Sounds like avocado toast-ian blame-shifting to me. Just like the rest of these pieces, they ignore the obvious, horrible conditions of life, and choose to tut-tut at the abused for ‘improperly’ using their free time.
just like the avocado toast shit, the translation of these pieces is broadly:
Look away, reader, from the terrible low wages, high cost of living, and soul-crushing work hours japanese people are forced to endure. Focus your attention on these 19% of young people, who don’t know any better, who you are better than. Laugh at these losers who admit that one time they almost couldn’t cover their expenses!!
Let’s look at the article.
Interestingly enough, while these results indicate that the popularity of in-game transactions may be increasing, the average amount of money spent on them is actually decreasing.
Hmm, could it be the actual problem is the immense increases to CoL young (and all) people have been under? I wonder why the article doesn’t even bring it up? So curious 🤔
Oh well. So like, how much money are we talking about on gacha? How much are these 19% of young folks spending? Must be a ton eh?
Article doesn’t say, but we do get these numbers
In 2024, young people spent an average of around 5,138 yen ($35.85 USD) on microtransactions per month while this year’s survey results state that the average amount of money spent on microtransactions is 4,247 yen ($29.63 USD) per month.
So it’s not a lot, not really. I say again, this article is slop created to take your eyes away from the real problems of the world and victim blame the ones suffering under them.
Average spending is not a good metric for addictive behaviors - spending/consumption tends to be extremely concentrated in a small fraction. My go-to example for this is alcohol where, in the US, 10 drinks/week is the population average, but also enough to get you into the “top 10%” or “heavy drinker” bin, where the average consumption of that bin is 74 drinks/week. In both alcohol and gacha, a huge fraction of the population don’t pay anything.
I mean, even if the article’s $30/month average spend is entirely within their 20% “problem” spenders, it would only be $150, but it’s a little easier (for me) to see where $150/month gacha habit could be a problem for young people already on the financial edge. Not the fundamental problem that skyrocketing rent and stagnant wages are, but more in the last-straw sense.
20% can’t enjoy the game if they’re not able to buy micro-transactions
Wtaf
game about gambling makes gambling addicts: americans shocked, more at 5
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It’s basically the same thing as gambling but with less regulations and social stigma. It’s not going to get better if no one does anything - and it’s not going to be the unregulated casinos cosplaying as gaming studios that will do it.
Completely mature in their 20s?
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It’s down hill after that.
Not just youth!
The older ladies at my work are candy crush/royal match fiends. They are hooked…
The problem is we socially dont view it as gambling (which it is), coupled with the fact its designed to be addictive.
There isnt a social stigma or support yet to stop playing and break the cycle
Candy crush costs money?
Also look into stuff like the “booster wheel”
The article admits this isn’t true and the money spent on these games is decreasing.
This is another corporate article blaming individuals for systemic economic failures.
Gotcha games should be fucking illegal.
I can not fathom the idea of spending that much on gacha
I can’t fathom the idea of wanting to play that garbage, let alone spend money on micro-transactions in it, but maybe that’s just me, maybe my brain isn’t smooth enough to find games like that stimulating and entertaining.
Probably also the same reason all the people who have tried and to get me addicted to gambling have failed.
A lot of “that garbage” has better game design than some western “triple AAA titles” which a lot of are also filled with micro transations.
Especially Genshin which is shown in the article has so much content and still receives updates every 6 weeks. Every 6 weeks there is 1 or 2 new characters, a new region, new story, new orchestrated music, new events and so much more.
It is absolutely just to hate microtransactions but calling every game you don’t like garbage is like a child hating broccoli because a character in a TV show does. There is still incredible effort to make a somewhat good game, even in F2P Gachas or Fortnite for that matter.
Neither could I, until I found out that my psychological profile was the target demographic. It was an expensive lesson to learn.
what was your experience, if you don’t mind me asking? what game snared you?
Fire Emblem Heroes. The game portion was nearly perfect pocket FE. But of course that was all just a wrapper for the gacha, and it only took a few months of playing before I cracked open the wallet. It’s just a few bucks, the game was free, what’s the harm? Things just went downhill from there. Rationally, I knew it was madness. I kept a spreadsheet tracking spend and results. And I knew that odds of rolling someone new went from bad to worse the more complete my roster got, but the hooks were in deep. It got BAD.
Took me a year and a half to delete my account, and just as long to dig myself out of the financial crater my face made.
Yeah, that’s how it goes. Glad you got out when you did.
Boggles the mind that people could spend that much money on subpar games. I guess it’s the whole moe waifu thing that’s driving it.
Have to say, Genshin is far from a subpar game, it’s so incredibly polished and smooth. That said, it’s still a gacha game.
Still better than shitty Ubisoft products or all the other ‘big’ dev houses that keep pumping obscene games every year.
There are gacha games out there that are garbage games. They aren’t the ones that are popular though. Stuff like Gensin has a lot of quality content that pulls you in and hooks you. It looks like that has proven to be much more effective than just a waifu simulator. Now, I do think Genshin has a lot of other problems even gacha aside, but calling it garbage is blatantly unfair.
Are you talking about Gensin Impact?
The game that even on PC looks and plays like a mobile game? With grindiness and awful animation quality?
Surely you can’t consider that top notch stuff? Or is gameplay time of 100+ hours and anime girls really that enticing to you?
Genuine question.
I never said it was a great game. In fact I literally said:
Genshin has a lot of other problems even gacha aside
I just said it wasn’t garbage. There is plenty of other actual garbage out there. It looks and plays like a mobile game because it is a mobile game. It’s a mobile game you can play on your PC if you want. But it’s still a 5-year-old mobile game. Expecting it to look like AC Shadows or something is silly. Besides, the BOTW-ripoff-meets-anime art direction really seems to appeal to a lot of people, and art direction is much more important than graphical fidelity anyway.
The soundtrack and score is genuinely very good and varied, with each area having its own feel and sound to the music. The game is huge and has lots of different areas to explore, each with its own characteristics. The world has lots of little details and puzzles, some that are extremely simple dopamine hits and some puzzles that are somewhat challenging. There is like a hundred hours or whatever of story content to go through that at least quite a lot of people seem invested and engaged in. There are new events every month or so with various things to do.
Let be clear: I don’t like Genshin personally. I don’t play Genshin. I think there are a lot of problematic elements in it not just with monetisation but with grind, RNG, retention/addiction mechanics, unskippable cutscenes and probably more I’m forgetting off hand.
It’s still blatantly unfair to call it “garbage”.
But you don’t need to spend money to find a waifu, they could just go watch Gundam or something
The games like ZZZ or Genshin are fun as long as you don’t take them seriously or engage with the gacha elements too much. ZZZ has a really nice vibe to it despite being a gacha game.
I ways hate when a new game comes out and it’s a gacha game. I have no self control, so I always have to keep them at arms length. 😔
I feel bad for those young adults.
Young people do young people shit, always have and will. I ate beef and vegetable soup for 3 months straight to buy a new engine for my race car 20 years ago…
Is this just the 80/20 rule?
Dat avocado toast excuse, every time.
I haven’t heard of addictive design in the business model of avocado toast.
Based
