What is a Gacha Game?

Let's talk about Gacha today! If you've played games where you collect a wide array of items, characters, or collectibles, and you're opening them out of some containers, you may already be familiar!

People often mistakenly refer to this as 'Gotcha' mechanics, but the term Gacha refers to Gachapon (or Gashapon). Gachapon is a type of capsule toy dispenser that originated in Japan. After inserting a toy and twisting a crank, it gives you a mystery toy. A capsule drops out of the shoot, and you open it to see what prize you earned. When purchasing a toy from one of these machines, you know the theme of the prizes, like characters from the same franchise, but don't control which one you get.

Gacha has become an incredibly useful and popular way for Game Designers to give rewards to players. There isare many opportunities to provide players with different experiences and the excitement of not knowing what you'll get next.

*안녕하세요* to all my Korean readers! Here’s a Gacha Shop that I came across in Seoul, South Korea! Look at the vast array of capsule machines all around the store.
You might also notice the logo bears a striking resemblance to Pokeballs! This is no mistake since these Gacha Pods are the inspiration for the iconic Pokemon capture device!

Put simply, a Gacha Game is one where a wide range of collectible objects are given to the player through the input of some kind of currency. Whatever the format of the game, there is an emphasis on the random nature of the collectibles and the wide variety of objects to be collected.

Gacha games emphasize collecting lots of objects. Whether this is characters, cosmetics, utility items, or otherwise, the game will often make managing a wide variety of objects the primary way the player feels their growing power.

For example, in "Fire Emblem: Heroes," the player earns a currency that they exchange to obtain a randomly selected character. There are many different Gacha Pools to choose from, which each has their own collection of contents. Some Gacha packs curate a list of characters based on a particular theme, role, or purpose.

Why do Game Designers Like to Use Gacha Mechanics?

When designing an in-game economy, having variety in rewards can give users different experiences. This is especially important in games where you have a large amount of characters. For example, if you're collecting some of your favourite Marvel Superheroes, everyone has their own favourite. If you give The Incredible Hulk to every single user, they may have different levels of responses. By randomly spreading out the earnable rewards, you can have a broader range of collections. This can be especially useful if your game has multiplayer components, as it prevents collections from feeling identical. If you have a game where everyone is earning and using the same small amount of content, you won't be able to showcase a wide range of collectibles out there.

There is also the ability for value variability. For pricing items in a monetization system, items typically have different value based on their rarity, power, affinity, etc. If users can only acquire the most rare items by spending or grinding the most, anyone who doesn't fit that user profile won't be able to experience that content. Gacha can positively affect experience when used to provide chances for users to obtain content that would typically be outside their obtainable experience.

Pure Gacha

Gacha mechanics refer to the general concept that the user receives one of a pool of items. The difference between the styles of Gacha comes into play when determining how the reward is determined.

Pure Gacha means that there is complete randomness in the reward given that is never altered. For example, here's a table of rewards:

Apple = 50%
Banana = 30%
Orange = 19.9%
Dragon Fruit = 0.1%

When the user receives their gacha reward, they receive it based on the weighting of rewards. The most likely reward in the above table is Apples, for example. Let's say you were a big fan of Dragon Fruit and wanted to collect it. There is a 0.1% chance of receiving it. If you were to open this pack 1000 times, you'd barely have a chance of earning it.

Now, imagine these rewards were exciting, time-limited favourite characters. This has led to criticism and even legal ramifications.

Complete Gacha

Also known as Kompu Gacha, Complete Gacha refers to completing a set of gacha items to receive a major prize. For example, in our earlier example, to receive the Fruit Basket prize, you need to collect every one of the Fruit Types to earn it. In our earlier example, you'd need to collect the 0.1% weighted Dragon Fruit reward to obtain the complete set reward.

This incentive to keep opening the prize pack until you've achieved every reward compounds the odds of the Pure Gacha so intensely that it got banned in many locations. Japan, where Gacha games originated, banned these mechanics back in 2012 for being too aggressive and similar to casino games.

Conclusion

Now that we've discussed the basics of Gacha, we'll revisit this to discuss as a Game Designer when to use or avoid this style of mechanics.

What is a Gacha Game?