Gacha Game (Game Design)

In 2023, free-to-play (F2P) games generated $111.37 billion worldwide, accounting for 85% of the total gaming revenue. These figures make understanding the F2P model essential for budding game designers.

This graph from Statista charts the growth in revenue from the F2P sector from 2018 to 2024:

Gacha games are a relatively new phenomenon in the F2P space. These games are inspired by collectible card games (CCGs), trading card games (TCGs), Japanese toy vending machines, and more traditional RPGs.

Let’s check out the gacha game model.

So, What Is A Gacha Game?

A gacha game is essentially a digital CCG in which players collect cards through lottery-style toy vending machine mechanics. Players can access the game world, story, and events without cost but must buy packs or grind to get rare cards for a more premium experience.

Ultimately, a gacha game is defined by its pack-opening monetization model more than any single gameplay element—you put currency (or time) in, and random cards come out.

This short from streamer Thejonathon shows the excitement some players feel when opening packs:

Gacha cards represent characters, costumes, items, or weapons that players can use to help them explore the game world. Rare cards have unique visuals and exclusive stats, abilities, or powers.

The basic visual model of  a gacha game looks something like this:

What are the differences between gacha game and loot boxes

Like loot boxes, gacha games encourage players to spend money in-game for random rewards.

However, two differences set the gacha genre apart:

1. Gameplay-altering prizes: In a gacha game, items dropped from the lottery mechanics affect core gameplay in meaningful ways. Players can get new characters, items, or equipment that offer gameplay-altering stats, boosts, or bonuses.

Games with loot boxes don’t usually feature gameplay-altering items as prizes. Doing so would render the game “pay-to-win” (P2W) and negatively affect public perception.

Games with loot boxes tend to feature cosmetic and vanity items without gameplay-altering features.

 2. No cash shop: Games with loot boxes often offer the items contained in the boxes in a cash shop. The price of directly purchasing rare items will typically be many times the cost of a loot box.

A loot box is cheaper, but there are no guarantees.

Gacha games only allow players to get new items, characters, or cards through the lottery mechanic. There’s no cash shop where items are available for direct purchase.

Engaging with the gacha is an essential part of gameplay.

What are The Roots of Gacha Games?

The word “gacha” comes from the gachapon vending machines of Japan. These coin-operated machines, first created in the1960s, randomly dispense capsule-enclosed toys from a set.

Colorful lights, the machine’s noisy crank, and the uncertainty around the result all contribute to the anticipation and fun.

This image from livejapan.com shows a row of gachapon machines on Tokyo’s Gashapon St.

The term “gachapon” is onomatopoeic in Japanese. “Gacha” refers to the sound the release crank makes when turned, and “pon” to the sound of the capsule dropping into the tray.

The toys in each machine form part of a set, often drawn from the cast of a popular manga or anime.

Typically, more popular characters from the IP are produced in lower quantities, making it less likely that you will get your favorite character with a single purchase. (A technique borrowed by the gacha video game genre.)

What were the first gacha video games?

Wizet’s Maple Story is a side-scrolling MMORPG launched in 2003. Starting in 2010, it was the first game where players could buy gachapon tickets for real money in exchange for a random reward from an in-game vending machine.

Gacha prizes in Maple Story include weapons, armor, scrolls, magical items, and consumables.

Nexon, the Korean developer of Maple Story, netted $420 million in ten years through these microtransactions.

However, a report from the Korean Economic Daily details how Nexon was changing the probability structure without informing players. The changes drastically lowered the chances of unlocking the items you wanted through microtransactions.

Wasn’t that illegal?

Yes. Nexon was found to have violated South Korea’s Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce and was consequently fined $9 million.

While Maple Story was the first game to feature gacha mechanics, Konami’s Dragon Collection was the first game built around these mechanics.

Released on the GREE social media platform in 2010, Dragon Collection allowed players to collect over 7,000 monsters to use in battles.

Dragon Collection’s home screen included options to quest, battle, connect with friends, open packs, and fuse existing cards:

Players could either complete tasks and battles in-game or buy packs with real money to earn more cards. Of the GREE network’s 30 million users, an estimated 10 million were playing Dragon Collection a year after its launch.

As Tatsuya Nishioka, the Senior Director at Marvelous Online, states:

“Casual games became popular in Japan around 2009 or 2010. In those days, GREE and DeNA were only providing services on feature phones. The card game boom first started in late 2010, when Konami released Dragon Collection. It had a cumulative total of 10 million users then, and at the same time GREE and DeNA were announcing their SNS community was around 20 to 30 million users, so you can understand how huge Dragon Collection was.”

Dragon Collection was a surprise hit for Konami, and its popularity encouraged other developers to experiment with the nascent gacha genre.

Ethical concerns around gacha games

Love them or hate them, gacha games are an established part of the video game landscape. This popularity makes it essential to understand gacha as a game designer.

Gacha-style mechanics do skirt close to gambling in their execution.

Multiple nations have adopted regulations to mitigate the addictive effect of gacha games—measures like published drop rates, daily spending limits, and age-related restrictions.

This study from Varaždin University demonstrates the distribution of spending in people aged 18 to 29 on gacha games:

Most gacha players enjoy the games similarly to most console and PC gamers, spending what they can afford. (In terms of both time and money.)

However, a small segment of big spenders account for the majority of the revenue generated in gacha games. (And F2P games, more generally.)

It’s accepted that children don’t have the mental bandwidth to resist the pull of gacha games.

Designers creating gacha games focus on building experiences for adults that include some “bad luck mitigation” strategies to reduce egregious harm.

What Makes Gacha Games So Popular With Players?

To reach a wide audience (and generate profit), a gacha game needs to offer more than a simple collection of cards. The cards are only as desirable as the game’s characters, world, and battles are interesting.

Designers of gacha titles must pay attention to several factors to give their game the best chance of success.

1. Feature interesting characters with in-game utility

Similar to CCGs/TCGs, gacha games’ appeal is in opening a pack to see which character/item/costume you receive. This appeal only exists if the player is invested in the characters and game world.

Many games use existing manga or anime IPs with a built-in fan base.

Bleach Soul Reaver and One Punch Man World are two examples.

Other gacha games create their own list of characters and monsters inspired by popular culture.

Games like Arknights have been so successful as to warrant big-budget anime adaptations:

Gacha character cards are typically beautifully drawn with exaggerated features and vivid color schemes.

These characters from Genshin Impact are an excellent example of the kind of striking,  exaggerated character art in the gacha genre:

The most effective gacha games give their collectible characters interesting backstories, personalities, barks, and dialogue, as well as unique mechanical or combat abilities.

Rarer cards are more powerful, making them doubly desirable.

Gacha designers will often create levels, encounters, and bosses that technically can be beaten with the free options. However, these encounters are often simpler and more enjoyable with some premium cards.

However, hiding certain characters behind a probability paywall has shortcomings.

For example…

In Honkai Star Rail, players who haven’t spent any real money on packs often find themselves experiencing story beats and dialogue based on characters they’ve yet to collect.

2. Hook players with evolving campaigns

Interesting characters feel more significant when players are regularly presented with new challenges to test those characters’ abilities.

Overarching, RPG-style campaigns give players a reason to keep pushing forward and unlocking new cards.

When working on World of Warcraft, I was conscious that mechanics, options, and abilities are only as interesting as the challenges they help solve.

For example…

When fights in Outland (pictured below) were originally created, many featured enemies didn’t have spells to be stolen, which undermined the mage spell steal ability. I had to rework many encounters to add minor stealable effects to support the skill.

Effective games give players room to flex their new skills and abilities. Clever game design, progression systems, and narrative coalesce to drive the player forward on their journey.

Arknights tells an atypical dystopian story of doctors searching for a cure to a plague while fighting the forces of hostile governments.

The story setup makes the consequences of each battle feel significant. Characters, equipment, and skills become more than a list of mechanical advantages and feel like integral parts of the experience.

The game’s plots, missions, and encounters give a narrative framework to what would otherwise be a simple collection of cards.

Exposition, dialogue, and storytelling help players become more emotionally invested in their deck and its ability to traverse the game world.

3. Bring an element of uncertainty

It’s human nature to enjoy low-level risk. Like gachapon machines and collectible card sets, gacha games feature a set of cards of varying rarity.

Not knowing which card you’ll receive (and the possibility it’ll be a rare one) taps into the human love of uncertainty.

Closed gacha games that don’t publish drop rates are the most uncertain and potentially harmful. Many countries have banned these types of games in favor of open gacha games.

In China, for example, regulations state that the developers must publish the drop rate for items and cards. This reduces some of the thrill of uncertainty but also reduces the potential for harm to the consumer.

In this video, YouTuber Jello Impact discusses how harm reduction regulations around uncertainty have affected the game Genshin Impact.

What Makes Gacha Games So Popular With Game Developers?

The gacha genre attracts developers for several reasons. There’s the lucrative monetization potential, the huge player base, and the opportunity to adapt retention strategies from other genres.

This image from DotGG shows the revenue earned by the top gacha games in February 2024:

The image demonstrates the potential return on investment for developers who create successful gacha titles.

Gacha games appeal to developers for the following three reasons:

1. Employ player retention strategies

The gacha genre is an excellent fit for many player retention strategies created for other genres.

For example…

• Seasonal content updates: Like in MMOs, seasonal content updates allow designers to introduce new characters, storylines, skills, and abilities. They can also alter game balance, requiring players to upgrade their decks.
• Dailies/Weeklies: Gacha games have also borrowed the daily and weekly reward systems from MMORPGs where players are rewarded for logging in and completing certain tasks every day/every week.
• Fear of missing out (FOMO): Content updates, new characters, items, and plotlines can all be introduced as timed exclusives. By limiting the time players have to access this content, designers encourage immediate playing and spending.

2. Feature a low barrier to entry

Gacha games often feature a low barrier to entry in terms of both technical requirements and cognitive load. Developers understand that by creating games for mobile, they can access the widest possible global player base.

Games like Bleach: Soul Reaper are based on popular IPs but come as small downloads that don’t require expensive phones to run:

Similarly, by including uncomplex pick-up-and-play gameplay that supports short, irregular play sessions, gacha games appeal to the broadest possible demographic.

Unlike console and PC RPGs, gacha games don’t require a player’s undivided attention for hours at a time.

For example, games like Genshin Impact feature hack-n-slash gameplay that, while satisfying, doesn’t demand intense concentration or complex combos.

Games like Honkai Starail and Arknights use slower-paced, turn-based battles that players can pause and put down at any time.

3. Encourage inter-player comparison and competition

The multiplayer component of gacha games is another important factor in their popularity.

Developers understand that collecting and displaying characters/outfits/weapons feels more rewarding when others are present to appreciate your hard work, luck, and/or dedication.

This screenshot from Raid Shadow Legends’ PVP mode shows the enormous cosmetic differences between players’ characters:

Including a PVP or PVE component adds a social element to the gameplay and adds another layer of unpredictability. Players are also more likely to invest time and money into a game that validates them socially through the presence of other people.

Gacha games allow players to show the results of their dedication visually and through their deck’s power.

Examples of Gacha Games

The following table illustrates three key points about gacha games:

1. Genre: Gacha games are overwhelmingly RPGs. The genre’s focus on characters, equipment, and interchangeable costumes makes them uniquely suited to gacha’s collectible mechanics.
2. Platform: iOS/Android are by far the most common platform for gacha games, making use of straightforward pick-up-and-play action, shorter session times, portability, and relatively low system requirements.
3. Gacha Method: Characters are the most common collectible item in gacha games, following a similar trend to the physical CCGs on which they’re based.

Conclusion on Gacha Games

However you may feel about the genre, gacha games are here to stay. Their explosion in popularity over the last decade can’t be denied.

Gacha games are partly successful because they represent the best chance for millions of busy students, office workers, and commuters to get in some daily gaming.

The rise of mobile as a gaming platform necessitated the creation of new genres. Gacha is one such genre.

The elements that make gacha games popular—interesting characters, exciting game worlds, and the anticipation of your next big card—hold enormous appeal for younger gamers.

As the global population gets younger and the mobile market expands, expect gacha to grow.