The addictive design of mobile gacha games

The gacha game industry is growing larger than ever in today's gaming market. The purpose of the thesis was to look into the game design philosophy of mobile gacha games, in order to understand not only the great game design aspect of mobile gacha games, but also the manipulative technique used to engage with the player base. This thesis sought to answer questions on what makes mobile gacha games addicting; and how they create a serious problem of underage gambling which needs to be dealt with. This is a theoretical thesis aimed to analyze the design aspect of mobile gacha games. First, the general concept of gaming loot boxes, gacha boxes, gacha games and their popularity will be explained. Then, the thesis analyzes different gacha games, to find their similarity and differences. Starting from the gacha rarity and collection, leveling and RNG progression to daily grind tasks. The thesis then proceeds to explore the design of the gacha boxes themselves, as well as the complexity of the currency system. Finally, the thesis tries to understand how such a game with so many RNG reward aspects can get away with being a gambling game. Based on the analysis from this thesis, it can be seen how gacha games manage to maintain such a large player base, how developers of these games use so many ways to keep the players playing the game as long as possible, even encouraging players who quit the game to revisit sometime later. The thesis shows how gacha games are technically not legal in the gambling laws, however, it does not persuade people from fighting to have a concrete regulation toward these gacha games