Gacha: Irresistible capsule toys

Gacha

Gacha reminds me of childhood where I used to put a coin in a weighing machine, a sudden twist or crank of the radiant wheel happens popping out a ticket showing some fancy information along with weight. But this Gacha makes the customers delighted by rewarding some random surprises in the form of toys. This article will create an awareness of gacha.

Background:

Gacha is a Japanese word and a short form for Gachapon. This is a coin-operated vending machine originated in Japan that throws out a toy, packed in a capsule. The word gachapon suggests both vending machines and toys collected from them. The US too has similar types of coin-operated machines, but the toys are of cheap and low quality. Initially, in Japan, each gachapon toy was sold for 10¥, which was unhygienic and of cheaper quality. In February 1965, plastic capsules were designed to hold these colorful Japanese toys. The giant toy company called Bandai.co entered into this business, risking in selling the toys ranging between 100¥ and 500¥.

initiative

Due to advancements in materials, this company has taken the initiative to develop the capsules with high-grade PVC plastic, which is cylindrical in shape to accommodate more products. Bandai sold 3.4 billion units until 2017 March. This company has launched gachapon machines around 360,000 in Japan and 20,000 in Asia. Gachapons are all miniature toys that can be decorated around the computer or on the shelves, inserted into keychains or can be placed anywhere. They form famous characters of people, lunch plates, umbrellas, wide varieties of hats for cats, various characters of ladies expressing different mood swings, backpacks, office chairs, lanterns, traffic lights, etc.

replica of Japanese manga

These toys are also a replica of Japanese manga, video games or anime. For example, the invention of Fuchiko in 2012 with 1500 design variations created an explosion in the gachapon business, selling 15 million units. The hilarious part of this game is while playing the user will never know which toy figure of that particular set is coming out from the machine. The user will play numerous times to earn the desired toy to complete the full set.

marvel gachapon

For example, marvel gachapon, where the user acquires all the marvel character gachas. This gaming creates enthusiasm and can trade among friends for missing gachas. Sometimes the user will get frustrated if this machine shoots the same toy often. Gradually all the ages of generations in Japan are found to be crazy in piling up these beautifully crafted toys. Especially this gacha fever is more in adults who are eager to gather their favorite set of toy figures. With a slow and steady pace, this gacha game crept into other countries too.

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Gacha games:

Gacha did not confine itself to physical machines and capsule toys. It has entered into the mobile gaming world in the form of gacha video games. These are virtual games which are similar to gacha machines in the real world. Here the user collects boxes, packs, cards or characters to fight against other players by spending money. These characters and cards have various rankings or grades to complete the challenges. The user has to do repeated transactions in obtaining high ranking and powerful items to accomplish multiple challenging levels.Below is the description of few gacha games:

What exactly is Gacha mechanism:

The player compiles items, cards or characters by spinning or pulling a gacha, (which is identical to a gacha machine in the real-world) using a particular amount of in-game currency this is called gacha mechanism. Sometimes these cards or items are very rare, so the users must spin and pull the gachas multiple times to avail a specific or desired set of cards or items. Gachas are necessary for the user to advance in the games. Through gachas, the player achieves additional powers, cards or items to combat against enemies.

Summoners War:

Summoners War was developed by a South Korean game developer, Com2uS. This game was launched on June 12th 2014, for both IOS and Android devices. And he received 150,000,000 downloads worldwide which earned up to $1.35 billion. This is based on the genre turn-based strategy role-playing game.

         Players prefer the role of a summoner who opens the scroll in order to obtain monsters to combat in turn-based battle. Newly summoned monsters have rankings from 1 to 5. Monsters whose rankings are 5 and 4 have 0.5% and 8.2% chances to retrieve the monsters from the mystical scroll. For whom the ranking is 3, have 91% chances to achieve the monsters from the scroll.

Final Fantasy Brave Exivus:

Final Fantasy Brave Exivus is a role-playing genre game designed by Alim and distributed by Square Enix for IOS, Android Fire devices. By August 2019, this application has five-plus million downloads, 787,000 plus reviews and 4.3 / 5 rating.

               This gacha game is a combination of both Final Fantasy series and Brave Frontier. Here the participants can demand their characters to attack by touching the character’s attack button. Special attacks can be made by swiping the button and choosing needed commands. Players pass through many levels to win against the end boss. This gains the participants to win experience points and money.

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Fate/Grand Order:

Fate/Grand Order is an online free-to-play launched on July 19th 2015 for Android. This is a role-playing gacha game developed by Delightworks and announced by Aniplex. This game is drawn from Type-Moon’s Fate/stay night franchise and retains one plus million downloads, 34,000 reviews and 4.4. / 5 rating. This game did $982 million in 2017 and marked as the sixth-highest mobile game in that year. By the end of 2019, it passed over $4 billion.

                The game is founded on both turn-based strategy role-playing genre, where the player carries the master role and authorities the group of people called servants to fight with enemies. The players form a party of 6 servants in each combat in which 3 are active, and the other three are reserved. Each servant has 5 cards. These cards are classified into the heavy attack, medium attack and light attack. The master controls these cards, and in each attack, the master uses 3 cards. In one attack, if the master utilizes 3 similar cards, it is called a chain which fetches a bonus depending on the card properties, and if the three cards happened to be of the same servant, then it is called a brave chain which adds a powerful attack at the end.

Raid: Shadow Legends:

Raid: Shadow Legends is a free to play PC gacha game created by Israeli developer Plarium games. It was released on June 29th 2018 which contains five-plus million downloads, 344,000 plus reviews and 4.4 ratings. This game is a turn-based strategy role-playing game.

        The game comprises a single player who overcomes 12 levels. Each level has seven phases, with three levels of difficulty. Here players should gather an army for battles in settings like castles, deserts and temples to protect from enemies. 

Marvel: Strike Force:

Marvel: Strike Force is a turn-based role-playing game introduced by FoxNext on March 28th 2018.This game earned ten plus million downloads, 330,000 reviews and 4.2 stars in rating.

This game enables the players to assemble all marvel characters including heroes, villains and generic characters from the huge organizations like SHIELD, The Hand and Hydra to struggle in turn-based battles. Here the collection of characters happen immediately by giving to players, and other characters are rewarded in the gameplay or by unlocking the shards. These shards are acquired from winning battles or buying from a shop. The combats in this game are divided into rounds. The round starts by sending the character possessing the highest speed attribute to damage the opponent badly and finally, the game ends having the last character alive.  Another role-playing gacha game founded on the marvel comics is Marvel: Future Fight.

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Apart from the above, there are humongous gacha games which are ruling the mobile gaming world and making out huge profits. Below is the list:

1. The Alchemist Code

2. Tales of Erin

3. Marvel Strike Force

4. Dragalia Lost

5. The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross

6. RAID: Shadow Legends

7. Fate/Grand Order

8. Another Eden

9. Azur Lane

10. Brave Frontier

11. Exos Heroes

12. Epic Seven

13. One Piece Bounty Rush

14. Langrisser Mobile

15. Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius

Issues raised with gacha:

  • Gacha games by nature develop thirst and curiosity among the players in the hunting of new collectables. These collectables are collected by doing a lot of microtransactions. The user will not get satisfied until the desired set of collectables are achieved. In some games, a huge amount of money is paid in a short amount of time to acquire the best collectables. Some people refer to this as gambling.
  • There are no age limits; even children without parents’ notice can play the game by performing microtransactions. Some gacha games have filthy content which the child shouldn’t view.
  • In 2012, Japan banned the complete gacha system, where minors are spending thousands of dollars to collect rare items.
  • Other countries, including Japan, have framed laws to safeguard the players from these trickery practices.

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Conclusion:

Overall, gacha games are fun gambling games which are not very helpful to society. The ban on complete gacha in Japan is still not an eye-opener to many people. Big brands are behind these games to earn enormous profits. Anything out of limits is injurious to health and the environment. Keeping this in mind, it is better to play the gacha games within limits.

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