dupes make it to where you cannot further evolve or ascend the hero unless you get a certain amount of dupes. Sometimes, depending on how the gacha game is designed, this artificially makes the lower rarity heroes usable. This becomes a big problem in collabs (where the gacha game launches a summon event for another franchise's characters) as collab heroes cannot get anymore dupes after said collab ends. Epic Seven for example has a dupe system called Memory Imprint, which is an additive stat boost depending on what position the hero is in and doesn't gate any evolution/ascension systems behind dupes, as you can still 6* and max out a hero without dupes aside from Memory Imprint.
3. Lack of content: Many gacha games snowball their playerbases/revenue after 4 to 6 months at best due to players running out of content to do after completing the main game's story, especially when they're often designed to be played only once. Therefore, it results in players getting bored with nothing to do except for further upgrading their heroes for the next story update, therefore resulting in them uninstalling and moving on to another gacha game. This is the reason why gacha games require some sort of repeatable endgame content (Spiral Abyss from Genshin Impact for example) that requires multiple teams to survive for more than at best 2 years. A lot of gacha games have failed and shut down in less than 2 years due to the main story content being able to be cleared with just only one team and with nothing to do afterward except for AI vs. AI PvP (where, in most 5-hero autobattlers, the PvP content cannot be manually controlled and is entirely through "auto battle" mode, which is seen in most turn-based gachas) and other unrewarding side content.
4. Having way more servers than necessary: A common culture associated with some gacha games is having an excessive amount of servers, or having like 10 different servers as opposed to the standard 3 or 4 (US, Europe, Oceania, Asia). The problem with having so many servers is that it costs more to maintain multiple servers and it ends up segregating the playerbase to the point where the playerbase artificially feels emptier than it should be, therefore eventually resulting in server merges as a form of cost-cutting. One unique example of this was when Soul Seeker (the same gacha that required 35 days to evolve a 6* hero to 7* and paywalled the option to evolve the hero with its 2nd premium currency known as rubies at a time when many gacha games had random hero fusion and pre-evolved hero gacha), developed by Clegames and published by Com2uS Corp back then, launched a second server in the middle of its lifespan that had no purpose other than serving as a second savefile and/or starting over. During when several older gacha games were popping up in 2014 and 2015, several of them made it to where the Korean/Japanese versions were the same as the global versions but only had one shared international server.
5. Several of these games often find ways to cynically monetize themselves, with methods such as VIP systems (alternatively known as VIP tier benefits as VIP systems often have multiple tiers), where spenders get more quality of life such as increased resource gain, reduced summon costs, etc. These aren't limited to idle gachas or AFK Arena clones as back in 2018 and 2019, Japanese and Korean gacha game devs were convinced that when pity systems become mandatory (For example, Epic Seven didn't have a pity system at launch before implementing it in mid 2019), whales would have nothing to spend their money on if they get a full roster too quickly and without spending, so in response, many Korean and Japanese gacha games during that time implemented VIP systems here and there on turn-based gachas and even IP-based gacha games, but many of them flopped shortly after with many of these devs learning from gacha veterans that VIP systems have always been bad altogether. In fact, Eversoul was going to implement a VIP system, but they scrapped it. This is not to be confused with practices like paid/free currency separation (some gachas have a special banner that guarantees a SSR/nat 5 every 10 pulls but only can be pulled with paid currency) or paid battle passes.
   • One of the most infamous examples of this is Taimanin RPG: Extasy. During its launch week, the developer which was publishing this globally, suddenly realized they gave too much gems from the start, so instead of just nerfing the gem-gain or just revamping the system already (because it was already launched in Japan prior to globally), they had to resort to not only nerfing the gem rewards, but also putting every player into gem debt, where they cannot earn any more currency until all gem debt is cleared off for no fault of the players. This resulted in the game underperforming with the damage already done, and shutting down in less than a year globally. It's extremely hard to recover from a launch disaster, as their developers/publishers simply put, cannot undo the damage that has already been done quickly enough.
6. Some of these gacha games often have useless or badly executed mechanics, such as automatic EXP generators where you can place down heroes and they gain EXP over time. The problem with these kind of mechanics is that 90% of the time, the EXP gain is so low that it adds nothing to help the player's progression. In fact, some gacha games have the option of buying gold or the game's farmable currency via premium currency, which the value is so low that even whales will always avoid it, especially when the amount can be easily farmed by dailies. For example, Guardian Tales had the option of buying 1 million gold for 10,000 gems (for reference, it takes 8,100 gems to do 30 summons). Buying gold/currency via gems/paid currency becomes pointless when the gold is farmed way too quickly and ends up being more expensive than summons/gacha in many of these games.
7. A majority of these gacha games, excluding AFK Arena clones have a stamina mechanic that limits how long a player can grind, and some gacha games increase the amount of stamina you need for later stages and resource dungeons to the point where it takes 6-8 games to fully deplete the stamina meter. Usually, the stamina meter can be increased via grinding your account level or via special buildings/mechanics. Speaking of stamina, it can take up to 30 minutes to an hour to fully deplete a stamina meter via auto-repeating dungeons, as most games other than 5-hero autobattlers often do not have sweep/skip systems where you can instantly complete stages and get rewards afterward.
8. These games, as with many mobile games, are no stranger to performance issues and here and there to where the framerate can chug CPU-bound wise and sometimes get memory leaks (where after you exit out of a game, you can't open it back up immediately due to RAM-bound issues). While many people will easily shrug off the 1* App Store/Play Store reviews when all they state is that it crashes on their device to the point where it can be seen as hugely "cliche", this mentality actually dates back to 2014 and 2015 when mobile games got even more demanding and required newer flagship phones to run them properly. It can also be linked because of how Android games, unlike iOS, are expected to run across a multitude of hardware, including Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Exynos, it can be very hard to get optimal performance while making sure it can run on all three types of hardware. For iOS, porting on Apple Silicon is in reality much easier because its not as fragmented as Android OS, which is why iOS and Apple Silicon Macs are getting AAA native games like Assassin's Creed: Shadows while Android devices are unlikely to in the future.
   • Additionally, mobile operating systems & hardware tend to throw out old code unlike desktop operating systems to keep their system sizes down, which means there's a chance that newer flagship hardware could end up being unoptimized and end up randomly crashing due to certain code getting thrown out either hardware-wise or newer OS-wise. This is why Infinity Blade and many older iOS games for example broke on newer iPhones, as the iPhone 6 and newer could not run the outdated aspect ratio/resolution of these games.
9. Many of these gacha games are made to cash-in on popular franchises and IPs. When Fate/Grand Order, based on the Fate franchise became a huge success, tons of Japanese gacha game devs tried to become the next Fate/Grand Order. Therefore, with how much limitations IP-based gachas have, they often have shorter lifespans especially taking in mind those only released in Japan. One example of an IP-based gacha that didn't even last a year was Grancrest War: Quartet Conflict, which not only flopped in Japan, but also globally.
   • The worst example of this is Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat. At first, the developer behind this game, NebulaJoy, best known for Mega Man X Dive, was aiming to make a faithful mobile version of Devil May Cry, but then simply to pander to the Chinese gacha game players, they turned it into a Honkai Impact 3rd/Punishing: Gray Raven knockoff where you run 3 party members and there's this tag system.
   • While gacha games based on Japanese/Korean anime IPs are hit or miss, gacha games based on Western franchises (TV shows, cartoons, etc) are often no better, as they're often made by developers who lack understanding of how the gacha gaming industry works and thus most of the time they shut down quickly due to them not making enough money to sustain themselves financially. For example, Adventure Time Heroes, which was just a Raid Shadow Legends knockoff of Adventure Time, ended up shutting down in less than a year after it soft-launched in Southeast Asian countries. This is also furthered by the fact gacha games based on Western franchises have lesser appeal towards the three big gacha markets; China, Korea, and Japan.
10. Its very hard to get invested into a gacha game's story, when in reality, most of that is going to become nullified as many gacha games do not finish their stories, or simply put, shut down on a cliffhanger altogether before EoS/shutting down. Back then, many gacha games told their stories in the cookie-cutter portrait-to-portrait lobby-based dialogue with zero interaction with text appearing instantly. Only a few gacha games actually finish their stories before EoS/shutting down, but most of the time, they do not, shutting down in a way where the plot was left open for another episode or season. This is because as gacha games are live service, they are expected to keep the story going as long as possible. Summoners War for example averts this trope as there is no ongoing story in that game and that game focuses more on replayable endgame content (such as Trial of Ascension which resets monthly) than new episodes/story content that are meant to be played only once.
11. Global shafting: Gacha game developers or publishers would often do paltry practices that hinder the experience of global servers. This can range from raised summon prices, various changes, etc. In fact, it was reported that many gacha games that did the infamous global shafting practice weren't doing too well commercially/financially China, Japan, or South Korea, the three biggest gacha game markets, therefore attempting to launch it globally as a "band-aid solution" against just throwing in the towel altogether. It's been proved that if a gacha game already flopped in all three markets, its even less likely to succeed anywhere else.
    • The biggest example was Border Reign, also known as Kingsense globally, where Superprism, a publisher decided to pick it up for a global release in May 2021. Aside from many launch disaster antics including a server rollback (where the gacha game reverses everything to a previous state, the worst being launch time) and a 5* rating campaign where the official Discord launched an event that eventually got cancelled due to backlash, the game ended up shutting down afterward in less than half a year. It was later found out that Kingsense was actually a publishing job of a Japanese gacha game that was already failed critically and was on life support back in 2019 and launched in China in January 2021, where it also received heavy criticism and flopped there as well.
12. Since the early years of gacha gaming (2014 to 2016 when people called these games different things before the term "gacha game" was standardized and when Facebook was king when it came to these games), these games are notorious for having very short lifespans to the point where most gacha games do not live past 2 to 3 years at best, with 2023 seeing a ton of gacha games that didn't even last a year. For example, Ezetta Prophecy only lasted one month before shutting down. Because of how there's too many gacha games which causes oversaturation, it takes a lot of luck and risk-taking for a gacha game to manage to get past the 2-year reputation (as many failed gacha games EoS/shutdown around a year and half, or around 16 to 18 months from launch).
    • A very common reason why most of these games shut down very quickly is that they were unable to make enough revenue for their developers to stay afloat, therefore resulting in the developers shutting down, which is why most of these gacha devs are never to be seen again after their gacha game shuts down afterward, buried in the sands of time.

Examples

Good examples

1. Genshin Impact
2. Epic Seven
3. Guardian Tales
4. Blue Archive
5. Granblue Fantasy
6. Fate/Grand Order
7. Arknights
8. Azur Lane
9. Fire Emblem Heroes
10. Honkai Impact 3rd
11. Honkai: Star Rail
12. Project Sekai: Colorful Stage (also known as Hatsune Miku Project Sekai: Colorful Stage internationally).
13. Tales of the Rays (Japanese server only)
14. Tales of Link
15. Kingdom Hearts Union χ[Cross]
16. Pokemon Masters EX

Bad/failed examples

These are many examples of gacha games that didn't last more than 2 years, or sometimes in less than a year. As stated above, those many failures aren't limited to Japanese gachas that mostly don't make their way globally, but also both Chinese and Korean gachas as both also are subject to failures here and there. Aside from fast shutdowns, there will also be gacha games that jumped the shark.

1. WAVE!!! Naminori Boys was a Japanese otome gacha game that launched in 2021 to a huge disaster, bugs were rampant, and it was reported that the text would end up being replaced with placeholders if the device was set to anything else but Japanese. The final nail in the coffin was when the developer, MAGES decided to do a maintenance to fix the game. Then the maintenance got prolonged again and again until for at least one month, where it was announced on X that the game was going to be shutting down for good. Excluding the prolonged maintenance, the game only lasted three days.
2. Closers RT: New Order was a Korean gacha spinoff of the MMO Closers that launched in 2023 to abysmal financial results, and then after 2 days, the developer decided to pull the plug on the game itself and issued refunds to everyone with the game shutting down in only 7 days after it launched. The game's rating dropped down to 2* prior to shutting down with poor action combat that fails to compete with the likes of Honkai Impact 3rd and similar games, and inferior graphics.
3. Love Live School Idol Festival II miracle live was the direct sequel to Love Live School Idol Festival, which the predecessor shut down before making way for the sequel. However, it failed to garner any revenue against other competing gachas both in Korea and Japan when it launched in Japan first. Then, in 2024, it was announced that the game was going to get a release globally, but with a catch; the game would be shutting down in only three months, with its EoS/shutdown announced before the game was even released to begin with. The game ended up underperforming and killed its franchise for good afterward.
4. Brave Frontier: ReXona, then known as BFX, was supposed to mark the comeback of the famous Brave Frontier franchise developed by Alim. However, aside from its uninteresting gameplay which can be best described as somewhat like Soul Seeker where gameplay revolves around summoning heroes in battle where they attack and leave the field after a period of time, it failed to get gamers intrigued especially with its outdated looking graphics that feel like a mid 2010s 3D gacha game. Eventually, the game shut down in less than a year (September 2021 to April 2022, with EoS announcement 3 months in advance on January), taking all of the other Brave Frontier games with it and killing the whole franchise for good, with Alim moving onto new IPs afterward. Like Terra Battle 2 which only lasted one year, it proved to gacha devs that making direct sequels to gacha games that try to co-exist with the predecessors never works.
5. Muv-Luv Dimensions, then changed to Immortals: Muv-Luv Alternative, was an action twin-stick shooter gacha game based on the Muv-Luv franchise that started out as a visual novel before expanding towards manga and anime spinoffs. When the game launched in 2022, it crashed disastrously with a 1% SSR rate with no pity system as late as 2022, tons of bugs, including a duping bug where converting guest accounts into registered accounts would for some reason give the account free summons and it can be stacked multiple times. After a planned banwave and a fallout stemmed from Japanese gacha players, the game was pulled within six hours after release. However, the devs didn't give up on the gacha game just yet, as they decided to polish it some more for a re-release in July 11, 2023.

Comments

Loading comments...