The Fall of Gacha Boxes and the Rise of the Gacha Store
If you’ve been paying attention to the gaming world, you’ll have noticed a certain animosity towards gacha boxes. This has gotten to the point where certain countries are beginning to outright ban them. The video game industry, being part of the tech industry and moving faster than Quicksilver, has begun to adapt. I made a post about some of the alternatives not too long ago, but, in my haste to finish the post and get it out, I completely forgot to mention one:
Marvel Strike Force’s rotating store!
For the uninitiated, Strike Force is a Marvel mobile app in which the player collects and levels up Marvel characters. They then take them into turn-based battles to complete the story and, in turn, unlock or power up more characters.
Ah ha! Are you sure? What is a gacha box but a box in which you randomly get rewards from when you purchase, or ‘pull’, the box?
Let’s take a closer look at this store.
In the store, we have items for sale for hard currency and various soft currencies. The store’s contents rotate every twenty-four hours. But wait, what’s this?
Hmmm, it would seem you can force the store to reset its contents with randomly rolled items via spending hard currency. Thus, by spending real money, you get the opportunity to spend more on a new selection of items. So, let’s say I know there are probably any number of items which could populate in the store. I just keep using the refresh button until the item I want appears in the store. And, because it shows you the items and you’re not getting anything directly from resetting the store, it circumvents all the gacha laws. It’s brilliant.
This is what my store initially looks like.
After one reset, we can see a different set of character shards are available.
After the second reset, we can see the refresh price has increased and another set of characters.
After the third reset, we have the same refresh price and a new set of characters.
After the fourth reset, the price would increase again and there would be yet another set of characters.
A couple weeks ago, during the Shang-Chi event, I reset three times. In all three instances, Shang-Chi appeared in a ten shard set. This suggests that my above example is of a general day in the game. However, during events, the tables of which characters may appear could be slightly skewed in favor of specific characters.
What makes this particularly interesting is that it has the possibility to increase revenue even further than typical gachas with less volatility.
Let’s look at an example:
Terminology note: Before digging in I want to explain what a carrot character is. In gacha or random reward sets, there is always a carrot. This is the item players really want. It can be a specific character or item. Typically, it’s the most valuable item in the gacha box which drives players to try over and over again to win one.
Assume the carrot character in the first slot has a high chance to stay the same. The player buys ten shards, then they reset the contents of the store hoping that a carrot character will appear. The carrot character reappears in the first slot but the other two are not particularly exciting characters. The player then buys ten more shards in hopes of trying again. On top of all this, the price goes up with every other reset, meaning the player will have to spend more to roll again if the character they want does not appear. This acts as a deterrent to users who normally might just buy their way through and are not whales, a term for users willing to spend large amounts of money through microtransactions, but still entices them to spend some money on the cheaper resets. Whales can buy their way through should their desired character not appear for many attempts, but the price will balloon quickly. Before they know it, each reset will cost $40 on top of the $10 they are spending for ten shards.
Let’s do some light math:
Mid tier characters cost 45 shards.
First buy $10 for 10 shards
Second character shard buy $10 for 10 shards
Third character shard buy $10 for 10 shards
Fourth character shard buy $10 for 10 shards
Fifth character shard buy $10 for 10 shards
That’s $80 for the chance to unlock the carrot character already. God help you if you want to level him up before he disappears tomorrow, or if the carrot character is a rare one that unlocks at a hundred shards.
On top of that, savvy players don't want to “waste” the other shards that are appearing. They’ll want to maximize each reset. What does that result in? They buy everything of value. Now you’re selling three characters and exponentially increasing your revenue. And that’s not even taking into account all the non-character shard items in the store.
So, let’s assume there are two sets of five shards for random mid tier characters alongside the carrot character which appears.
Purchase round 1: $10 additional ($5 for each lower tier character)
Purchase round 2: $10 additional ($5 for each lower tier character)
Purchase round 3: $10 additional ($5 for each lower tier character)
Purchase round 4: $10 additional ($5 for each lower tier character)
Purchase round 5: $10 additional ($5 for each lower tier character)
That’s an additional $50 for the lower tier characters, with no guarantee these character shards will unlock a character as they are more likely to be different upon refreshes. Thus the player won’t gain enough in one sitting to unlock the additional non-carrot characters. Players who do not buy all the characters when they have the chance will be kicking themselves when the next event rolls around and these lower tier characters are required to unlock better characters.
$130 for 100 character shards. Let’s compare this to the offers in Strike Force. Team offers typically run from $15 to $25 and award 400 to 900 shards. This will unlock or promote four to five characters. So, for four characters, you’re looking at a 520% to 866% increase in revenue from selling them in group offers.
500 Shards, 100K of soft currency for $25
500 Shards and 100k Soft Currency for $25
V Single Character Offers
Single character offers come in typically at $30 for 50 shards and a bunch of resources. This is much cheaper than the straight $80 to unlock the same amount of carrot character shards without awarding any other resources. That is a 266% increase in spend over the single offers. Even though it seems like the user is spending less on the rotating store characters because it is in smaller increments, it ends up being considerably more than the single character offers.
Let’s look at the Human Weapon Orb. Its carrot is the character Shang-Chi. After doing some math, we determine that on average 9.39 shards will be given out with each pull. Each pull costs 675 Hard Currency, and the player will need to do, on average, five pulls to unlock Shang-Chi. This comes out to about $45 to unlock the character. An argument could be made that the player will unlock 46.95 shards with only 5 pulls, and so they are getting slightly less value. This is true, but, as far as the value to the player goes, the character is still unlocked. The 3.05 additional shards do not translate to additional power or content in the game and are thus not worth worrying about in our current analysis. Additionally, 56.34 shards are still valued at less ($54) than rotating store value of $80 for the same result.
Note: even the most unlucky player will unlock the character with eight pulls after spending $72 which is STILL a better deal than the store.
Terminology note: Gacha typically awards X amount of a specific item per pull. Grab bags will have multiple pools of items and will award an item from each pool in each pull. For example the Human Weapon Orb contains 3 pools:
A Shang-Chi shard pool which awards at least 3 Shang-Chi Shards, and up to 180 shards for the jackpot.
Two Shang-Chi gear/ability pools, which award a random piece of gear or level up currency each for Shang-Chi.
So a user would be guaranteed to receive some Shang-Chi shards and two pieces of gear or two piles of useful currency.
With the Human Weapon Orb, the player is guaranteed a drop of the carrot character shards with each pull. While this doesn’t have the same “feels bad” moment of gacha, which has no guaranteed result, no one buys the Human Weapon Orb thinking they will get only three shards, despite there being a 50% chance of it. When people gamble, they are thinking about the best case scenario, the jackpot that catches their eye. “I could be the one to win that car.” After so long of not getting it, and getting the lesser reward, it can become a “feels bad” moment. Targeting a low amount of pulls required to unlock the character will help to mitigate this. Unfortunately, this also forces the revenue down to hit that good feeling of unlocking the character, thus making the gacha and grab bags receive less revenue than the rotating store.
Now, an argument could be made that a specific gacha box or grab bag can be balanced so a character comes out after a user has spent more money than the rotating store. However, with the forced rotation of the store, you’re going to get more users engaging in the system and buying additional shards. Instead of exclusively relying on whales to raise your ARPPU/ARPDAU, as no one else feels they can spend enough to reliably unlock the characters, it’s safer to engage more users more frequently. There’s also no “feels bad” moment this way, and, while I know that can be valuable in encouraging spending in some users, I’d argue it alienates and turns off more players than it brings in as it creates insane volatility with users not getting what they want.
If this is very similar to a gacha box then why doesn’t it take any heat?
It’s because, if I’m a free player who doesn’t do the resetting of the store, I can still buy the shards for a character I want regularly with hard currency. This guarantees me the thing I want without spending, whereas gacha boxes have that “feels bad” moment of trying for something and not getting it. You need to remember, it’s never the whales who have issues with gacha boxes. They don’t care, they have the money to pull as many as they want. It’s everyone else, and you need to really consider the non-whale experience regarding systems that are similar to gacha boxes.
So let’s wrap up with some Strike Force Data
For the rotating store, users pay at least $80 for the single character unlock.
For the gacha, users pay roughly $45 for the single character unlock.
For the offers, users pay $30 for the character unlock.
For the multi character offers, users pay $20-$25 for multiple character unlocks.
Note: A character in any of these phases is never in the other phases at the same time. Shang-Chi was in the rotating store a couple weeks ago, and is now in the gacha. I imagine that after he’s no longer profitable in the gacha he’ll become a single character offer.
That’s it for me for now. I hope you enjoyed this post and can apply some of this info to your game to increase revenue while making your users happy. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on my blog/portfolio at https://ScottFineGameDesign.com or on social media like LinkedIn.
