In the defense of gacha games

Lately there was news of a teenage girl who spent $20,000 buying in-game currency for Genshin Impact, an award winning open world RPG mobile game, and it was only when her dad checked his credit card bill did he find out about what his daughter had been up to. This news hit me close to my heart. About a year ago, though my son didn’t rack up 5-digit bill, he did make it to the 4-digit space within the span of two months. I remembered staring at my mobile phone bill with all kinds of weird thoughts going through my mind as I processed how he had managed to spend so much money on games without any consideration for his folks slogging away at their jobs just to bring home the dough.

It hurt even a lot more when he remained defensive about spending that much money, lied that it was his friends who had spent the money, and suggested repaying me with his savings in his bank account (money which came from me in the first place!), without a single remorse. I was disappointed in my boy’s behaviour and needed to think about the best way to discipline him, so that he understood why I was so upset with him. I wasn’t really concerned about the money he had spent because we could earn it back. I was more concerned about him losing self-control and giving in to the temptation of such gambling mechanisms within games that are becoming more and more commonplace. If he is unable to say no to instant gratification, I was sure it would lead to a host of other societal issues that plague us today.

So I decided that the best way to teach my son a lesson is to make him work. I told him I wanted him to pay me back the $1000 he had squandered but he couldn’t take it from his bank account as the money was meant for his education. Reluctantly he agreed to spend his year end holidays working at his uncle’s restaurant to earn back what he had spent. Later, I went a step further and told him that he would use that money he earned for his own pocket allowance for the whole of 2021, thereby giving him an early education in budgeting.

Lo and behold, while I was checking on his bank account one day in February, I found out that he had withdrawn a relatively large amount of money. When confronted, he finally broke down after lying a few times, that he had used that money to buy in-game currency for the same Genshin Impact. My heart broke again and I hoped that my son learnt what it meant to see his mother cry because she was disappointed in him. He apologised after realising how much pain he had caused me and I sat down and went through a budgeting exercise with him.

Looking at the numbers, he realised that he could not afford to spend that much money on his game for the rest of the year. I explained that if he wanted, he could set aside some money for the game but he had to cap it at a certain amount e.g. no more than $20 per month. After all, money is for spending, and if he couldn’t enjoy some benefit from all that saving he did, then what would be the point of saving even. He promised me that he would better control his urges and not lie to me again in future. If he really wanted to spend, he had to tell me first.

On my part, I decided to do something rather unorthodox. I decided to join my son’s world so that I could keep a better eye on him and also to understand what was so addictive about Genshin Impact. I’ve played several similar games before and I haven’t ever felt the need to spend so much on it. I think in some ways I was telling my son that I wanted very much to be part of his world. So over the next 6 months, we played Genshin Impact together as a family, which meant all my four children and I would join each other’s world to fight monsters and complete quests and show off our characters which we managed to get out of sheer luck. We had a great bonding time together at home amidst all the COVID-19 restrictions.

I made sure never to spend a single cent on this game to prove to my son that we could still enjoy the game and get good enough characters for our team without spending money on it. I think he really learnt the lesson and since then he has worked hard to complete quests and whatnot to earn the in-game currency and use those wisely to only pull characters he really liked while passing up on others even if they were really powerful. I also started to see this behaviour among my younger children. Through this episode they witnessed for themselves the right way to approach gacha games so that it would never control us.

So in defense of gacha games, while they are designed to siphon your money away and many young and old have fallen prey to the mechanics, I want to add that with the right education, there is much value in such games that may have been overshadowed by all the controversies around it.

Firstly games earn in two ways – you either require an upfront payment for a full release game or you create a free to play game with a compelling storyline, lovable characters, entertaining gameplay and continued fresh content that would entice people to spend. No matter how you look at it, games are commercial products and the developers need to be remunerated in some ways. While the industry was plagued with low quality gacha games in the beginning, many developers like Mihoyo have stepped up to raise the standards.

Genshin Impact deserves all the awards it has won as it is a very well designed and thought through game that enables players to enjoy hundreds if not thousands of hours of play, which is quite revolutionary in the RPG genre. If you can control your urge to spend, Genshin Impact is a great game for quality entertainment without ever needing to spend a cent on it as it continues to suck you into the mystery of its world as it will be revealed over the next 5 years. You can already imagine what a growing community of players such a game platform would be able to bring together, especially in a time when the world is fracturing along many divides – geographical, political, cultural, faith, economic etc.

Secondly, these games open up a very important but often overlooked conversation that parents should have with their children, which is about self-control specifically in the areas of money management. I’ve always believed that being able to manage your money wisely is the most important lesson and life skill anyone should have. For my family, I am grateful that we managed to turn around the situation into a teachable moment for my children and a reminder for myself to also be a good role model.

Such games can be used to teach children the principle of hard work (grinding quests to earn rewards), using resources wisely (saving and planning ahead on which character to roll for), budgeting (if you really must spend, to set a cap and have the discipline to let it go when you reach your budget. Genshin Impact’s gacha system is designed in such a way that it allows you to carry over your chances to the next banner so even if you don’t win now, you’d win at some point in future), and like it or not, that life is never fair (gambling mechanism which runs on random algorithm). Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. It’s what you do when you don’t that really matters about building one’s personality.

Thirdly and in a more subtle way, such games teach you loyalty and devotion. These gacha games are designed in such a way that if you focus all your resources on only 1-2 characters, you will likely be able to get them without spending money. It is when you start to be greedy and covet all the good characters that you realise that your urges will spin out of control and you lose grip on your wallet. I’ve often wondered if such games were targeted at those with OCD tendencies who feel they must collect every single card of every single character in the game to feel fulfilled. Well guess what, that’s not how life works.

Whether it is loyalty to your employer, your spouse, your faith, your interests etc., we were never meant to spread ourselves across too many things or it will turn around and bite you. Since I am a fervent player of otome games, the immediate lesson is to only focus on one guy you really like and ignore the rest over time. It is a lesson that I’ve had to learn over and over again in my life whenever I develop new crushes for people I work with. In the end, all men are equal in the sense that there will be something you like and dislike about them. So instead of disappointing yourself trying to find the perfect one, why not just devote that time to deepening your relationship with the one you already have?

In Genshin Impact, my favourite character is Albedo. Even as I have had the luck of pull and gotten other five star characters like Diluc, Xiao, Zhongli, Venti, Keqing etc., I realised very quickly that it is hard work trying to master all these characters and if I were to do so, I would lose the love for the game because it just becomes so tedious. Every new and shiny thing would lose its sheen very quickly as I look for the next new thing to play with. So I stick with Albedo as my main even though he isn’t a high damage dealer and over time I’ve built him up well and learnt how to master his skills so that he becomes not just my main but also a useful support when I team up with my children, and I have never grown bored of using this character. Therein lies the beauty of focus and devotion.

Likewise in the three otome games I play concurrently – Tears of Themis, Mr Love, and 100 Sleeping Princes, I have devoted myself to only like one character in the game, i.e. Marius, Lucien and Graysia, and I have never found these games less enjoyable than if I managed to own every card or character in the game. In fact, it gives me greater pleasure knowing that I worked hard to earn those rewards, and for those I didn’t I’ll look forward to a rerun to try again. I hope this sharing will be useful for parents who are trying to understand the world of gacha games. Instead of immediately condemning it, why not turn it into a teachable moment that would engender you closer to your children’s hearts?

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