How Gacha Games Get You Addicted

For help with gambling in the US:

I've been playing so much Genshin Impact lately, and have some experience with gacha games and psych in general. AFK Arena, Genshin Impact, Summoner's War, Raid Shadow Legends, and way more games use a lot of the same strategies to convince people to stick around and spend, and their annual revenues really show it. Stay safe, have fun, and don't be a whale.

[CrazyBerry]

I played Genshin Impact and was F2P for a good amount of time. I really enjoyed playing it and i was basically vibing to it. But i didnt realize that the fun slowly faded away and focused more on grinding Artifacts and Primogems (the currency for drawing weapons and characters). It basically became an everyday chore and it really affected my school grades in a negative way. I was so desperate on grinding that i started spending money on the battle pass, which i ABSOLUTELY regret.

Then i realized “oh, this game isnt fun anymore, im even starting to spend money to feed the circle, my grades are shit, im becoming addicted!” I immediately deinstalled it after that, but im tempted to reinstall it during new events or start playing other gacha games. This video is facts and people should really see it or get the information of it.

[afl]

Spreading gacha addiction through medium of videogames is genius tbh. From dealer's pov it's better stuff then drugs. It's legal. It's digital (payment/stuff via phone). It's recyclable.

[kinjogoldbar]

Excellent video. I'd like to add that even if you don't spend any money on these types of games, the tradeoff is that you end up spending a lot of your time instead, which is just as bad of an addiction. You can easily get sucked into the habit of just doing the daily activities to get your free currency. You get trained to come back into the game on a daily basis, making it a part of your daily routine that you look forward to every day. I once tried playing a gacha game just to see how it worked (with the intent to never spend any money) and after a few months realized I had spent hundreds of hours tediously grinding, when I should have been doing other more important things with that time. Oh, and I did end up spending a few dollars in the end.

[anarchyskywalker]

Thank you for making this video! I played this game for a couple of month and it is exactly like you explained. The early game is very generous. You need very little to make progress. The resource costs are quite low and everything needed is available. A world of abundance. Then the turning point comes. Not only are the resource costs exploding exponentially, you also get very restriced with the amount of progress you can make. Keyword here is resin. You need it to farm mora (ingame currency which is needed for almost everything), experience books (character exp), talent upgrade materials and boss upgrade materials (special stuff you need to level characters), elemental crystals (special upgrade material). You get 180 resin per 24 hours (which can be increased by spending primogems). Let's do a number example of what you need to level a 5-star character to max level including talents but EXCLUDING weapons and artifacts.

Mora: 7, 050, 030
Farming mora costs 20 resin per run and gets you 60, 000 mora.

Experience Books: 419 tier 3 books
Farming exp-books costs 20 resin per run and gets you between 4-5 t3 books.

Boss materials: 46
Farming bosses cost you 40 resin per run and gets you between 2-3 boss mats.

Elemental crystals: 1 tier 1 + 9 tier 2 + 9 tier 3 + 6 tier 4
Crystals are dropped from bosses aswell and the drop rates are also very rng-based. From my own experience you get like 2-3 t1 and 1 t2. Every now and then you get "lucky" and one t3 crystal drops. The chances of a t4 crystal are almost non existent, but "possible" I guess. You can upgrade the crystal into higher tier ones with a factor of 3 which means you need 3 t1 to make one t2 and so on. So basically a single t4 crystal is worth 3*3*3 = 27 t1 crystals. Oh and ofcourse you need a good amount of mora aswell to upgrade them.

Talent upgrade Materials: 9 tier 1 + 63 tier 2 + 114 tier 3
Farming talent materials costs 20 resin and is highly rng-based. From my experience the drops are 3 t1 and 2-3 t2 mats. The materials are upgradable into higher tier ones for a specific amount of mora and a factor of 3. You need 3 t1 to get 1 t2 etc. This means a t3 mat is worth 3*3 = 9 t1 mats.

There are also some other materials you need which you can farm by killing mobs or picking in the open world. They can be annoying to farm but because they are time gated aswell but not as hard as the above mentioned stuff.

Well then, lets calculate the resin needed and add it up:
Mora: 7050030 / 60000 * 20 resin = 2350 resin
Exp books: 419 / 4.5 * 20 resin = 1862 resin
Boss materials: 46 / 2.5 * 40 resin = 736 resin
Crystals Tier 1: 271 / 5.5 * 40 resin - 736 resin (from boss mat runs) = 1971 - 736 = 1235 resin
Talent materials Tier 1: (9 + 63 * 3 + 114 * 3 * 3) / (3 + 2.5 * 3) * 20 resin = 1224 / 10.5 * 20 resin = 2331 resin
(Calculating talent materials and crystals are difficult because of the rng. To simplify things I went with my own experience on drop rates and broke down all higher tier ones into the lowest)

So it is 2350 + 1862 + 736 + 1235 + 2331 = 8514 resin or 47.3 days worth of resin to level just ONE single 5 star to maximum. Not including weapons and the greatest resin sink of them all: artifacts. Artifact are behind a wall of several rng layers and farming them is the biggest scam ever. One dude did the math on them and the result was to get 1 perfect artifact ~270 thousand years of resin would be needed. Every character need 5 artifacts btw. Good luck on that one... And at this point I should mention that the maximum resin is capped at 160. Which means you cannot simply chill one or two weeks and then come back and grind with the piled resin. Ofcourse not. The company uses all the mechanics to force you to come back every day.

Puh, I'm sry this was a long one...
tl;dr why is this shit legal? I have the answer to this, but I'm not gonna go into politics. You can find one yourself, if you just reflect on things.

Thanks for reading
Peace

[iagteam]

I had this gacha addiction in Genshin and I just recently stopped since I notice it's bad effect on both my time and money. Best cure I have is I focused on something that is really beneficial for my career, and keeps my excitement really high. Right now, I quit Genshin and gaming overall and went to more helpful stuffs like trainings and chess.

[ronaldelcana]

the worst part is players are defending this type of games.
When someone gives their opinion like how awful the system of the game, other players would respond, new to gacha? suggesting that he oe she should stop complaining because it is "how the gacha works"

[sofia-mqei]

What a lovely video. Playing Genshin Impact right now, and I'm super consumed by it, luckily I just enjoy the game's story mode and how the characters look, but this gave me some insight too, super thankful I found this video! Great content and I'm sure your channel will get lots of subs.

[NCC-]

While this video really showed a great purpose of the predatory and addictive tactics of gachas (And some of the problems they cause with our daily lives), pretty much you are forgetting the end game point few people speak out: The game's death. Not every server based game is destined to live forever, someday other huge successful rival will dethrone them, people will get bored, or the Company might think they are not profitable anymore, turn the killswitch and it is done: No more game, no more grinding, no more JPG Waifus with 0.06% drop rate. (For example: Magia Record)

What did you earned in the end? After expressing your "loyalty" to the company buying Battle Passes or the gems' packs?

IMO it is a better bet to just be a traditional Console/PC Gamer, far away from games with micro-transactions. Let's not forget retro gaming exists, or do you question why people still collects retro consoles like the SNES, Sega Genesis or PlayStation 1 to play games they used to love when they were child/teen even after 30 years of their original releases?

With gacha games, can you imagine yourself playing these games after 30 years in the future? During this new year I finally come into realization that all of this is just a waste of time, effort, and mental health. And while it'll be a bit hard, it is better to just cut all of this in the healthy way than just sink more time in hell, gambling for a 0.7% drop rate character.

[chaeripie]

This is why I've stayed as a f2p genshin player. I know that these games will cause you to want more and more once you start paying for it.

[volcaniicash]

this is a masterclass on depression. holy fucking triggering. excellent, excellent video!

[princekratos]

I know this video is 5 month old, i just want to say that this kind of videos really helps people that are in such situations, i hope you make more of this kind of content. Much love to your channel :)

[whysoserious]

Man genshin did it so well they have players defending their methods/system
Without a care in the world how their favorite game is using them as pawns and a cash cow.

[Kilatypus]

Amazing video. Definitely deserved a subscription. There are far too many people who defend Gacha games and don't realize how far their predatory practices have leeched on to them. I understand that game developers need to run a business and get paid, but this is not the way to do it

[MifuneTakumi]

bruh... seeing so many of this kind of videos that now i realize some years ago when opening yugioh or pokemon or the card game packs were a thing on the streaming community they're basically doing real life gachas

[grasstoucher]

I was an F2P player for SMT Dx2 Liberation and E7.

I may have not lose any money, i did lose time and energy. All that time and energy could have been better spent doing something else though i didn't see why i should read books and work out and all that back then. My sleep schedule went to shit because of SMT Dx2's 100 free summons and free 5 star events.

I would grind for hours on end and try and climb the pvp ranks. I also talked to the people on the chat but I'm talking about me quitting SMT Dx2 and E7. However, if you're curious, the whole chat stuff went to shit because of drama and all that stuff.

Eventually, i got burned out and decided to uninstall it. I said farewell in the chat.

Probably a year later, i started playing E7. The art is great and the game is more balanced than SMT Dx2. But i have changed as a person. I read books, worked out, and honed my passion. I didn't spend a lot of time playing E7 and there's also some grind there.

In the end, i deleted E7. Oh, and i didn't try and chat with anyone this time. I'm no longer interested in game chats in general.

I'm glad that E7 and SMT Dx2 were the only gacha games I've played, and I'm even more glad that i didn't play multiple gacha games at the same time. I can't imagine the amount of time and energy spent playing multiple gacha games.

If you're reading this, thank you for your time. If you're still playing gacha games, i advise you to quit.

>But i have spent money and invested my time and energy in it
Well, guess what? The more you play these games, the more time, energy and money you'll lose.

Once again, thanks for reading

[sparklestar_]

For me, I like dipping my toes into these games. sure after a while they all share the same basic features but there are so many different gacha games around and as someone who likes anime, there are even more. Whenever I play one of these though, I always tell myself that i'm gonna be free to play and that I play the game for fun. Wether it be from getting well known characters I like on occasion or just having the gameplay being fun, it's pretty easy for me to play this way and not get any addiction going. Plus this mindset stops me from getting too addicted because if the game stops being fun, I stop playing. If i'm just playing for fun but am finding no fun in the game, why should I keep playing? of course i'll occasionally get on once in a while but it's not a problem for me and I can continue my life without it affecting me badly.

Sorry this got really long lol. I just hope that for any other people looking for a way to enjoy gacha games without getting addicted, this might work for them too!

[astaganaga]

Thank you for making this video. I feel anyone who plays any gacha game should watch this. These gacha games can get so insidiously predatory without you noticing. I’m thankfully still an F2P player and read the infamous FFBE whale story before I got hooked to make any microtransaction…

[PuppyGems]

thank you. loved this video. being addicted to Genshin sucks. its very expensive to were i had no food. i want to return to console games and PC games even if there is no anime so i can eat. I dont even like the story in genshin, but feel pressured to play it as it the number 1 game for past years and its all over youtube. the main character can't even talk :( and i find the story very cheaply done and no interest as i the main character can't even talk with the characters in the story. there is not enough time to build empathy towards the characters in this story. This game could of been a great rpg game instead of a gacha. They could of just have the Traveler travel the world for there sibling, similar to other rpgs. But the gacha made this very unenjoyable as the dopamine effect goes away to fast and you feel unsatisfied with what you have. Then we have artifacts and weapons! another in game gacha system. No good basic artifacts your character wont due damage due to their strength and weaknesses. I think artifacts was the finally straw for me.

[femmirika]

Heyo, really love that you talk about gacha and addiction, but unfortunatly its not as easy as you think, to say it is just 'dopamine', because actually it is very unclear how dopamine influences any addiction differently, than socially acapptable rewards

Still love your content, but would recommend the book 'Addiction and Choice' by Nick Heather and Gabriel Segal, if you are more interested- you defenetly do not have to read all of it, but there is a very insigthful section about the neuroscience of addiction

[doodle-oh]

dude, your calm tone and pretty great script makes me wonder how the fuck you only have 100ish subs, hopefully you gain a bit more steam later down the line