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Would trading card games work under a similar type of logic? Because games like Magic the Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh tend to work on a system where the pla

by CM30 10y ago

Would trading card games work under a similar type of logic? Because games like Magic the Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh tend to work on a system where the player buys a random pack of cards, with the better ones being extremely rare/hard to find and the weaker ones being more common. And they often come with people spending hundreds of dollars on rare cards or buying whole boxes on the assumption there's at least one ultra rare one per box.

Lazare 10y ago
There's certainly a lot of overlap with the general gacha concept, but I think at least in the case of Magic the very robust secondary market leads to very different dynamics than kompu gacha systems. For me, at least, back when I played Magic, I never ever opened a pack in the hope of getting a card; what I would do is open a pack in the hopes of getting stuff to trade for the card. In addition, the distribution of value from a pack of Magic cards was pretty even. If you opened 3-4 packs, you would be very unlikely to get the rare card you wanted, but you'd be quite likely to get cards you could trade. There's also published data on rarity and distributions. Ultimately, I think the kompu gacha systems work by exploiting the sunk cost fallacy. You've already spent $X on prizes, but it's worthless because you don't have the one ultra-rare one you need. But if you spend another $Y, you have a chance of making the earlier investment valuable. With Magic, typically, after you spend $X on cards you have less than $X worth of cards, but not a lot less. If you don't get the one ultra-rare one, you still have, worst case, a bunch of junk rares and some decent uncommons you could trade or, worst case, sell to a dealer. And, crucially, the previous investment doesn't become more valuable if you finally do get the ultra-rare. ...that being said, a huge, huge part of the money the companies behind them earn is because of the random nature of the packs. So...I guess I'd grade it as mildly exploitive, perhaps, but only mildly. :)
RandomOpinion 10y ago
While there is some similarity with trading card game packs, part of the predatory design of these online games is that you aren't permitted to trade what you've bought to other players at all. This prevents the player from trading away unwanted or duplicate rare items for ones that are wanted in order to pressure the player to continue spending.

by CM30 10y ago

Lazare 10y ago

There's certainly a lot of overlap with the general gacha concept, but I think at least in the case of Magic the very robust secondary market leads to very different dynamics than kompu gacha systems. For me, at least, back when I played Magic, I never ever opened a pack in the hope of getting a card; what I would do is open a pack in the hopes of getting stuff to trade for the card. In addition, the distribution of value from a pack of Magic cards was pretty even. If you opened 3-4 packs, you would be very unlikely to get the rare card you wanted, but you'd be quite likely to get cards you could trade. There's also published data on rarity and distributions. Ultimately, I think the kompu gacha systems work by exploiting the sunk cost fallacy. You've already spent $X on prizes, but it's worthless because you don't have the one ultra-rare one you need. But if you spend another $Y, you have a chance of making the earlier investment valuable. With Magic, typically, after you spend $X on cards you have less than $X worth of cards, but not a lot less. If you don't get the one ultra-rare one, you still have, worst case, a bunch of junk rares and some decent uncommons you could trade or, worst case, sell to a dealer. And, crucially, the previous investment doesn't become more valuable if you finally do get the ultra-rare. ...that being said, a huge, huge part of the money the companies behind them earn is because of the random nature of the packs. So...I guess I'd grade it as mildly exploitive, perhaps, but only mildly. :)

RandomOpinion 10y ago

While there is some similarity with trading card game packs, part of the predatory design of these online games is that you aren't permitted to trade what you've bought to other players at all. This prevents the player from trading away unwanted or duplicate rare items for ones that are wanted in order to pressure the player to continue spending.