A gacha (ガチャ), or gacha game, refers to a type of game that relies on the business model of exploiting players with microtransactions and hoping it will draw in whales that are willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money, theoretically recuperating any losses made.

The first goal is to break players who will 'never pay' for a gacha game. At the beginning, your losses will see instant gratification as you're rewarded with boosters or collectable items, then the demonstration gradually slows down as it eases you into an engaged 'hot' state. This is where the players are bombarded with 'deals' to keep going, along with some pressure (e.g. availability timer, lost rewards) to fuel loss aversion.

Once the player starts viewing payment as 'socially acceptable', the second goal is to encourage the loop and keep players coming back. This is often done with the addition of new content or lore, recurring notifications, seemingly personal gifts (e.g. apologems), subscriptions, and a sense of community. In addition, the players may find themselves growing attached to what they've 'built' or 'made' with the game.¹⁾

Most players stop being relevant here since they are merely pawns in the community for the game's final goal: catching 'whales' in due time and maintaining reasons for these players to keep coming back. Of course, this roadmap is just a mere outline, and it doesn't go over how players can be intimidated and less inclined to pay if the game becomes unbalanced, requires 'too much skill',²⁾ or it simply overwhelms you with choices.

Some companies might categorize their players using the four Bartle types, which shows what the players are expected to do and how much profit that they can potentially extract from them. This isn't a very useful chart by itself, but it can be useful to pinpoint where the game should focus and where the problems can arise, usually when the community grows resentful and 'end of service' (EoS) inches closer.

For some reason, I just haven't found myself becoming attached to a gacha game for the extended periods of time that these companies want, and I joke that I'd rather buy scratch-off tickets or drive to a casino since it would be a more efficient way to waste my money. That aside, ignoring everything that I've already explained in the previous sections, here are some of the personal qualms and reasons why it just doesn't resonate:

• I don't like notifications. I've never liked how mobile apps, and websites, will spam you with useless notifications to check back in or stir your emotions, whether it be a gacha game, food app, or social platform. I can stand having 1,500+ unread emails, but I don't need all this crap telling me that I should return so the companies behind them can wring out more money or ad revenue out of me.
• The updates. It's normal for gacha games to push out new content, like, every two weeks to keep the players coming back. However, if this attachment never forms, revisiting a mobile gacha game just becomes a chore since you spend 5-10 minutes waiting for the game to update, and making sure that it actually does. In addition, some of these games are not optimized for older phones.
• Little to no storytelling. Some gacha games have incredibly weak storytelling and it shows when the community simply glosses over it. You might find a few posts about strategy or rolls, but when you mostly encounter imagedumps of conventionally attractive characters or bad one-dimensional humor, it says more about how much 'enjoyment' that people are getting out of these damn games.

• Do I mention FIFA, Madden NFL, and NBA 2K…
• Operant conditioning chamber.

• Gacha on Pixiv Encyclopedia
• Gacha on Niconico Enyclopedia