Gacha Games: Not Even Once

gotcha games yeah we're talking about him again there's something of an oddity in the modern gaming sphere they're often distanced from most other video games and rarely discussed by creators outside of sponsorships but after becoming fascinated with them addicted last year I decided to tackle the subject the first time I made a video on gotcha games I praised them and expressed my interest in the genre while poking fun at addicting design tactics upon taking a look at the Joe Joe gotcha games in a later video I discovered some very questionable design choices that eventually led to the demise of Diamond Records and now consider this the final chapter in this strange trilogy because do you know how hard it is to make a video with vertical footage of gotcha games the [ __ ] is so boring to watch like do I use this purple scrolling background or make it look like a worldstar fight video or what this video has expanded heavily in scope and size since I first got the idea so I'm splitting it up into parts to make it sound less like a ramble about anime gambling and more like a somewhat intelligible video essay I fear for my sanity part 1 my journey with gotcha games it's been a long time since I first got interested in mobile games I've been playing since the beginning of the smartphone era installing banger after banger on my ipod touch from Angry Birds to jetpack joyride to Monument Valley I also played my fair share of city builders and endless runners games like clash of clans Tiny Tower Temple Run subway surfers and yes I was there to watch the transition to microtransactions that I explained in my previous video many of the mobile games I used to play were purchased for under $5 but boy has it been a hot minute since I last installed an app that wasn't free that doesn't mean that I haven't spent money though quite the opposite the first gotcha game I became heavily invested in was Kingdom Hearts Union cross back when it was still called Unchained X I started in 2016 when the global release was still in its infancy and I had a great time although I wasn't a Kingdom Hearts fan I became invested in the strategy of team building and the enjoyment of collecting Final Fantasy and Disney characters people on the subreddit were helpful in answering questions and creating quest guides and I eventually submitted an application to join a party called dearly beloved I joined their discord and genuinely enjoyed my time with the game however over the span of a couple years Union cross began to sour and many in the party slowly quit the game unable to keep up with the blatant pay to participate system that developers were implementing with PvP VIP bonuses and ridiculous amounts of power creep at some points I was tempted and spent money to get crazy strong units that were rendered useless in a few weeks and I eventually quit the game too but I was already too deep in the genre to stop now I'm not trying to say that gotcha games are the devil I still loved regalia lost a game packed with quality and style I own the soundtrack for a mobile game on CD the gameplay is more entertaining than other gotchas I've tried with high level quests functioning similarly to MMO raids they require a knowledge of each specific fight item prep and team coordination and I found it to be much more engaging than the somewhat overused turn-based combat system in most gotchas I've had a blast playing harder missions with existing friends and making new ones but dragged alia is the outlier for me and around the time I made my first gotcha video in April of 2019 I was definitely playing more than just one I began to go through loops of getting addicted to games re-rolling units grinding the hell out of them for a month or two and then getting overwhelmed by overly complex strategy or absurd pay2win roadblocks I think one of my biggest personal issues with most gotchas is that I can't seem to enjoy them from a gameplay perspective unless I start on day one these games introduce so many new mechanics upgrades equipment and more that starting too late feels like getting dropped into a turn-based RPGs sixty hours in and you have no [ __ ] clue what anything means or no idea if you're using your items and summons right or just wasting them they have a constant barrage of tutorials and menus and alongside various wiki's and reddit threads I end up being unable to retain all the information I need to get to the endgame or the fun part I had my fun enjoying art styles or cute gameplay design but when I really look back most of these games didn't provide me with anything lasting at least not like a traditional video game would there were no real memories or things I'd take away from the experience itself sure the girls were hot and the guys are also hot and know you can know that's a vegetable stop dude there was this one time where I pressed a button on King of Fighters that auto to my stamina on the gold quest until I ran out or like um I remember this one time where I press jump and slide on cookie run just like everyone else but then I got sad because my cookie wasn't as high level as the people who paid money predictably talkable many gotcha games implement conscious money focused design choices and psychological tricks like daily rewards loss aversion Skinner boxes and other terms I definitely didn't just steal from a game makers toolkit video to keep players hooked and spending I comedic Li shrugged them off in my original video but after reading through YouTube comments and discussions in different Gacha communities I often find it strange how playful everyone is about tactics that have become normalized here that would seem disgraceful in any other genre I'm not joking when I say some gotchas are kept alive by a very small number of players that spend small fortunes to be the best of the best we're talking tens of thousands of dollars on individual games now while I'd probably rather put a down payment on a house than acquire every version of Kyrie and Union cross I can't say I'm immune to the draws of gotcha did I literally just spend $25 to buy a single character last week yes does that mean I'd recommend it that she was worth as much as two copies of hollow Knight no but then again Who am I to judge value I have a wall covered in children's toys that I keep in the boxes as long as people play gotcha responsibly and understand common mobile game tactics which admittedly is a strange thing to have to preface a game genre with it's a perfectly normal thing to enjoy however just like most games that include microtransaction mechanics they can become financially destructive for people with addictive tendencies I even felt my interest in gotcha games turn into an obsession but the price I paid was time I began reroll inferred Azon games I'd never play just for the satisfaction of getting new unit there was an adrenalin rush in getting the SSS on the tear lists that I didn't even really care about Irie rolled the King of Fighters gotcha every day in my spare time for over a week to get a single unit for someone else fellas I was playing the sword art online gotcha therapists near me I don't have any logs saved from last year but if you were to take one look at my phone screen time dashboard it was clear I spent a lot of time with these games from the 6 or more hours I'd log each day even recently after getting back into a singular game I find myself playing Drogo Leo way more than I should be and whether or not it's Auto encuesta octave play gotchas can end up being a huge time sink if you're not careful at some point down the line I realized I could do so many better things with the time I was sinking into these games every week there are tons of mobile games that are well-made and genuinely entertaining but I think that I was playing them for the wrong reasons I lost the connection I had with most of these games in the first place and they turned into a permanent distraction I could sync infinite amounts of time into lying to myself that the progress I made was valuable late last year I realized how little fun I was actually having with the genre and decided to cut myself off not to everything completely but to most of the games I had installed or was considering installing I've kept the one or two games that as far as I can tell bring me genuine enjoyment without the psychological addiction one by one as I deleted the games I had played over the years I thought of all the progress I'd made the progress is what kept me hooked the whole time you auto a bunch of quests and press a bunch of shiny buns for rewards and suddenly months have passed and you'd never even consider deleting the game it gets worse if you invest real money which I luckily haven't done outside of small amounts on a couple games and yeah maybe over $100 on regalia but I want to get back to playing amazing games games that as cheesy as it sounds because it's practically my catchphrase at this point fill me with childlike wonder I played the Final Fantasy 7 remake recently and I really enjoyed it I could literally be clearing a game of that length every week or two with the idle time I was dumping into phone or you know working on my amazing upload schedule as we approach the end of my own story with gotcha games we've only looked at a small corner of what the mobile market has to offer well one of the main reasons I got into these games was their connection to existing franchises or anime I was a fan of not every mobile game can have an SSR winnie-the-pooh to lure in players so what about the realm of mobile games that don't find a player base through their existing connections to anime and game franchises what about games that seem to be out for money as opposed to creating a quality experience the ones that need to use aggressive advertising and addicting design tactics to find their big spenders welcome to part 2 mobile game sponsors with this video I'm not trying to diss on anyone for their interest in mobile games or on youtubers taking sponsorships or anything like that I have friends who've taken these sponsors for one reason or another and they're pretty damn important in helping creators continue to produce content nowadays however as someone who is actually ventured into the depths of what these games have to offer I feel like I have a much more critical opinion when it comes to this type of thing like has any creator actually played raid shadow Legends for more than 10 minutes to get the footage they need for the ad read I actually tried it to see how bad and generic it really is and may I just say taking the world by storm the followings we build as youtubers are an advertiser's dream if you really enjoy my content and respect my opinions when I review games and I were to be sponsored to talk positively about a product that is way more influential and powerful than an annoying pop-up you close when watching a video and that leaves a permanent mark on me as a creator and to some it may weak in my opinion when I try to be serious like this club does it matter if I say I like Sonic mania if I also say sonic forces is the most ambitious RPG of the decade with hundreds of champions to collect I often see comments and arguments along the lines of everyone knows raid shadow Legends is a bad game or that it's just an ad read and no one takes them seriously but if that were the case they wouldn't still be dishing out millions of dollars for people to talk about their games Rayne has over 10 million downloads and is in the top 25 grossing on both iOS and Android someone's playing these games mom did you just install raid Shadow Legends and trust me raid wants you to spend money out of all the gotchas and mobile games I've tried raid was one of the worst I've ever seen when it comes to incessant pop-ups from the start trying to get me to spend twenty to fifty dollars at a time while most gamers might dismiss a game like candy crush saga it's still surprising that a game designed as play until you have to pay to play more and then pay for powerup so you can play more or pay for extra turns because we made the levels impossible on purpose is still one of the highest-grossing games in the App Store ah [ __ ] there's a huge casual audience for these kinds of games and this extends to genres like virtual gambling since mobile games and microtransactions have no regulation if the user can't cash out for real money the developers can also implement predatory tactics to detect addicts and keep them spending but that's a huge can of worms I'm not informed enough to open at the moment what I do know is that ad reads are powerful and I often think about the way certain games promote themselves I think sponsorship campaigns with forced scripts filled with blatant obvious lies are a big factor in revealing accompanies intentions for their game compared to other games on the market basically I think people should think more critically about the reception and acceptance that these products receive when integrated into the YouTube advertising sphere and maybe the government should jump on that whole idea of regulating an industry that generates fifty billion dollars a year sometimes I feel like I'm pulling my punches because this is complicated stuff but don't worry I watched a handful of news reports and developer conferences about keeping players addicted and designing social games just to make money and [ __ ] that [ __ ] dude I could physically see a gateway to hell opening in the background I'm gonna have to sleep with my nightlight and a copy of Kirby air ride Jesus Christ part 3 gotcha mechanics are everywhere I surveyed a handful of friends and fellow gotcha enthusiasts to expand my horizons on this stuff and a common sentiment I found was that they're tired of the negative connotations associated with the genre there are misconceptions that there's no skill involved in any gotcha game or that they're all just paid to win cash grabs while many can be fully enjoyed without spending a cent others said some believe gotcha games aren't real video games simply because they're played on a phone or tablet why would anyone spend money to get JPEGs of anime girls said the gamer dumping another $20 into league to buy the new skin for his favorite character this joke isn't funny anymore like I mentioned before I think certain gotcha games are super rad and have a lot of care put into them from character artwork to music and collabs to an incredible amount of strategy and mechanics that's why I enjoy analyzing them and discussing what I think is acceptable when it comes to keeping players engaged over time versus blatant disrespect for a player base there's nothing wrong with developing attractive or powerful characters to keep your players interested but spitting in their faces and hoping they'll stay addicted is another look no further than Fire Emblem heroes's nu fe h pass a highly controversial $10 a month subscription that adds the ability to freely restart turns distributes powerful stat boosted characters and locks rudimentary gotcha features like auto encuesta paywall can you [ __ ] imagine celebrating the third anniversary of your game by going hello we hope you've been enjoying your time from the world of Fire Emblem heroes for our third anniversary or how about Kingdom Hearts Union cross a game which has barred a massive amount of progression quests damage multipliers and all-around useful features behind a paywall of $15 per week since the beginning only worsening its pay2win nature with the introduction of features like supernova and seven star medals which make new units so batshit powerful that the ones released a few weeks prior are rendered absolutely useless and who could forget when bandai namco set a let's reset everyone's progress and make this beat them up Jojo game people kind of like into a turn-based combat game we can power creep the [ __ ] out of I bet we'll make so much money oh [ __ ] no gotcha game is perfect it's not like drug alia doesn't have problems just like every other game as I could talk for quite a while on the topic of split and limited banners without mercy summons or the awkward divide between easy and hard content amidst insane weapon scaling and shadow element power creep I speak so highly of the game because at the end of the day I still enjoy playing it and I know that sentiment can extend to other games for other people the reason I don't bash all mobile games or take a more definitive Fisch stance is because I've played them but I've played a lot of online games and most of them are far from perfect a single-player game that can be cleared and generates revenue from the initial purchase functions differently from a constantly evolving online experience that requires repeated players spending to survive in fact the elements often chastised in gotcha are present in many popular games and that's even if we choose to ignore things like rotating skin shops in battle Royales and season passes and dlc expansions and games like destiny - daily quests valor and a lot of modern MMOs pretty much every card game world of warcraft invented that [ __ ] well Neopets technically limited edition cosmetics and gameplay items hidden behind random chance any game with a loot box system including overwatch and again games like hearthstone at least you can actually buy specific rare cards for a couple bucks in legends of runeterra and if you're gonna compare a game to gambling you can't get much more literal than csgo this is a game that has a public market unrelated to its gameplay to buy and sell skins and a trade system that inspired skin betting and gambling websites not only marketed to children but so rigged by the site owners and in violation of existing gambling laws that Valve had to say hey guys check out this sick new tech I found I call it a cease-and-desist a dragon lore op skin in Counter Strike global Offensive once sold for 61 thousand dollars and you have the audacity to tell me that gotcha games are just and a big girl cache breath I'll have you know that acquiring the big-titty anime girl is only half the work if you don't build the right weapons equip the right dragon and worm prints and learn the rotations and attack patterns for volcon expert you're gonna die and then get sorry right out of that [ __ ] co-op lobby I know a few people who have spent thousands of dollars on individual mobile games but I also have friends that spend hundreds opening csgo crates monetized incentives can take many forms and games but that doesn't inherently make them bad games as long as the developers are dedicated to crafting an enjoyable experience as opposed to focusing on maximizing profits and manipulating addicted players so we call them pokemon cards bad game design now or what part four what the heck is my point the realm of gotcha should always be seen as a temporary one these games require a constant internet connection to play which in turn requires constant maintenance and server costs they rely on the player base to spend money so they can continue developing new features levels and subsequently new things to spend money on some games become industry giants and get their own arc sis fighting game and multiple seasons of anime damn a-1 pictures and map added season two guys I'll be right back I'm making a gotcha game but others aren't so lucky they fizzle out and die completely within a few years and when these games die there are no remnants of progress they won't remain on into the future there's nothing to play a decade or two down the road if the server is shut down so the question I asked myself when quitting and evaluating most gotchas was if this game closed tomorrow would I be happy from all the good times I had playing it or just upset feeling like all my money was wasted and my meaningless progress deleted and that's where I figured out how to end this video you know that classic cop-out ending in stories where the real treasure was the friends we made along the way well what if I told you that it's kind of the end of this story it's certainly a strange feeling but I've met new people and made friends on the internet through just about every interest I have including those toys on the wall and gotcha games are no different remember that awful game called Kingdom Hearts Union cry sorry I'm getting off-track again that party dearly beloved was super fun to be a part of bantering in discord and running around together in multiplayer raids spamming aw shucks are the things I actually enjoyed about playing Union Cross I still chat regularly with the party's original leader who taught me one piece treasure cruise before I stopped playing that one and accompanied me and my buddy Kevin in our party in oulala before we stopped playing that one to hell one of the main reasons I became friends with Kevin and the friends I met through my other friends couch was because we shared a common interest in gotcha games also not gonna lie I thought about taking a sponsorship for uh Lala but there's no [ __ ] way I could make a 10-minute dedicated video on an idle progression mobile game and keep my soul from shooting out of my body Durga Leo lost still holds true as my favorite gotcha game for now and it just so happens that someone I played a high dragon trial with in the drug alia discord watches my videos they invited me to another server and introduced me to a whole new group of awesome people that help me clear harder quests I had only dreamed of clearing in the past they make the game genuinely fun to play again after months of mindless event grinding so yes I'm going all-in on the cheesy cliche at the end of the day the best thing I got out of gotcha games over the course of my slow descent into madness wasn't the cute anime pngs or the amount of times I auto that gold quest or even my iron resolve to never miss a daily reward but the friends I made along the way so thank you gotcha games I guess I hope more people can come to understand this wacky genre pay2win subscription passes can suck my dick and man it's gonna be weird if I ever decide to do a mobile game sponsorship in the future after this video at least I can finally delete all those emails well we finally made it to the end of the video this ended up taking like three weeks to make so I do hope you enjoyed listening to me explore the maddening realm of gotcha feel free to leave a comment if you've got your own opinions about this stuff I'd love to hear it if you want to support my work please consider checking out my patreon in the Chinn I just released the first video in an exclusive series where I talk more casually about the games I've enjoyed each month along with giving some behind the scenes into my videos but regardless thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one and now we're on the end screen so I can give a big ole thank you to ecto screen night dream trend rekt and all my other patrons [Music] [Music]

Channel: yakkocmn

Views: 416,033

Keywords: gacha games, gotcha games, mobile games, best gacha games 2020, yakkocmn, gacha games in a nutshell, anime, gacha anime, best gacha games, gacha games are ruining my life, dragalia lost, fate grand order, arknights, final fantasy opera omnia, mobile game ads, sponsored mobile games, khux, fire emblem heroes, feh pass, destiny child, dx2, gacha, gacha games review, android, iphone, guys i think i finally quit gacha games, genshin impact

Id: sHe8bwGFxqg

Length: 22min 50sec (1370 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 08 2020