When considering global entertainment such as Fate Grand Order or any game from Monopoly casino reviews that perfectly reflect their popularity and relevance, you rarely have the question, “What do these games have in common, and why are they so popular?” And the answer is actually closer than you think, but first things first.
The history of gacha games
In the early twentieth century, enterprising Americans invented and distributed the gumball machine throughout their country. It was a fairly simple device – you throw a penny, you rotate the lever clockwise, in a small special compartment falls round ball of gum. The kids were delighted: buying gum without parental supervision, finding a few cents – it’s a dream, not a life. These machines are widespread to this day and stand in almost every mall in many countries around the world, to the delight of kids and to the chagrin of parents worried about their children’s stomachs.
When Americans settled firmly in China, the gumball machine arrived there as well. The Chinese wouldn’t be Chinese if they didn’t take a good idea and turn it into a perfect one.
That’s how the gachapon machines came to be. The small round plastic balls held everything imaginable: cards, pendants, key chains, figurines, magnets. Anything you could store, collect and collect. The marbles were broken down by value and loaded into the machines in appropriate proportions. For example, 2 valuable figurines, 10 trinkets, 20 postcards.
And for a small price, anyone could try their luck and try to pull the most valuable prize from the set.
And what began here! Gasapon mania hasn’t subsided to this day. They regularly re-release hachiapon-sets of all the major anime-franchises, and collectors hunt for them, while casuals with a high Luck parameter successfully resell rare things from the hachiapon machines on the secondary market to anime fans.
Even people from the former Soviet Union couldn’t resist bringing back a real gashiapon machine from China. Tattered in battles with Chinese otaku, it immediately caught on in many stores.
So, not only did hexapon culture become popular, but its imitation began to be gradually transferred to video games.
For example, in the game Just Dance – all the additional items: stickers, avatars, new songs you get for 100 coins from just such a virtual hassiapon machine. Completely addictive and entertaining pastime.
Well, more recently, Chinese companies (and with them caught up with all the rest) have integrated hassiapion culture in video games full-fledged, giving rise to a separate genre: gacha games.
What are gacha games?
Most often, they are free mobile games that can be played either on your phone, tablet, or PC via a browser or client.
The story is most often responsible genre-mechanics visual novel: the story is served through pictures and voice-over text.
Combat systems can be either marching, tactical or with action mechanics.
Be sure all of this is equipped with fairly large micromanagement with a lot of RPG components: pumping parameters, equipment, classes, related elements.
But the center of everything here is the gacha. The game is loaded with hundreds of bright heroes, which are divided into normal/rare, super rare, and super rare with the corresponding chances of falling out. These are the latter and begin to hunt players, testing their luck in an attempt to get rare characters or characters with a unique visual design.
Now, these games have been created about fifty. Almost all are doing not just great, but mega great. You may have heard about the fact that the gacha game Fate Grand Order has grossed $3 billion worldwide and isn’t even going to stop.
Just think about that figure. It’s more than “Avengers. The Finale.” The big revenues have given big results: many game creators can already afford to hire the top illustrators, composers, voice actors, and screenwriters. They also started ordering anime adaptations of their games.
That is, the genre instantly responded to the interest of the players and returned with great appreciation to the fans in the form of real quality projects. You pour money into the gacha, and the gacha pours mana into you. It’s a perfect circle of goodness in nature, isn’t it?
What gacha and gambling have in common
But what do gacha games and gambling games have in common?
In addition to the insane popularity and demand for these two game genres, these games have a lot in common. For example, in the two categories, you instantly cover the excitement, turning your head and plunging you into a kind of trance. You want to win, by all means.
If in the casino it is important for you to get as many matches as possible (considering slot machines) or a perfect number of cards collected (blackjack), then in gacha games you strive to improve yourself and your account, improving your character and trying to earn as many game resources as possible.
That is, in the two options you are driven by a thirst for victory and excitement.
These two genres are also equipped with perfectly matched melodies and sounds that only fuel your interest and make you freeze in anticipation of a winning combination or the successful completion of the battle opponents.
It is also worth noting that these genres have incredibly colorful animations, giving players a lot more passion and desire to stay inside the gameplay. The pictures and animations are perfectly matched, which pushes away your thoughts that it’s time to stop and time to move on to more important matters.
Bonuses and rewards are also the elements that unite gacha and gambling.
Conclusion
Sometimes some things in our world can have a lot more in common than we might think at first glance. These same characteristics exist in many areas and the two genres of the gaming industry, gacha, and gambling are no exception.