#... yes I did pay money for the gacha

[sunshine-and-her-ikevil-stuff]

I GOT THE WRONG GAY BUT I'M STILL HAPPY

[wonderlilane]

google surveys my begrudgingly best friend..... always enabling my poor decisions

[infrared135-36]

the zoomers playing gachas now get so defensive and aggressive over them compared to what I remember from the early to mid 2010s. I see so many people saying “well Y is a gacha but you totally don’t need to spend like Z gacha! It’s more like a live service!”, or “X gacha fans try playing a gacha that actually respects you like Y!” I see this all the time for people shilling shit like Arknights or Limbus Company. Please for the love of god can we get back to the point where everyone can recognize creating a game in the gacha genre is inherently exploitive. I’m not saying this to shame anyone who plays them because I don’t really give a shit, of course there’s pedo-pandering heavy games like blue archive and increasingly FGO that I wish would EoS but that’s a different discussion. If these “nice” gachas wanted to be “buy an update a month” or whatever live service games, they would have been. It doesn’t matter if you think they’re nice about it, they made these games specifically to be gachas because they make a shit ton of money. In one single “dead” month for Limbus Company they basically made the same amount of money that the entire Pathologic 2 kickstarter made for example. And this is even after alienating half their fanbase pulling that incel shenanigans shit.

You don’t need to defend their money grubbing asses even if idk you see the game as an inherent aspect of who you are and your identity so anyone criticizing the game itself is as if they’re criticizing you as a person, which, because of the growth of SNS sites especially since covid, I think a chunk of this is. I don’t think that makes these games unable to tell interesting and moving stories or have lovable characters - on the contrary, they have to make sure gacha-original characters will be pulled for, so they invest a lot of time into their appeal, even embarrassingly having them break the 4th wall and directly say this is the case like in FGO. However every single character design and story has to be created under the gacha framework and the unrelenting need to appeal to their userbase. Why do you think there’s a lot of “badass old men” designs in FGO but after 8 years there’s not one single woman with even the whisper a wrinkle? Why did they change Frankenstein’s berserker screams to be a cute anime girl voice? Why do many of the male Arknights characters have detailed, shaded and distinguished facial features while most of the female cast has the classic anime bug eyes, dot nose and line mouth, especially with the full animal-faced characters?

It’s like many entertainment industries where the characters must have mass appeal but on steroids because you’re not paying to buy the game, you’re paying for the 1% chance of getting the character, so the game lives or dies based on their appeal. I don’t even mean this in a sanctimonious “therefore don’t play them” way, there are “traditional” video game companies pulling stupid, damaging and illegal shit all the time, gacha is not the one single evil thing within the industry. I would just like to see recognition about what you’re playing. It’s a gacha game. Yes even Limbus Company is made to have you gamble, that’s literally the reason there’s daily log in incentives and a gacha currency…. It doesn’t matter if you think these games are nice or fair to you. They’re gacha games, they were made to make money from you first and foremost. Keep skeptical about what they do, you don’t need to jump in and defend their practices just because you like the game.

[shimishimii]

rich ginger, eight figure, that's my type

⟿ wc; 407

⟿ Childe x gn reader ; fluff

⟿ my hc is Childe's great at making money but not at managing it, when you tell him he's like a sugar daddy, he takes it as a compliment

good thing Childe has a lot of money, because he’s bad at keeping them.

“If this goes there or that goes this”

“What? ….whaaaaaat????” childe complains, grabbing the notebook. “where did these numbers come from???”

There’s a quiz in accounting tomorrow and if he is on the way to failing, well he might, if you weren’t there for him.

“wasn’t it add and subtract only?” he scans the pages, wondering where’d all these problems came from. He already has a lot, why would they add more?

“Yes, but with letters and lot more tweaks”

“Why do even people put letters with numbers?” Childe gives up.

“You obviously didn’t listen to the introduction during lectures” you say with a light chuckle and Childe could just kiss your right now if he does not need to break these cryptic math conundrums, which you call word problems.

He complains, “the calculator can do it for me,” his confidence is unfazed since he passed the previous term relying on his instinct and sheer luck.

“Unfortunately, because of your financial decisions, I am doing it for you,” you reply “go on and thank the calculator, not your partner keeping your bank account sane” you took his notebook from him and gave a sarcastic smile.

Truthfully, he really doesn’t count his money, expenses do not seem to matter to him. During your first month of dating, you were baffled why he is not getting broke. Childe would even go off swiping his card left and right.

‘Money can’t buy happiness, but at least I can buy the things that makes you happy, which makes me happy too’, that’s what he says.

Thankfully, you are there, reminding him to spend wisely as much as you can. You tell him to pay attention to his financial management while keeping track of receipts during dates and making sure nothing goes off past his savings.

Honestly, Childe is actually wary of his expenses, and amazingly proficient with stock market. He makes sure he gets decent earning.

Besides, how could he not help himself spend a little more than the ‘20%’ rule when he sees your eyes light up at some plushie? or when you ramble how you want to get a certain character but gacha system sucks? or that new shade of lipbalm you want to try?

Surely, a good boyfriend should do something right? Wait until you hear a new bank account he opened and filled just for you.

[eternal-auditor]

What PB did recently is truly something

I played some gachas before, but I've never seen anything like that

Paid currency for a specific banners with a chance up and specific pool of characters, but you can still get them without paying? Yes

Units who you can get only if you pay and no other way? Never

Some gachas I've tried always followed the same strategy: make all characters obtainable for F2P, but make them grind for that and if you still need their money make micro transactions with accessories, like skins, frames, decorations etc.

It could have worked if the game was much more popular and had more content, but with what they have right now it was a stupid move imo

A lot of gachas try to lure new players through their generosity with gifts, but PB think they won't be able to afford that it seems

Idk where it's gonna lead us all, but we'll see

Personally I'm not mad about P2W banners, but that was a weird decision nevertheless

[pretty-idol-hell]

Hey hey one more ask lol. Do you know if they plan on expanding the gacha section? I did one 10 set pull but I wanted to see if they might change it in a month or so. I love SoLaMi Smile outfits and all, but Tricolore is one of my fave groups.

Also, is the only way to get get gold currency to buy it? I would love to play Make It! But it's locked behind the pay wall ;;-;;

Hi! I actually sort of answered your first question three posts below. Answer being, I'm not sure! The current gatcha lineup was announced as being the gatcha for "August" on Twitter but there has been no update since. I suspect, like many things, it's been extended. Surely they will update it eventually, though.

(It is odd that there is no expiration date for it since every other coord in the shop has an expiration date, though. Maybe they want to gage based on how much money it's making?)

Also yes, you have to buy gold idollars! Even with the copious gifts we received due to all the the maintenance/problems, they never handed out any free gold idollars, so it seems they are steadfast on that. Remember, these sort of games only exist as long as they make money! That's the bottom line in the end...

If it makes you feel any better though, I quickly bought all the songs only to realize it's hard to actually enjoy them since not everyone has them. I put up promises with paid songs daily and it's a huge treat when they actually get filled IDK one out of ten times?

[valtharr]

Tumblr won't let me reblog the original post, so here:

Donkey Kong was - in its original form - a game that required you to pay 25 cents (which, in 2023 money, is closer to 75 cents) whenever you needed to use a continue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending gachas and loot boxes here, I just think it's incredibly reductive and "rose-tinted glasses"-y to pretend like video games don't have shit like it baked into their DNA. At least when you die in a mobile game and get told "either wait an hour, watch an ad, or give us money", you're given a choice. Arcade games were often deliberately designed to be hard as balls, just so people would sink more money into them (which probably eventually led to a lot of sunk-cost-fallacy vicious cycles a la "I already spent so much on this, I can't stop playing now!"). When home consoles became the norm, because they were more convenient and lent themselves better to new game types, like RPGs and adventure games, arcades pretty much died out, and yes, so did these business practices, but only because they didn't have the technological means to get more money from the player after the initial purchase.

Again, not saying these modern business practices are good, just pointing that it's a bit hypocritical to criticize them while praising the "good old days", when a lot of early classics - Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man - were literally designed not to be products you paid for once and then owned, but essentially services you had to keep paying for whenever you wanted to play them.

[pwnyta]

Okay so there’s the thing… I play CROB still (for some reason 💀) and couple of updates ago I sent you a pretty long message about all the changes and how ugly they are and how much I hate them and how they demotivate me and I don’t really wanna play the game, but that message, sadly, was completely lost when I sent it because of the internet disconnection… so, I was really angry about it and just decided to let it be.

But OOOOOOHHHHH MYYYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOOD I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE‼️‼️‼️‼️ THIS FUCKING GAME JUST GETS WORSE AND WORSE, UGLIER AND UGLIER, LESS AND LESS CONVENIENT I— god I REALLY don’t want to be angry about it, but I’ve been playing this game for 2-3 years and put good amount of many into it (let’s not discuss whether it was a good idea or not, I have money to spare and CROB was one of my hobbies), but now the game is just so. Fucking. BAD.

Bro.

They changed the way to level up characters. I LEGITIMATELY don’t know how to do it anymore. You can pay GEMS to level up your characters (yes, you heard it right), they got rid of the character and pet gachas, BUT IT DIDNT MAKE IT BETTER!!!! I AM!!! SO‼️ ANGRYYYYYYY AGHHHHHH‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

Today was a new update (it’s a Yogurca update) and I’m just…. Not only did they bring ANOTHER legendary treasure that is near impossible to get (I spent 50k+ gems that I’ve saved up + a lot of free pulls for treasure gacha and didn’t get SHIT), But also - and, tbf, I didn’t connect the dots until I went to the CROB’s YouTube channel - they’ve released a BOMBER cookie with a BOMBER jelly shapes for a middle eastern inspired world during Ramadan… need I say more?

God I’m so tired. I really liked CROB, I preferred it heavily over CRK, I was there for quite some time, but devs just get greedier and greedier, and they keep making game uglier and less convenient. I really don’t want to leave it behind, because, well, I put money into it, but outside of that, I still really like characters, I love their designs, I love the concept of the game and I REALLY love guild runs, they are fun! But at this point, I just login into the game everyday for rewards and to login into guild lottery. I just… god I feel so defeated. Why are they doing it? If the game is doing worse than they want, then just pull the fucking plug. I understand that some people are going to play and going to whale no matter what - I’ve already seen people with fully refined new legendary treasure, and that shit came out only couple of hours ago. But my GOD. I really liked this game, I felt nice while playing it, I liked the sense of accomplishment when I was getting better. Now the game is ugly, I don’t understand how to fucking LEVEL UP the characters and just….. ugh. Sorry for this rant, I just needed to talk about it somewhere 😓

Damn… Yeah IDK whats with CROB lately either. Im assuming theyre just putting more time and resources into CRK now, I know they never expected for CROB to get as consistently popular and well loved as it did and were planning for it to end well before… but like I honestly wish if they dont wanna do it anymore that they really did just shut it down rather than making things super bad until people just leave.

Which I mean theyre PROBABLY not going out of the way to make the game worse… but certainly FEELS that way. Or I guess its more they just wanna make more money off it. Since the Gacha was super generous when I was playing at least with the character/pet Gacha

And Peppercorn Cookie... great design... probably ANYWHERE ELSE at ANY OTHER TIME would have been a better time to release her... remarkably tone deaf.

It all really sucks since with Kingdom you need a higher end phone and it takes up way more space so theres probably a lot more people on the poorer side of things playing CROB which is probably why its so popular still… IDK.

Well IDK what to tell ya… I know I really loved the game and praised it for a long time and even spend money on it as well cuz I really enjoyed it… but it just stopped being worth it. If your still having fun just enjoy what you can… if you just wanna see the characters im sure you can find the stories on Youtube or something so you dont have to waste your time with it…

No worries tho. Im always ready to commiserate the loss of a good series or game...

(Unlike BNHA Im more sad about CROB than mad about it.)

[crystalelemental]

Fire Emblem Engage has remained in my peripheral vision for a bit now.  It’s not quite the mad fixation on a new entry to a series I’ve liked that I expected.  I think just because the general premise wasn’t really...interesting.  At all.  And the character designs are overall...really bad.  But I have been hoping that it might turn out to be really fun.  Like, if I can come back to Fates and go “Well at least Conquest is like...pretty fun to play sometimes,” maybe this is salvageable.

Anyway I just got wind of the “but it’s literally gacha” thing in the home base, and now I’ve got some Opinions.

To get to the important bit first, it’s gacha in form but not in function.  As far as I can tell, no actual currency goes into it, so this isn’t paying for a full game and then also getting microtransactions on top of it.  Thank god.  I still hate it though.

Look, the other time they did something like this was Fates and the stupid gems or whatever that you needed to get a billion of to forge weapons.  And it wasn’t really essential, no one needed to forge weapons in that way, but the system then is extraneous and doesn’t need to exist.  It’s just shitty and pointless garbage that exists for no real reason.  Well, not no reason.  That’s as good a segue into the gacha debate as any.

In Fates’ case, it was mainly to market My Castle.  My Castle was another stupid idea, involving going to someone else’s base and getting some of their resource types and maybe beating their base for the ability to inherit a unique skill or something.  Mainly it was to get Aptitude on everyone like you weren’t supposed to.  It was extremely tedious, and overall bad.  I know some people were like “But Fire Emblem PvP!”  It sucked.  It sucked so bad, like FE competitive always sucks.

But the other reason was that, although it wasn’t necessary, it could be enticing.  Because a forged up Iron Lance is outright better than a Silver one.  Fates had weapon detriments that went too hard, and forged Iron was like the best thing you could get, if you had the materials.  Again, unnecessary, but...that’s something to note.  More significantly, it raises an important question: who’s going for it?

Ask yourself: did you enjoy the forging in that game?  The answer’s no.  No one did.  But did you use it anyway, in a serious capacity?  If the answer’s no, this isn’t for you.  If the answer’s yes...why?  More than likely, it was because the game was too hard at some point, and weapon forging by using free actions to visit My Castles for resources and forge better weapons or gather better skills gave you an edge.  Reasonable enough.  Especially in harder difficulties where stat inflation is massive, and enemies start having forged weapons themselves.

Transpose this to Engage.  These other, minor rings and the gacha system they employ, are only good for minor stat increases.  Nothing huge, just a slight tipping of the scales in your favor.  Just like Fates, this is undoubtedly not a necessary system, and just as tedious, given the whole “fusing weaker rings into bigger rings” thing.  So it stands to reason, the same rules apply.  If you’re spending a lot of time using this system, it’s because whatever you’re up against is too hard, and you need to go gather materials for it.

You know.  Kinda exactly like a gacha game that does eat your money.

This is my main issue with it.  Engage’s system isn’t just a probability system, it’s identical to a gacha.  Input currency, random outcome, but you can use a bunch of other resources to steadily improve weaker stuff, with the end goal of “participate in this system, and you’ll be better prepared for what the game is asking of you.”  That’s de-facto gacha.  It’s not even subtle.

“But it’s not paying real currency so who cares?”  Anyone drawn into FEH is who.

Three Houses was explosively popular, but I remember seeing statistics on the game’s sales that suggested it barely outperformed sales in FEH during the height of Three Houses fever there.  From the developers’ perspective, that makes a really easy decision: spend a ton of time and money on creating a brand new product that is good and significant, or spend a short amount of time and far less money on something to compress into your gacha machine.  The choice is blatantly obvious.  Engage has been very clear about not being anything that profound.  The plot is back to the barest basics.  The characters exist more as vessels for evoking previous big names, given the rings and some of the design choices.  They’re drawing on pretty much everything but what’s new to the game itself.  It will not surprise me if this winds up being a bigger bomb than Fates.  Because they don’t care about it.  What they care about, is how it translates to FEH.  They’re already pushing the connection, having unique rewards in both games for tying them both to your Nintendo Account.  There’s a direct link being established before the game’s even out.  And the system in the base game is blatant behavioral training to get acclimated to a gacha-based system, and the approach of “If you’re stuck, just throw resources at it, that’ll fix the issue.”  The leap from in-game currency to real currency isn’t as wide as you’d think.

All this to say, I don’t trust it.  I don’t trust it, and I don’t like it.  It’s...really weird to see such a blatant attempt to market the gacha in a base game.  This feels wildly backwards, and I’m morbidly curious to see how it goes.  Because honestly, I would’ve predicted a gacha thrives off of popular and recognizable characters from the base game, but near as every review tells me, the characters are one-note slabs this time around, and the game’s carried by gameplay.  They’re clearly banking on this just drawing people to FEH.  And it...might work.  Like, it might work out, I can’t say.  I hope it doesn’t.

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  I guess I’m just disappointed.  I dunno.  I never liked the main base thing.  And it feels like we’ve gone from “This is kinda eh” to “This is an actively annoying thing” to “I’m spending literally half the game here” to “This feels like it’s designed to draw people into the actual gacha game.”  Like from a bad but potentially well-meaning idea to...whatever this is supposed to be.  I dunno.  I’m not happy about it.  But I’m also dead inside and willing to try the game out if I hear it’s actually fun to play.

[hisaribi]

Place your bets if google also gonna leave and where do I put my fics to. Also like ok they turned off AdSense (which was sort of useless before, but now it's impossible to use), maybe that counts. Miro who also sort left at least allowed non-paid users to still have their boards (I think). Also I sorta worry about Figma. Adobe's been pirated for ages now so whatever

And steam (they did already make gamedev from around here pay tax both in Russia and the USA though), and egs (they do allow payments from Russia but mostly through China for gacha-games, including Fortnight)

Gosh I probably use a lot of other software that can be blocked

Also I should probably go to Kazakhstan and buy a sim-card and maybe create a payment card and all the tax things here and move my google accounts there, but I have no money for food even, because of lay off that happened in the begining of summer, and I only have like 50 bucks till the end of the month. Which might be surviviable if I didn't have to deal with credit card debt and mortgage

Also it is sorta funny, all the you can't use our products, considering rn one of our regions is bombed using american bombs, and I say funny because otherwise I'm gotta get aneurysm

Like on one side govt tries to block access to a bunch of sites (I literally can't use ao3 or YouTube without VPN, which is also getting blocked), on the other our accounts and accesses are getting under sanctions, like when I still worked in creatives production I had to use VPN again to get an access for the base stuff I needed to work with (once again, some were actually blocked by the gov, but a lot were blocked by the site themselves), and I sort of just think what else would I have to deal with

And ye-ye, don't @ at me about it's deserved or whatever, I'm just annoyed and whining

Also Durov was arrested because of telegram in France, and I use telegram as my main blogging platform, so will I have to just delete it because of this bullshit as well

Discord is also acting out for some of my peers, and if I'll have to go there with VPN I'm gonna be so annoyed. I'm already annoyed with it being like oh buy nitro, buy this, buy that, which it throws at me every time I try to attach file or just write a message, but it's also like sorry payments from you won't work, you still get to see ads though

It's also 6 am I woke up from the pain because I had troubles feeding myself and gosh I need meds and I need to buy them because I only have them enough to last till Saturday, and also I got a new prescription for new meds but I have no clue how much would it cost but also I feel exactly nothing so whatever

I just hope your day is better than mine

[sewmice]

Same person as the ask about the collab rant: I’m only saying what I did because I cleared the 150k mark yesterday and am finally free of event, despite setbacks. So technically I’m done, but BOY did I wish I was a day ahead. I’m a maths person, so calculating the optimal way to play comes naturally, your advice about using weak cards to play 0 LP games that still level up EXP/affection/item drop level seems obvious, but international fans who cannot read Japanese probably have yet to figure things out.

For anyone reading this: for collab events, ALWAYS use the eligible card with highest overall stats even if it’s not your favourite boy. If he is not fully maxed out in level AND board, make sure you keep feeding him after each game. If you have more than 1 card with the same overall high stat, use the one that has the same attribute as the song. If you have control of the whole team, pick the most powerful 7, and ditto for guest. Don’t think too hard about attribute unless you have an excess of maxed out SR and UR. The end score directly impacts your resource drop! So if you have newly pulled a SR or UR and it’s at level 1, use the resources earned from your best team and best item drop level song AND highest possible full combo difficulty to farm the levels/board until you can power the rare card up. When it becomes your top 7, put it on the team and replace the weakest member. Avoid duplicate members where possible, to ensure 7 different boys get affection increases per game. If you have booster items, always use it on 5 or 10 LP game. If you stuff your combo up during a high stakes game, pause then quit the game and try again - your items and LP will not disappear.

Resources are unevenly distributed by type, board items are limited in the item exchange and LP does not increase with rank, so play strategically. Try to do a talk with each boy 3 times daily, even the max affection level ones, as each can give you 3 mission points, that’s a daily maximum of 54. Try not to put on new outfits for boys who have max affection, go get keys from the board and unlock a new affection ceiling and come back to it, otherwise the affection increase of a new outfit is wasted.

I’ve been wanting to scream this advice from the rooftops since 1 month ago, so I’m sorry for the rant, I really hope fans who are free to play can take advantage of the system and lessen the time they have to spend grinding. Gacha games are predatory by nature, so make sure you get your time and moneys worth!

(sorry I went to bed right after I answered the first ask and have been busy all day)

YES TO ALL OF THIS!!! I think a lot of people were SL players and understand the gist, but like yes! Play efficiently! Especially if you're not gonna spend money! I don't go full calculating on it, but I pay enough attention to do it enough in a lazy way. Also plenty of people in an old SL Discord and some other servers have been sharing tips after they did the math.

Like I'm using a level 70 SR Ai for the whole event because even though he's not my favorite QN member, he's my strongest card eligible! And I made sure to level him up right away. His board....I only just finished. But I think everyone is universally suffering in getting medium gems right now lol.

I think the only thing I'm not being super efficient on is the bond stuff. I'm too lazy to get all into adding that to my routine. I just do my tapping for the daily mission and maybe remember to grab Otoya because I would like to work on him too and don't have ANY usable card of him orz.

[centrally-unplanned]

The Soviet Union also had massive state-run lottery systems. They used them to fund say sports budgets, specific state projects - the 1980 Olympics was substantially paid for by lottery tickets - and at its peak the majority of the country was buying tickets periodically. One of my favourite Soviet experiments was the "lottery bond" - instead of selling treasury bonds with a defined interest rate, you sold bonds with a 0% (or low) interest rate but with an attached lottery ticket that could win a big payout. This is still you paying for a ticket, since after you could be getting interest on your investment, but at least you didn't lose the principal. Though really in the USSR's case it was more "the state prohibits you from having alternative investment options in order to tax-without-calling-it-that". Late USSR finance is in so many ways a system happy to engage in rent extraction from vices, and gambling was no exception.

Though ofc it isn't like western liberal nations don't also have state run lotteries, and the USSR also did say lotteries for famine relief. And meanwhile it isn't "better" that a private company gets profit over a state from a tax on human weakness, they both suck. "Socialism" wouldn't/didn't in any way fix this issue, instead you should say human nature is sticky and hard to systematize against. But yes, the USSR absolutely, 100%, would have had state-run gatcha systems - and therefore state-sanction S-Rank Waifus, also known as the greatest timeline.

On the object level topic I will continue to reiterate that people like gacha games and so many reactions against them are knee-jerk. Games cost money to make, and a games-as-service model will not run on a one-time purchase fee, the financial model doesn't add up. You should instead compare gacha to monthly fee MMOs, and what history has shown is consumers vastly prefer "freemium" where their pay is for concrete in-game bonuses over pay-to-play because it simplifies the value of the purchasing decision & allows for far superior game ecosystem onboarding. Plus people actively like gambling and the "stretch" of gameplay imposed by arbitrary time-gated resources caps, game-as-daily-ritual vs 20-hour one-off grind. You cannot replace this game genre with a different genre players don't like and call it a problem solved.

Which of course is not to say the games are someone above criticism or whatever, many do also do exploitative things like obfuscate prices via multiple currencies operating at opaque exchange rates, exploit sunk cost fallacy to ratchet up prices in late-game, etc. But by no means do all games in the genre do that, and if you forced all gatcha to have say unified currencies or even caps on weekly money spent (good ideas, execution aside), they would still be gatcha games. And they would still be super popular gambling machines, often beating out the competition. I don't think most of the opponents would be appeased by that.

if we lived in a socialist society, phone games would be better

[askagamedev]

Lightning Mailbag: Not About Gamescom

I’ve built up a number of questions that I thought I could answer quickly in one post, so here we go.

You talked about Intrinsic x Extrinsic rewards. Can you talk about Intrinsic rewards from an accessibility standpoint? It seems to me that Extrinsic rewards are inherently more accessible, while Intrinsic rewards may elude some players completely. How do you deal with that?

You’re assuming that an intrinsic reward might require some amount of manual dexterity, but that isn’t necessarily the case. For example, there was an older game from 2011 called Magicka, where players played as wizards and would cast spells by composing them from eight different elements (e.g. fire, water, cold, life, lightning, shield, etc.). Various spells were the result of specific elemental recipes (e.g. life + shield + cast = healing mine). The intrinsic rewards in Magicka were learning which recipes mapped to which useful spells, either through experimentation, external research, or finding in-game recipes. Intrinsic doesn’t have to mean physical dexterity, it means the player learns something and now knows when that bit of knowledge applies. This can easily apply to a turn based game with zero execution involved.

What is the role of achievements with relation to extrinsic/intrinsic rewards? What do they provide that cannot be otherwise given?

Achievements themselves are extrinsic. The skills (sometimes) used to complete them are intrinsic. 

Food question! Despite how far animation has gotten in games, why do eating and drinking animations still look and feel awkward?

Humans are intimately familiar with food and eating, which makes the missing minute details tend to stand out to us. Eating animations would require a significant amount of fidelity not to look weird, which is often far more resources than we’re willing to spend. As an example of a game that did spend those resources, check out Final Fantasy 15′s food content.

What's the reasoning behind making games to a target audience who doesn't even play video games?

If I can persuade non-gamers to give my game a try, I won’t have a lot of competition to get compared to, so I won’t have to spend resources building table stakes features or one-upping a competitor in my marketing campaign.

I haven't seen too many western gacha games compared too the litany of them from japan and china. Given how much money so many of them make (in the west as well as in asia) can you think of any reasons why more of them haven't been made/ broken through to popular culture (excluding FIFA and Marvel Strike Force).

Collectible Card Games are the original western gacha.

For as long as gaming has been around, devs have mentioned being unable to execute concepts because of technical limitations (meaning the hardware they worked with wasn't able to execute a feature they want). Is that still an issue now?

Yes. Game development will grow to fit its limitations, like a goldfish will grow to a size relative to the environment it lives in.

A common solution I've seen proposed to reduce crunch is to switch from the commonly used salary system to hourly compensation. The theory being that because doing standard crunch hours would result in them spending way more with hourly pay than they would with salary, ergo meaning they work you guys less. Your thoughts on this solution?

When I was contracting for a major publisher, I was paid hourly like the other contractors. I worked so many overtime and doubletime hours crunching on that project that I literally worked myself into the next tax bracket. My personal weekly record of 98.5 hours worked in a week was while I was being paid hourly - that's how I know it was exactly 98.5 hours. I don't think hourly pay would change much.

I was surprised to see the Ubisoft Avatar game being postponed and it looks like it'll miss the movie launch window tie in. What are your thoughts on this?

Historically, a movie tie-in missing the premiere of the movie it's tying into is a death sentence for its sales. I wish them a lot of luck, they're going to need it.

What's the most common style used in concept art?

“House Style”

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[unholyeverything]

About Obey Me! apparently not being F2P anymore.

I just wanted to say something about this. Because I’ve seen so much outrage in the fandom especially about their recent anniversary celebration.

Sorry if this might end up being long.

It’s just, so many people cry and complain about the game allegedly not being free to play anymore. But that is where the lie is.

And that’s also what will bring down the game a lot faster. Them constantly getting complaints and feeling like they’ll lose their player base will make them start to milk the game out of the last cent a lot sooner then knowing they have a few more years. 

The game is free to play. You download it for free. You play for free. You have to pay nothing and to be honest, if you invest some time you get a lot.

This is a gacha game after all, you also need some luck, but in comparison to a game like Genshin Impact, that a lot of players seemed to have started to pick up as well you get a lot of materials to get the most out of your luck.

I’ve been playing for 432 days and those are all my cards. I haven’t given them a single cent. Did they get a lot of my time? Yes- but I was willing to pay that price.

I’m not trying to show off with that in any way, I just wanted to show that you indeed get a lot. As an F2P.

So it’s a lie saying the game is starting to become Pay to Play. Because it is not.

You don’t have to spend anything if you don’t want to.

Could they have handled the celebrations differently, like letting everyone chose their desired background at the end of the login? Sure- they could’ve done that. But they simply decided not to.

And that is their right as the company paying for the servers you use for free, paying for the artist that do a super good job providing about 14 brand new hand drawn cards per month, plus the voice actors, plus the animations, plus the story writers. That is a lot of work. That’s a new card every two days. They pay for promotions. They pay for all the IT working on the game, programming it, customer support, social media managers. Do you think this is free? Do you think that’s payable with just some advertisement here and there? Fun Fact: It’s not.

Small rant in the rant: A lot of people also make money off of their copyrighted materials and therefore take more income from them. As they would have to pay for usage right to be legally allowed to sell fanart. Just saying :D

How’d you like someone take your character and makes money off of them, not really, am I right? I don’t know why people think it’s okay since it’s a company. Their designers want to have a wage too.

So it is definitely not P2P.

I will however agree that the events are Pay to Win.

And apparently most of you don’t understand the difference of pay to win and pay to play. And listen, there is a big one.

I don’t know why the Obey Me! Fandom seems to think they are entitled to getting every single card that’s been put out there, to find it in their inventory. Like you can even see it and download the art from the Wiki. Heck spend 5 minutes on YouTube and someone uploaded the Devilgram too. The visibility of the Card is not behind a paywall. Is the additional story or animation that cost additional money sometimes behind a pay wall? Yes- and that is ok. 

I don’t know if you noticed, but aside from the Lucifer Paws and Claws UR there is not a single Pop Quiz UR in my cards. Not one. And I got Lucifer’s grinding my ass off in Lonely Devil, spending weeks doing my daily battles. Because that card was worth it to me. In the normal events I can max get the Memory SSR, spending all of my savings on nightmare beforehand. I have like two of those. Two of which we got completely free. Leviathans UR was completely free.  You realize they could’ve converted the points and taken the card from everyone, which tbh was the move I would’ve done but long term the realized it would make them lose more people and therefore money. Amos UR+ was completely free. Lucifer’s raindrop card I just got in this rerun, spending all of my savings from the past two months or more. Mammons was my guaranteed BDay card. 3 of those completely free so to say. The 14 were all I got with 432 days of playtime. That’s about a card each month. Doesn’t seem that much anymore don’t you think? Also most of the gacha cards I got from after they raised the odds to 3%. That also needs to be mentioned. They did that. 2 are character birthdays. Again with savings and time you got them. All the old cards I got doing that free pull you get every two days. That’s 4 of them as well. Only 8 of them being from limited gachas, in about 1 and a half years of playing.

But especially in gachas you should know that you can’t have everything. I don’t know why people got that impression? I don’t have every card that comes out because I don’t pull on every nightmare. I use the time there is a character I don’t like to save up. And with Obey Me! you can save up a lot.

Bringing up Genshin again: It’s fandom seems to be aware that as a Free to Play you just can’t get every character, and they seem to be fine with it. They save and manage their resources. I’ve been playing since 4 months and I have 2 5 star characters and one 5 star weapon. 2 of those I didn’t want and lost the 50/50. But that’s just how it is. I enjoyed what I got since I only spend my time how it is worth it to me.

I have to admit I had a lot of time to spend on games and if you don’t you won’t get as much, but that’s also normal. OM dailies take about 10 minutes and you get your 18 DP and can work on your cards. That is a lot to save up. And so far I pretty much got every card I wanted as long as it wasn’t an event card. And I could get those too if I invest even more time. I am just simply not willing to.

There is too much to do in this game already for me to keep up. So I really can’t understand what more you could ask for. I am home all day long and I can’t keep up with everything, so why are people complaining about not getting everything? There is so so much to get. Just focus on what you want and don’t turn into miniature Mammon’s that just want everything. And also like: Have you noticed? Most of my cards aren’t even close to being fully leveled. What do you want to do with even more of them? That won’t bring you anywhere?

But anyways I’m losing track of my own rambling where were we?

The fact that people here seem to confuse Pay to Play and Pay to Win, that was actually all I wanted to ramble about. 

Manage your resources and you get a lot. If you want an F2P game that has no aspects to generate money? Well go make one. Teach yourself how to do everything, consider how much time you spend on all that before even starting. And then not getting a single cent back. 

I also probably forgot half of what I wanted to say again, my body can’t keep up my big brains idk. 

[oriigirii]

💞 MC is a Genshin Simp 💞

=====

{ AN: Omg! This is my first ask so thank you anon (๑ↀᆺↀ๑)/!! This is such a vibe too haha, I hope you like it! } Warnings: None [Maybe Refs and Chars you wont get if you dont play Genshin Impact] * Probably a bit OOC too *

Reader: Gender-Neutral [Default]

( ⓛ ω ⓛ *)

========

< Genshin Impact was a game that took the human realm by storm, with its open-world gameplay, its competitive PvE and aesthatic settings, it was truly something that captured you the moment the beta was announced. Although, as with any Gacha games, you weren’t only attracted to the world and its setting.

No no.

The characters were truly the main eye candy of the game. You’d been worried that when you had been sucked into Devildom, you wouldn’t be able to access the game due to, yknow, realm differences, but luckily that wasn’t the case thanks to Levi, and hence why the moment it dropped, you had been spending your life savings simping for characters on every banner.

Yknow theres handsome bois in devildom too... Theyre just kinda waiting for you to put your game down for a moment and kinda notice em ～((Φ◇Φ)‡ >

------

ฅ⁽͑ ˚̀ ˙̭ ˚́ ⁾̉ฅ Lucifer

He usually doesn’t mind you playing games

Although, He would’ve preferred if you didn’t cause you kinda need to focus on your studies yknow?

But hey he’s not stopping you

Usually you would stay with him as he works, but he can’t seem to focus with you constantly begging beside him

Small little ‘please’ would be heard every now and then, and a sudden look of disappointment would show on your face.

He tried to ignore it, even giving little cues for you to quiet down, like clearing his throat

You didnt seem to pick up the hint though

He was just about to ask you what you were doing in the first place that has you praying beside him (which is hella rude) but your scream of happiness has him a little more irked and kinda taken back

“LUCIFER! I GOT HIM! LOOK LOOK I GOT HIM!”

You show him the screen showing your pull results

The character held a giant claymore with bright red hair

Before he can get another word in, you snatch your phone back and just sigh as if youd just had a heavenly (ironic) experience and mumble

“I seriously love him, Im so happy...”

Bro same though, Diluc pls come home

You were truly one of a kind, because youve just managed to break the Avatar of Pride’s... well.... Pride.

Did he just get cucked by a man in a video game?

Truly outrageous.

He seems to scoff and holds back a bit of an eye roll as he tries to focus back on his work

But boy oh boy, his salt is high

“If you are going to be causing a ruckus MC, May i suggest you doing it with Levi instead, I have no time for such games. I dont see why youre so caught up in such a character anyways, he looks quite basic.”

His words were sharp, and that was enough to shake you out of your fangirl/boy mode.

You were literally ready to fight the first born, a literal fucking fallen angel, for dissing Diluc like that

like

how dare

But then you notice how he seems to avoid your gaze and a small little red tint was on the tip of his ears.

Lucifer wouldve wanted to see you that happy with him, but no, a game character steals that spotlight.

Angey.

Instead of being intimidated by the sudden coldness, you giggle and finally close your phone and set it aside

You can continue celebrating and bragging about it later, for now, you wrap your arms around his arm and give him a small smooch on the cheek, which definitely makes him blush a tad bit

“Awww Luci dont be like that, Yknow I love you more”

Potential apocalypse has been diverted

But Lucifer does smile the smallest of smiles as he sighs, finding it silly to really get jealous over such a small thing and says

“I love you too, my dear... but you do have to make up for distracting me from my work...”

Well you kinda deserve it, so it wasnt long before both his work and your phone had been ditched

( After a while you do kinda see him quite similar to Diluc and it just makes you smile everytime you think about it, seems you have a thing for the strict cold men huh?)

===

Σ(‘◉⌓◉’) Mammon

Why you simping for a fictional character when you already have him?!

He’s your first man!

Your homie!

“Yeah well hes my first 5* so can you blame me?”

S A D N E S S

But for real, this man is just so clingy

He has heard from Levi that you were playing a new game from the human world, and of course, he had wanted to see what it was about by watching you play.

But since it was quite grind-heavy gacha game, he grew a bit bored and asked you to come with him to hang out somewhere else, or even go to the casino and gamble his money away cause he just got goldie back

But no matter what he suggests, you were just so focused on your grinding.

He’d prefer a different kinda grinding right about now with how lonely he is, ya feel me?

But no, you still werent interested.

“Oi! Cmon MC, whats even so important about this?”

“I already told you Mammon, Im grinding for primogems from the event! Theyre gonna be gone soon and I just HAVE to get them! Ugh I swear to Diavolo, if I dont, Imma cry! I didnt get him on their first banner too... ugh!”

Wait no--

Cmon he doesnt want you to cry!

Mammon kinda stays silent for a bit as he watches you struggle to fight the monsters with your low level team, frustration growing on your face.

But as you finish, Mammon seems to snatch your phone

“Hey! whats the big deal Mammon?!”

“Shut up and show me where the store is geez”

Mammon’s demands kinda surprises you and you raise an eyebrow at him, but you do show where it was, and sit back for a while as Mammon just fiddles around with it. You werent sure what he was doing honestly, was he interested? Did you say anything that made him act this way? All you talked about the game was the gacha system so--

oh…

OH

“Mammon! Wait you dont have to---”

“There! I got you as much primo things, or whatever theyre called”

He already has tossed you your phone back and he crossed his arms, looking away as the red blush covers most of his cheeks.

You look at your phone and you honestly felt your heart speed up and stop at the same time at the amount of primos on your account, it was enough for a full 180 pull! If you dont get the limited character on the first 50-50, you have another shot!

You felt your own heart speed up and your face burn so hard, but you do mumble him a quick “But... But why though?”

“Cuz! If you start cryin’ Lucifer’s gonna beat my ass! Dont think I did it for you, you human! I just dont want him taking away Goldie again!”

“But I thought this was your gambling money, isnt it?”

“w-well!... I mean... Hmph.. Gachas kinda like gambling right?, I know Lucifers gonna hang me if he catches me in the casino again anyways, so I thought I might as well just do this... with you...or whatever...” Hes dying, help

But so are you!

Hes too fucking cute and you just glomp him and just hug him as tight as you can!!

Flusterred boi 100

But you do spend you afternoon on his lap, both of you rolling the full 180 in excitement, whether you get that boi/gal you simped for on the banner or not, you still were happy to spend some time with Mammon

He doesnt mind losing a bit of cash for you

but you do promise to pay him back (maybe with a few kissy)

But to be honest, Gacha probably will help him with his gambling addiction...

kinda...

He doesnt go to casinos anymore but he does whale with you now

Lucifer has such a mix feeling with these results.

But he still confiscates Goldie and your card on the end, yall need to chill.

====

ヽ(。_°)ノ Leviathan

He probably wasn’t even interested on the game at first

He already has enough games to play, and it just looks like another rip off of some other game he saw not too long ago with that elf looking guy

But when you came to him asking for his help to get the game, you bet your ass that he felt a switch click

Suddenly it was incredibly interesting!

You do share your interests to him almost immediately

By interests, of course i mean the peeps you simp for

The sexy ara ara in the library of mondstat, the pirate looking ass of the guards, the pirate looking ass’s brother thats a wine owner and still highkey reminds you of Lucifer, the demon slayer--- You were actually unsure if you should talk about Xiao but hey hes cool

You explain it all!

From their lore to their voice lines and whatever

But honestly what do you expect from the Avatar of Envy?

Of course hes gonna be a bit jealous! He cant compare to any of these characters! Hes not as witty as that eye patch man, hes not as sophisticated as that red head, hes not as flirty as that ara ara either!

As you go on, you notice that Levi was kinda... half listening....

It made you pout, but then, it made you worried

Uh-oh you know that look

its that, ‘im overthinking’ look

So to snap him out of it, you kinda grab his face as gently as you can

“Need Grimm for your thoughts?”

He flushes and he immediately looks away, but you usher him to look at you as you coo and ask him whats wrong

It takes a bit till he kinda explains to you how hes feeling

In your relationship, you both were practicing being more open with each other, hence why you were proud of Levi for saying it

but you did feel kinda sad and frowned as he finishes explaining

“You... feel jealous?”

“Ugh d-dont say it out loud normie....”

He covers his face with his arm and you just cant help but shake your head with a fond smile, but you do need to address this and comfort him.

“Levi... when you fanboy about Ruri chan, did you ever think she was better than me?”

Your question made him frown and look at you in absolute worry

Did you actually think that you were below Ruri chan?

Of course hes an absolute simp for Ruri but.. cmon

Now that he thinks about it, he does talk about her a lot doesnt he? oh no...

“MC O-Of course not! I love Ruri chan yes, but you... I... I Love... you more...” Levi exe do be dying

But you smile at his response and gently kisses his cheek

“I think thats sweet Levi... But thats how I am too... Youre still better than any of these characters, youre real and they arent, youre mine and I am yours~ Youre my personal 5 star!” You wink at him and Levi just dips

his heart couldnt handle the cuteness and he died, ladies and gentlemen

but for real he did pass out

Must be from all the blood on his head from the blush

But ah, he does get it, and after being showered with love from you, He kinda slowly got over his jealousy

its not immediate but with simple reassurances, you can manage to reel him in and have fun with you

He does end up enjoying the game cause he gets to spend time with you, and he gets to show off when events happen 

He also goes out of his way to memorize locations for materials for you, and when youre sick or busy, he pilots your account

true gamer

But ironically enough hed probably start simping for a character too and of course, you both start bonding over that, which just makes Levi absolutely happy

I wonder if hed simp for Barbara, she is an idol afterall like Ruri chan

Probably lowkey for now

Afterall she looks like a minor so-----

( I dunno i searched shes 16-18 lol )

But regardless, I can imagine you both just cosplaying each others fav characters too

Its a wack looking ship cosplay but yall just simp for each other cause of it, its pretty fun but the rest of the brothers just finds it hella weird

----

I only have energy for these 3 as always, Im sorry! But i promise Ill do the rest!! I hope you guys do enjoy, and Id love some feedback on the characters personalities cause I know they can be a bit Ooc, But feel free to send me an ask! Im pretty open lol 〜(￣△￣〜)

[deviljho]

the thing the gacha addiction convo sometimes fails to mention is how goddamn unfun and unplayable these “free to play” games are like genuinely and i say this as someone who has played A LOT of mobile games. like i really get pissed off when people argue “well it’s not like it costs MONEY to play!!!” like bitch…that isn’t the point like the point is that it is so miserable to log in every day for months and months saving up tiny amounts at a time and play the same daily missions over and over like it’s a full time job to MAYBE get the character you really want. like, not to mention games like genshin, arknights, etc can be genuinely difficult to progress in if you DONT have at least one or more fully leveled up character. this is mitigated somewhat with games that allow for co-op so higher level ppl can help you out but that isn’t always an option for everyone or in every game and i’m tired of people pretending like playing a game from the very start with zero strong characters vs playing a game several years (YES, YEARS) down the line with a large amount of invested/leveled characters isn’t a vastly different and more enjoyable experience.

like, i definitely understand and have had lots of fun playing these types of games, i even understand the fun of progression and grinding like i honestly have primarily played them for the past like 8 years but even i’m coming to a point where i’m sick of it and i’m sick of other gachpilled ppl trying to argue that it’s actually fun and fine to play these types of games and defend the way they’re structured to either force someone to pay money to have fun OR suffer through an incomplete game for months at a time. like that’s actually not a “FREE” to play experience because of the amount of time you’re trading in to get anywhere in the game. like yes you’re not spending money but how many hours did you spend grinding for an item or experience points like please…like once you unshackle urself from playing them everyday and realize you could actually be playing smth that gives you a fuller game experience without spending extra money or devoting like a year of miserable grinding to get ahead you will be free. world clean.