Thought this would be a fun topic for discussion. There's plenty of material on Gacha style games on the internet that you can look through, but I'll focus on two here EA Ultimate Team and Fire Emblem Heroes. Loot boxes are essentially a form of Gacha.
A few weeks ago there was a thread What game put Loot Boxes on the Map? and in it most claimed games of this generation like CS:GO, Overwatch, etc. Some dipped way back and looked at games that went F2P inspired by Korean MMOs such as Puzzle Pirates but those didn't really become popular until the App Store hit its stride post 2008. Some went to TF2 where hats were introduced in late 2009.
I know this forum is mostly anti-sports games. Yearly iterations, cash grabs, etc, etc. We don't talk about them much, or their impact, beyond NPD threads and "It's August of course Madden and FIFA are on top." We're mostly nerds and love our Fantasy RPGs and shooters. In that same thread about who put loot crates on the map, a few people piped up and said "FIFA" and I think they were absolutely correct. Sports games at the time had one of the largest populations and they were introduced to micro-transactions long ago. Right around the same time Rock Band started selling songs. No doubt inspired by actual sports collectible cards and the actual physical Gacha industry.
Ultimate Team was introduced by EA in 2007 in a UEFA (non-FIFA) soccer game with a resounding success. A little on the history here via Polygon. But essentially it went so well that they decided to move it over to their FIFA games in 2009 and then Madden in 2010. Here's an (older) look at the number of people that participated in Ultimate Team, culminating in $200 million in revenue in 2013 for and now up to $800 million in revenue in 2016.
To be clear, Ultimate Team is a separate optional mode from the base game.
Courtesy of Polygon:
Let's think about that for a second. $800 million in purely digital revenue. Two years ago Kotaku reported this was more than their total digital game sales and half of all their online revenue. It'd take quite a few (tens of millions) physical sales of SW Battlefront II to meet this type of revenue.
This quote from EA's Jorgensen is a gem: "[Players will] typically pay money to beat their friends".
So what is Ultimate Team and how did we get here?
More at fifaaddiction.com: about the mechanics. But at it's core you are given a very mediocre team (each has a card) comprised of random players (bronze, silver or gold) to start with. You then play with your team against others in your division and move up in a ladder style system. You earn currency by completing matches and/or paying money. Each player (card) has a contract length and unless you re-sign them with a contract card (found in packs) they will (EDIT:) be ineligible to play after a certain number of games. New players are found by opening packs. So you aren't getting permanent players, you have to feed them contract cards that drop at different rarities extending your players contract.
Here are the packs and the fairly transparent nature of how many Bronze, Silver, or Gold cards you will get per pack. For reference here are the price of packs. It's not bad, it's a buck for a gold pack. But you have no clue what you'll get out of the pack. The odds aren't published. Want Ronaldo? Keep pulling. What Ultimate Player of the Year Ronaldo card? Keep pulling. How long will I have to pull for? Surely after some time I can guarantee myself Ronaldo? Yup, but you'll never know how much that actually is.
This is my transition into Gacha games. This is essentially a Gacha game. Gacha games are required by law in China to display odds to the user and in Japan the odds may not be worse than X or it is considered an illegal Kompu Gacha (basically enticing people with a Grand Prize that is akin to winning the lottery). In the US we don't have to display the odds yet, so EA can make them whatever they want. So if you want to look for where Gacha ("loot crates") were introduced en mass in console games look no further than sports games.
But let's look at a Gacha game for fun and the actual rates. Because if these are the advertised rates, imagine what you could do if you didn't have to advertise? My favorite game Fire Emblem Heroes operates very similar to Ultimate Team. You are building up a roster of heroes that you pull from "Summons." They can be 3*, 4*, 5* (bronze, silver, gold for the Ultimate Team). 5* are obviously more powerful and desirable. New characters are often only obtainable as 5* characters for a limited period of time.
What are the odds of pulling a 5* character? Under normal circumstances it is a 3% chance of pulling a "banner" character and a 3% chance of pulling a "non-banner" (or old) character. This is displayed prominently in the game. As you pull and fail the rate goes up, as in this picture below the. For every 5 misses you go up 0.25% in each 5* category. It costs 5 orbs per pull, or about $3. $3 for a 3% chance...
On top of this if you are looking for a specific character you have RNG to contend with. When you pull for a character you are presented with 5 random options of varying character types. Red, Green, Blue, and Colorless. Looking for a Red character? You have to hope your 5 options are mostly red or you'll have to sacrifice 5 orbs to get a new selection of 5.
The game does give free orbs, roughly 20 a week, just like Ultimate Team gives coins per matches played. But those are dwarfed by the actual odds. I typically save for a month at a time to collect ~100 orbs and will likely pull 1-2 5* characters, although I've gone over 180 before getting one once. Odds that the characters I do pull are the ones I'm going for? Slim to none. Hence the rub that people then want to buy more orbs.
For fun here is a Summon Simulator. The current banner has three units. If you are willing to get any one of the three you can simulate how many orbs/$$ you'll have to spend to get what you want. I just did it five times and ended up at $32 (60 orbs), $32 (60 orbs), $63 (120 orbs), $95 (180) and $170 (320 orbs). Not once did I get the Karel character if I was actually trying to "complete the set." Combine this with limited time banners and you've got people paying and paying (not giving up due to sunk cost fallacy) and ending up in the hundreds to obtain that special Christmas Tiki character.
Fire Emblem Heroes has 1/10th of the downloads as Super Mario Run (a game you can optionally pay $10 for the entire thing) but has generated more revenue for Nintendo. Back in July it was reported Fire Emblem Heroes made ~$110 million.
Anyway, there really isn't a point to this, except that it is really lucrative business practice that has been around for about a decade now in consoles. Mobile games just refined it, but it has been there all along. But it has seen regulation that require specific odds and transparency in other countries and we should fight for that!
A few weeks ago there was a thread What game put Loot Boxes on the Map? and in it most claimed games of this generation like CS:GO, Overwatch, etc. Some dipped way back and looked at games that went F2P inspired by Korean MMOs such as Puzzle Pirates but those didn't really become popular until the App Store hit its stride post 2008. Some went to TF2 where hats were introduced in late 2009.
I know this forum is mostly anti-sports games. Yearly iterations, cash grabs, etc, etc. We don't talk about them much, or their impact, beyond NPD threads and "It's August of course Madden and FIFA are on top." We're mostly nerds and love our Fantasy RPGs and shooters. In that same thread about who put loot crates on the map, a few people piped up and said "FIFA" and I think they were absolutely correct. Sports games at the time had one of the largest populations and they were introduced to micro-transactions long ago. Right around the same time Rock Band started selling songs. No doubt inspired by actual sports collectible cards and the actual physical Gacha industry.
Ultimate Team was introduced by EA in 2007 in a UEFA (non-FIFA) soccer game with a resounding success. A little on the history here via Polygon. But essentially it went so well that they decided to move it over to their FIFA games in 2009 and then Madden in 2010. Here's an (older) look at the number of people that participated in Ultimate Team, culminating in $200 million in revenue in 2013 for and now up to $800 million in revenue in 2016.
To be clear, Ultimate Team is a separate optional mode from the base game.
Courtesy of Polygon:
Let's think about that for a second. $800 million in purely digital revenue. Two years ago Kotaku reported this was more than their total digital game sales and half of all their online revenue. It'd take quite a few (tens of millions) physical sales of SW Battlefront II to meet this type of revenue.
This quote from EA's Jorgensen is a gem: "[Players will] typically pay money to beat their friends".
So what is Ultimate Team and how did we get here?
More at fifaaddiction.com: about the mechanics. But at it's core you are given a very mediocre team (each has a card) comprised of random players (bronze, silver or gold) to start with. You then play with your team against others in your division and move up in a ladder style system. You earn currency by completing matches and/or paying money. Each player (card) has a contract length and unless you re-sign them with a contract card (found in packs) they will (EDIT:) be ineligible to play after a certain number of games. New players are found by opening packs. So you aren't getting permanent players, you have to feed them contract cards that drop at different rarities extending your players contract.
Here are the packs and the fairly transparent nature of how many Bronze, Silver, or Gold cards you will get per pack. For reference here are the price of packs. It's not bad, it's a buck for a gold pack. But you have no clue what you'll get out of the pack. The odds aren't published. Want Ronaldo? Keep pulling. What Ultimate Player of the Year Ronaldo card? Keep pulling. How long will I have to pull for? Surely after some time I can guarantee myself Ronaldo? Yup, but you'll never know how much that actually is.
This is my transition into Gacha games. This is essentially a Gacha game. Gacha games are required by law in China to display odds to the user and in Japan the odds may not be worse than X or it is considered an illegal Kompu Gacha (basically enticing people with a Grand Prize that is akin to winning the lottery). In the US we don't have to display the odds yet, so EA can make them whatever they want. So if you want to look for where Gacha ("loot crates") were introduced en mass in console games look no further than sports games.
But let's look at a Gacha game for fun and the actual rates. Because if these are the advertised rates, imagine what you could do if you didn't have to advertise? My favorite game Fire Emblem Heroes operates very similar to Ultimate Team. You are building up a roster of heroes that you pull from "Summons." They can be 3*, 4*, 5* (bronze, silver, gold for the Ultimate Team). 5* are obviously more powerful and desirable. New characters are often only obtainable as 5* characters for a limited period of time.
What are the odds of pulling a 5* character? Under normal circumstances it is a 3% chance of pulling a "banner" character and a 3% chance of pulling a "non-banner" (or old) character. This is displayed prominently in the game. As you pull and fail the rate goes up, as in this picture below the. For every 5 misses you go up 0.25% in each 5* category. It costs 5 orbs per pull, or about $3. $3 for a 3% chance...
On top of this if you are looking for a specific character you have RNG to contend with. When you pull for a character you are presented with 5 random options of varying character types. Red, Green, Blue, and Colorless. Looking for a Red character? You have to hope your 5 options are mostly red or you'll have to sacrifice 5 orbs to get a new selection of 5.
The game does give free orbs, roughly 20 a week, just like Ultimate Team gives coins per matches played. But those are dwarfed by the actual odds. I typically save for a month at a time to collect ~100 orbs and will likely pull 1-2 5* characters, although I've gone over 180 before getting one once. Odds that the characters I do pull are the ones I'm going for? Slim to none. Hence the rub that people then want to buy more orbs.
For fun here is a Summon Simulator. The current banner has three units. If you are willing to get any one of the three you can simulate how many orbs/$$ you'll have to spend to get what you want. I just did it five times and ended up at $32 (60 orbs), $32 (60 orbs), $63 (120 orbs), $95 (180) and $170 (320 orbs). Not once did I get the Karel character if I was actually trying to "complete the set." Combine this with limited time banners and you've got people paying and paying (not giving up due to sunk cost fallacy) and ending up in the hundreds to obtain that special Christmas Tiki character.
Fire Emblem Heroes has 1/10th of the downloads as Super Mario Run (a game you can optionally pay $10 for the entire thing) but has generated more revenue for Nintendo. Back in July it was reported Fire Emblem Heroes made ~$110 million.
Anyway, there really isn't a point to this, except that it is really lucrative business practice that has been around for about a decade now in consoles. Mobile games just refined it, but it has been there all along. But it has seen regulation that require specific odds and transparency in other countries and we should fight for that!
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