Home Gaming What happens if you spend $1000 in a Gacha game? A surprisingly personal investment of addiction and waifus

What happens if you spend $1000 in a Gacha game? A surprisingly personal investment of addiction and waifus

3 min read
11
Gigguk-gacha

Hi, my name is Darryn and I freakin’ love gacha games. And not just because of my fascination with anime girls after I realised early on in life that I’ll never be intimate with another human being. There’s a certain comfort in gacha games, a style of addiction that tickles every dopamine-producing section of your brain and releases the endorphins that can only come from unlocking a five-star variant of your favourite waifu.

I’ve been addicted to such games in the past. Heck, I’m still addicted to them although I’ve never played Raid: Shadow Legends, which has over 63 trillion downloads currently and if you sign up with this special link you can unlock the champion HEY WAIT A MINUTE DAMIT RAID SHADOW LEGENDS STOP SPIKING MY DRINKS WITH SWEET PROMISES OF INTERNET SELL-OUT MONEY!

For those of you who are unaware of the genre, gacha games are essentially a one –way ticket to financial hell wherein developers use tried and trusted carrot on stick methods to convince me to part with my money because I have a fetish for girls who are totally over the age of 18 and aren’t related to me by blood. Or just read this for a more detailed breakdown while I do my best to avoid another FBI sting operation.

Just last week I managed to kick the Final Fantasy Brave Exvius bucket, having spent almost three years constantly grinding away on that game and logging in daily. Seriously, I caught a flight across the entire damn planet one year and my first priority upon landing was making my way to the customs desk so that the US border patrol officer could make me feel like a criminal for daring to tour the land of the brave and leeching off the free airport wi-fi to get my daily login bonus.

I’ve thankfully given up and deleted Final Fantasy Brave Exvius…so that I can focus more on Marvel Strike Force. A game which I genuinely adore but loathe logging into as it bombards me with pop-up adverts for in-game specials that cost too much damn money. To my credit, I’ve managed to not spend a single cent within the gacha game genre, although the same can’t be said for those people who have found themselves hopelessly addicted to various games over the years.

Pokémon Go still makes mad bank every month, Fate/Zero’s mobile game managed to hook a $70 000 whale and once I saw how Final Fantasy Brave Exvius had created a culture of coin for Lapis, I knew I had to get out. But what’s it really like though? How do you actually explain Gacha games, its ability to draw you in and how it can make you spend literally hundreds of hard US cash on what is essentially a glorified JPEG?

That’s the question which YouTuber Gigguk wanted to answer, by doing what no other influencer has ever done before: Actually exposing himself to toxic levels of Gachadiation as an outsider, and documenting the whole experience in a move that he ain’t ever going to financially recover from:

For the sake of clarity, Gigguk set two ground rules for the experiment:

  • No playing of games that his previous videos had been sponsored by
  • No spending money for the sake of spending money (“If I was going to whale, I needed a reason to whale”)

The results? a fascinating exploration of addiction, grinding and a weird sense of fun in the entire experience while also admitting that people with addictive personalities should stay far away from these games. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading to my iPad so that I can pull some Thor shards in Marvel Strike Force so that my Asgardian team can grow in power. No, I do not have a problem.

Last Updated: June 23, 2020

11 Comments

  1. Whale, would you look at that.

    Reply

  2. Original Heretic

    June 23, 2020 at 14:15

    We all have problems.
    But, D, you got issues, too.

    Reply

  3. MechMachine

    June 23, 2020 at 16:13

    Nope.

    Reply

  4. Iskape

    June 23, 2020 at 13:35

    I’m also an avid player of Marvel Strike Force. I have roughly 64 hours logged and am at level 65.I can also admit that I haven’t spent any real world money on it yet. There’s enough freebies in the game.

    Reply

    • The D

      June 23, 2020 at 14:22

      I’m so close to level 65! Been plugging all my resources into my Asgardian team currently, because a full squad of them is ridiculously OP.

      Reply

      • Iskape

        June 24, 2020 at 10:14

        Will remember that. Thanks for the tip.

        Reply

        • The D

          June 24, 2020 at 10:26

          Dude, an Asgardian team at around the 100K mark can rip a 120-130K team a new one thanks to all the team-up bonuses. It’s insane!

          Reply

  5. Original Heretic

    June 23, 2020 at 14:15

    We all have problems.
    But, D, you got issues, too.

    Reply

  6. Sibongile N

    June 24, 2020 at 00:44

    google: DarksydePhil, DSP and WWE Champions

    Reply

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