When I initially conceived of Gachapwned, I did so as a limited experiment, and that experiment has now run its course. I did so because as I noted in the first column, gacha games tend to be treated in a particular way by people who may or may not know much about them or even understand why the appeal is there, which necessitated an in-depth examination and an explanation of how gacha is not a bad business model alone but an entire field of vice unto itself.

So let’s wrap this up. If you’ve been reading along since the beginning, you understand all of that now. But understanding does not in and of itself give a path forward. What does all of this mean for gacha as a business model? Should we regard it differently? Is it not actually a predatory model at all?

Yes. Of course it is. I said that during the first column and I knew where this was going from the start. It is a predatory model. It’s just a predatory model that is part of the appeal of the game itself. That’s what a vice means.

Regulating vice is tricky, as I mentioned in the prior column, but that doesn’t mean that we should take a leave of absence from trying. The closest parallel to gacha is gambling, but it’s also gambling within a fixed pool; as I mentioned back in the second column, while you could wind up spending the maximum amount of money to theoretically get a character, you also could wind up spending a lot less. I’ve had times when I wanted to get the new character that was added and drawn them on the very first pull I did, bypassing pity mechanics altogether.

It’s also not purely gambling because the gamble itself is not all of the game. Pulling a slot lever does not give you a little guy you can then send off to play a separate video game because that would just be a gacha game with a different interface. The real parallel to gacha is… gacha. It is its own thing, its own kind of vice, but we should be cognizant of how that vice shapes play patterns as well as what it does to the games.

Given that I am not a legislator, I don’t make the rules about these games, but I do think that a push to keep these vices regulated away from minors is a good thing in the same way that we regulate most vices to keep them away from minors. It’s not that being 21 lets you be immune to gambling; it’s that at least at 21 you are probably not gambling with mom and dad’s money and abstracting things away even further.

Equally importantly, we need to start engaging with this business model as a vice in the same way that we engage with other vices. Recreational drugs (liquor or, increasingly in the US, weed) have strict rules about labeling, doses, and so forth. Some of that is being done already with gacha games; more needs to be done.

But the biggest problem is, I think, is how we improve the public’s understanding of what gacha does – which is part of what motivated me to cover this in the first place.

I have been playing various gacha games for some seven years now. Over the course of those seven years, I have spent – generously – maybe a couple hundred dollars on them. That might sound like a lot until I point out that I have spent nearly a thousand dollars on my Final Fantasy XIV subscription over the same time frame. My budget for spending in these games is basically just my discretionary gaming budget, and generally speaking I would rather spend that money on something else, which is why even if I give very generous margins, I have not sunk a lot of cash into these games.

This is not meant to demonstrate that I am somehow immune to vices because I am decidedly not; it is demonstrating that it is clearly possible to play these games and have fun and not have them financially ruin you or leave you scraping and praying that you will get the anime girl you want. And yet I know for a fact that there are people for whom that is not the case. There are people for whom this is genuinely harmful. The house always wins in gambling because the house is not gambling! It’s tricking you into thinking your gambling with it was ever a fair or evenly matched competition.

Part of why I have personally avoided spending money on these games is that I know this is a vice designed to get me to spend money, just as I know to go into a casino with a fixed amount of money earmarked for gambling and to avoid the temptation of “maybe if I just get another chunk of cash I’ll start winning again.” I know what the gamble is. I am going into the vice with both eyes open and full knowledge that I am engaging in a vice, so I should be careful about it.

Education is important with vices.

I mentioned very early on that the biggest risk with gacha games is going into them knowing nothing. And sure, some of that is about resource management because these games love them some resource management. They love giving you the option to spend a Dragon Bone on something you should never spend a Dragon Bone on, but now it’s too late, get ready to grind for six months in order to get another Dragon Bone, which would have been a lot easier if you had spent the first one right.

But a lot of that is also because of the same risk profile with any vice. If you grew up being told that smoking weed would destroy your brain, then the first time you smoke weed and not only don’t destroy your brain but actually have fun, you’re going to discard any information about smoking weed as being lies, even if it’s true over time. And yes, you can, in fact, kinda mess yourself up with smoking weed!

That doesn’t mean that we should make sure no one ever gets to smoke weed, either. Some people will try it and not like it. Some people will try it and like it way too much, and their lives will be consumed by it. A lot of people can enjoy it a normal amount, but it can still lead to bad moments. You were high and you decided to get two dozen donuts delivered and you ate them and now you feel sick and you ruined your diet. That was a bad idea. A low-key problem, but still a problem.

So we need to understand how gacha works and why, the ins and outs of what these games sell and why they are, in fact, fun to play and good at keeping players engaged. It’s not because you should ward them off with holy symbols at the thought of ever trying one; you can have a good time with them (and lots of people do). It’s because you need to engage honestly before you do so and be prepared for the risks so you don’t wind up spending money you don’t want to or getting into some pretty nasty spirals.

And even if you don’t care for it, you need to understand why someone would enjoy the vice because if you can’t understand the appeal, you don’t actually understand it in the first place. Betting on sports doesn’t automatically ruin your life, but if you can’t understand why anyone would want to, you’re at serious risk if you try it and find it fun. Vices require understanding to engage with them safely.

Maybe a minority of those vices involve pulling various elementally themed hot anime people you can make kiss in your mind, but that’s a detail, not the substance.

• Gachapwned: How to interact with gacha MMOs without letting their vices destroy you • Gachapwned: Gacha is not just a business model – it’s a vice • Gachapwned: The lesson a failed gacha game’s offline version teaches about gacha games • Gachapwned: The hollowness of gacha MMO shutdowns and the way you lose • Gachapwned: How gacha games drown us in progression and randomness • Gachapwned: How gacha MMOs attract players with the secret of volume • Gachapwned: How gacha MMOs attract players with gameplay that’s calculated to be mid • Gachapwned: How gacha MMOs attract players with narrative (even players who know better) • Gachapwned: How gacha mechanics use pity and free content to encourage spending money • Gachapwned: Examining the nature of gacha mechanics as a concept Many MMORPG gamers recoil from the term “gacha” – and for good reasons – but the subgenre is still raking in money from players, and it’s worth a deep-dive. In Gachapwned, MOP senior reporter Eliot Lefebvre tackles the highs and lows of the infamous gacha game genre and how it affects the MMO industry.