I don’t understand people who WILLINGLY install that shit. They KNOW how they work and are monetized. And unlike gambling at a casino, there’s zero chance of you being up money at any point.
No, “gacha” comes from “gashapon,” the crank vending machines, and the name is an onomatopoeia. “Gacha” (or “gasha”) is the sound of the crank being turned, and “pon” is the sound of the capsule dropping out.
Exactly. I have been gaming for decades, yet I never played any of these. Only heard of WOW and Apex Legends out of all the names, no idea what the rest are.
It is possible to spend your money and time on games that provide the entertainment you’re looking for, but not exploit you.
I don’t understand people who WILLINGLY install that shit
The ads are everywhere and the games are often F2P - no barrier to download or install. Excellent for hooking younger kids, especially ones whose parents can’t or won’t give them access to the old fashioned games.
And unlike gambling at a casino, there’s zero chance of you being up money at any point.
Arguably the singular upside. You can coast in a Gacha game without losing a ton of money a lot longer than you’ll last in Vegas.
Gambling
An Addictive Behavior with Health and Primary Care Implications
I feel like it’s easy to conflate addiction with chemical addiction specifically. Anything that releases endorphins in your body can become addictive.
Watching TV, playing video games, sweet foods, sex, etc, all have the potential to become addictive.
I’m going to give you the BoD and say that I think your confusing how addiction works and how the body regulates itself. Also, I should be more clear that anything causing an intense reward response can be addictive. Not just any old response will do, it has be a rush.
Addiction isn’t just doing something repeatedly or enjoying something a lot. It’s a progressive hijacking of the brain’s reward system.
It starts with an activity (like gambling) triggering a strong reward response. That response draws people to repeat that activity for the “high”. If the behavior is engaged in regularly, the brain adapts over time. The reward response becomes less intense (this is what “gaining a tolerance” is), causing the person to to engage in the behavior more frequently or intensely to get the same “high” as they did the first time. Eventually, the behavior stops illiciting a reward, and you start to get stressed without whatever behavior it is that originally made you feel high. The person is no longer seeking the behavior because their reward system is telling them to, but for relief from the stress and anxiety of NOT performing the behavior. This is where addiction occurs.
Gambling, sex, and drugs all activate activate this feedback loop in the brains reward system. In contrast things like drinking water or wearing boots just just don’t engage the reward system in the same way. You can experience this yourself by having an orgasm, drinking a glass of water, and comparing the difference in how you feel afterward. Drinking water and wearing clothes are biological necessities or habitual actions. They’re not neurologically reinforced the same way that high reward activities like gambling or sex are.
I think we tend to prefer to think of chemical addiction as the true definition because of opiods like heroin. In the case of heroin, you’re not activating your reward system so much as you’re introducing a reward chemical WAYYY more powerful than anything your body can produce.
Other drugs don’t replace dopamine tho, they just make your body release all of the dopamine it has at the same time, resulting in a similar, but less intense feeling. Getting addicted to these drugs is really no different, biologically speaking, than becoming addicted to a behavior.
Recognizing gambling as an addiction is not a slippery slope to naming more mundane things as addictions. It’s the result of decades of work in neuroscience by thousands, if not millions, of doctors.
I played Arknights for a bit because there’s actually a pretty solid tower defense game in there. There’s not a big selection of good games for Android and I wanted something I could play when I have no laptop with me.
Unfortunately the good gameplay is buried under tons of attention hogging gacha bullshit.
I stopped playing once I realized that I was spending more time doing chores than actually playing through interesting content. Also, while the BGM is nothing short of lavish, the presentation of the story is like a very cheap VN, which basically killed any hope of getting engaged in the story or the characters.
I didn’t spend much more than maybe twenty bucks on it so it’s not too bad given the partially solid gameplay. But yeah, I’m done with live service bullshit games.
Dude needs to stop playing predatory gacha games.
I don’t understand people who WILLINGLY install that shit. They KNOW how they work and are monetized. And unlike gambling at a casino, there’s zero chance of you being up money at any point.
I think of them as “Gotcha!” games, cause their point is to trick you.
I think that’s where the term gacha comes from. A japanization of the term gotcha.
No, “gacha” comes from “gashapon,” the crank vending machines, and the name is an onomatopoeia. “Gacha” (or “gasha”) is the sound of the crank being turned, and “pon” is the sound of the capsule dropping out.
Exactly. I have been gaming for decades, yet I never played any of these. Only heard of WOW and Apex Legends out of all the names, no idea what the rest are.
It is possible to spend your money and time on games that provide the entertainment you’re looking for, but not exploit you.
The ads are everywhere and the games are often F2P - no barrier to download or install. Excellent for hooking younger kids, especially ones whose parents can’t or won’t give them access to the old fashioned games.
Arguably the singular upside. You can coast in a Gacha game without losing a ton of money a lot longer than you’ll last in Vegas.
Addiction doesn’t really care about this kind of logic.
gambling isn’t an addiction, it’s a lifestyle.
Professionals disagree with you.
Like it’s in the definition lol.
I feel like it’s easy to conflate addiction with chemical addiction specifically. Anything that releases endorphins in your body can become addictive. Watching TV, playing video games, sweet foods, sex, etc, all have the potential to become addictive.
what’s next are you gonna claim thigh highs can be addictive? this has the same vibe as “water is addictive” or “you have an oxygen addiction”.
I’m going to give you the BoD and say that I think your confusing how addiction works and how the body regulates itself. Also, I should be more clear that anything causing an intense reward response can be addictive. Not just any old response will do, it has be a rush.
Addiction isn’t just doing something repeatedly or enjoying something a lot. It’s a progressive hijacking of the brain’s reward system. It starts with an activity (like gambling) triggering a strong reward response. That response draws people to repeat that activity for the “high”. If the behavior is engaged in regularly, the brain adapts over time. The reward response becomes less intense (this is what “gaining a tolerance” is), causing the person to to engage in the behavior more frequently or intensely to get the same “high” as they did the first time. Eventually, the behavior stops illiciting a reward, and you start to get stressed without whatever behavior it is that originally made you feel high. The person is no longer seeking the behavior because their reward system is telling them to, but for relief from the stress and anxiety of NOT performing the behavior. This is where addiction occurs.
Gambling, sex, and drugs all activate activate this feedback loop in the brains reward system. In contrast things like drinking water or wearing boots just just don’t engage the reward system in the same way. You can experience this yourself by having an orgasm, drinking a glass of water, and comparing the difference in how you feel afterward. Drinking water and wearing clothes are biological necessities or habitual actions. They’re not neurologically reinforced the same way that high reward activities like gambling or sex are.
I think we tend to prefer to think of chemical addiction as the true definition because of opiods like heroin. In the case of heroin, you’re not activating your reward system so much as you’re introducing a reward chemical WAYYY more powerful than anything your body can produce.
Other drugs don’t replace dopamine tho, they just make your body release all of the dopamine it has at the same time, resulting in a similar, but less intense feeling. Getting addicted to these drugs is really no different, biologically speaking, than becoming addicted to a behavior.
Recognizing gambling as an addiction is not a slippery slope to naming more mundane things as addictions. It’s the result of decades of work in neuroscience by thousands, if not millions, of doctors.
I played Arknights for a bit because there’s actually a pretty solid tower defense game in there. There’s not a big selection of good games for Android and I wanted something I could play when I have no laptop with me.
Unfortunately the good gameplay is buried under tons of attention hogging gacha bullshit.
I stopped playing once I realized that I was spending more time doing chores than actually playing through interesting content. Also, while the BGM is nothing short of lavish, the presentation of the story is like a very cheap VN, which basically killed any hope of getting engaged in the story or the characters.
I didn’t spend much more than maybe twenty bucks on it so it’s not too bad given the partially solid gameplay. But yeah, I’m done with live service bullshit games.