research-article

Open access

Gacha Game Analysis and Design

Authors:

Zhixuan FangAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems, Volume 7, Issue 1

Article No.: 6, Pages 1 - 45

https://doi.org/10.1145/3579438

Published: 02 March 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Gacha game is a special opaque selling approach, where the seller is selling gacha pulls to the buyer. Each gacha pull provides a certain probability for the buyer to win the gacha game reward. The gacha game has been enthusiastically embraced in numerous online video games and has a wide range of potential applications.In this work, we model the complex interaction between the seller and the buyer as a Stackelberg game, where the sequential decision of the buyer is modeled as a Markov Decision Process (MDP). We define the whale property in the context of gacha games. Then, we show that this is the necessary condition to achieve optimal revenue. Moreover, we provide the revenue-optimal gacha game design and show that it is equivalent to the single-item single-bidder Myerson auction.We further explore two popular multi-item gacha games, namely, the sequential multi-item gacha game and the banner-based multi-item gacha game. We also discuss the subsidies in the gacha game and demonstrate how subsidies may encourage the buyer to engage in grinding behavior. Finally, we provide a case study on blockchain systems as gacha games.

References

[1]

2022. Gacha game: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game

[2]

2022. Reddcoin Wiki: Proof of Stake Velocity (PoSV). https://wiki.reddcoin.com/Proof_of_Stake_Velocity_(PoSV)

[3]

2022. Source code of reddcoin on Github. https://github.com/reddcoin-project/reddcoin/blob/master/src/kernel.cpp

[4]

Moshe Babaioff, Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier, and S Matthew Weinberg. 2020. A simple and approximately optimal mechanism for an additive buyer. Journal of the ACM (JACM) 67, 4 (2020), 1--40.

Digital Library

[5]

Yannis Bakos and Erik Brynjolfsson. 1999. Bundling information goods: Pricing, profits, and efficiency. Management science 45, 12 (1999), 1613--1630.

[6]

Foteini Baldimtsi, Varun Madathil, Alessandra Scafuro, and Linfeng Zhou. 2020. Anonymous lottery in the proof-of-stake setting. In 2020 IEEE 33rd Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF). IEEE, 318--333.

[7]

Aleksander Berentsen, Gabriele Camera, and Christopher Waller. 2004. The distribution of money and prices in an equilibrium with lotteries. Economic Theory 24, 4 (2004), 887--906.

[8]

Patrick Briest, Shuchi Chawla, Robert Kleinberg, and S Matthew Weinberg. 2015. Pricing lotteries. Journal of Economic Theory 156 (2015), 144--174.

[9]

Brian C Britt and Rebecca K Britt. 2021. From waifus to whales: The evolution of discourse in a mobile game-based competitive community of practice. Mobile Media & Communication 9, 1 (2021), 3--29.

[10]

Frank D Buono, Mark D Griffiths, Matthew E Sprong, Daniel P Lloyd, Ryan M Sullivan, and Thomas D Upton. 2017. Measures of behavioral function predict duration of video game play: Utilization of the Video Game Functional Assessment--Revised. Journal of Behavioral Addictions 6, 4 (2017), 572--578.

[11]

Ningyuan Chen, Adam N Elmachtoub, Michael L Hamilton, and Xiao Lei. 2020. Loot box pricing and design. Management Science (2020).

[12]

Shaddin Dughmi, Alon Eden, Michal Feldman, Amos Fiat, and Stefano Leonardi. 2016. Lottery pricing equilibria. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. 401--418.

Digital Library

[13]

Zhixuan Fang, Longbo Huang, and Adam Wierman. 2019. Prices and subsidies in the sharing economy. Performance Evaluation 136 (2019), 102037.

Digital Library

[14]

Scott Fay and Jinhong Xie. 2008. Probabilistic goods: A creative way of selling products and services. Marketing Science 27, 4 (2008), 674--690.

Digital Library

[15]

Tan Gan. 2021. Gacha Game: Selling a Unit Good to a Prospect Theory Consumer. Available at SSRN 3790798 (2021).

[16]

Haiqian Gu, Jie Wang, Ziwen Wang, Bojin Zhuang, and Fei Su. 2018. Modeling of user portrait through social media. In 2018 IEEE international conference on multimedia and expo (ICME). IEEE, 1--6.

[17]

Oussama Hanguir, Will Ma, and Christopher Thomas Ryan. 2021. Optimizing for strategy diversity in the design of video games. arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.11538 (2021).

[18]

Sergiu Hart and Noam Nisan. 2017. Approximate revenue maximization with multiple items. Journal of Economic Theory 172 (2017), 313--347.

[19]

Tingliang Huang and Zhe Yin. 2021. Dynamic probabilistic selling when customers have boundedly rational expectations. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 23, 6 (2021), 1597--1615.

Digital Library

[20]

Tingliang Huang and Yimin Yu. 2014. Sell probabilistic goods? A behavioral explanation for opaque selling. Marketing Science 33, 5 (2014), 743--759.

Digital Library

[21]

Yan Huang, Stefanus Jasin, and Puneet Manchanda. 2019. ?Level Up": Leveraging skill and engagement to maximize player game-play in online video games. Information Systems Research 30, 3 (2019), 927--947.

Digital Library

[22]

Yuming Huang, Jing Tang, Qianhao Cong, Andrew Lim, and Jianliang Xu. 2021. Do the Rich Get Richer? Fairness Analysis for Blockchain Incentives. In Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Management of Data. 790--803.

Digital Library

[23]

Yifan Jiao, Christopher S Tang, and Jingqi Wang. 2021. Selling virtual items in free-to-play games: Transparent selling vs. opaque selling. Service Science 13, 2 (2021), 53--76.

Digital Library

[24]

MARK R Johnson and T Brock. 2019. How are video games and gambling converging. Gambling Research Exchange Ontario 20 (2019).

[25]

Sunny King and Scott Nadal. 2012. Ppcoin: Peer-to-peer crypto-currency with proof-of-stake. self-published paper, August 19, 1 (2012).

[26]

Marco Koeder, Ema Tanaka, and Philip Sugai. 2017. Mobile Game Price Discrimination effect on users of Freemium services--An initial outline of Game of Chance elements in Japanese F2P mobile games. (2017).

[27]

Marco Josef Koeder and Ema Tanaka. 2017. Game of chance elements in free-to-play mobile games. A freemium business model monetization tool in need of self-regulation? (2017).

[28]

Sung-bin Lee, DongYeop Hwang, Jonghyun Kim, and Ki-Hyung Kim. 2020. Proof-of-Lottery: Design for Block Producing Algorithm Based on PoS for Scalability. In 2020 International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN). IEEE, 666--669.

[29]

Kevin Liu. 2019. A global analysis into loot boxes: Is it virtually gambling. Washington International Law Journal 28 (2019), 763.

[30]

John Loomis. 1982. Use of travel cost models for evaluating lottery rationed recreation: application to big game hunting. Journal of Leisure Research 14, 2 (1982), 117--124.

[31]

Will Luton. 2013. Free-to-play: Making money from games you give away. New Riders.

[32]

Ahmed Afif Monrat, Olov Schelén, and Karl Andersson. 2019. A survey of blockchain from the perspectives of applications, challenges, and opportunities. IEEE Access 7 (2019), 117134--117151.

[33]

Roger B Myerson. 1981. Optimal auction design. Mathematics of operations research 6, 1 (1981), 58--73.

[34]

Satoshi Nakamoto. 2008. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Decentralized Business Review (2008), 21260.

[35]

Rio Akbar Pramanta. 2019. Psychoanalytical Approach to Transnational Money Laundering Utilizing Japanese Mobile Online Games with Gacha System: A Forecasting Study. Journal of International Relations 5, 4 (2019), 646--652.

[36]

Larry Ren. 2014. Proof of stake velocity: Building the social currency of the digital age. Self-published white paper (2014).

[37]

John Riley and Richard Zeckhauser. 1983. Optimal selling strategies: When to haggle, when to hold firm. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 98, 2 (1983), 267--289.

[38]

Fahad Saleh. 2021. Blockchain without waste: Proof-of-stake. The Review of financial studies 34, 3 (2021), 1156--1190.

[39]

David Scrogin, Robert P Berrens, and Alok K Bohara. 2000. Policy changes and the demand for lottery-rationed big game hunting licenses. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (2000), 501--519.

[40]

Lifei Sheng, Christopher Thomas Ryan, Mahesh Nagarajan, Yuan Cheng, and Chunyang Tong. 2022. Incentivized actions in freemium games. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 24, 1 (2022), 275--284.

[41]

Akiko Shibuya, Mizuha Teramoto, and Akiyo Shoun. 2015. Systematic analysis of in-game purchases and social features of mobile social games in Japan. In DiGRA Conference.

[42]

Dr Serkan Toto. 2021. Gacha: Explaining Japan's Top Money-Making Social Game Mechanism. https://www.serkantoto.com/2012/02/21/gacha-social-games/

[43]

Pavel Vasin. 2014. Blackcoin's proof-of-stake protocol v2. URL: https://blackcoin. co/blackcoin-pos-protocol-v2-whitepaper.pdf 71 (2014).

[44]

Orlando Woods. 2022. The affective embeddings of gacha games: Aesthetic assemblages and the mediated expression of the self. New Media & Society (2022), 14614448211067756.

[45]

Orlando Woods. 2022. The Economy of Time, the Rationalisation of Resources: Discipline, Desire and Deferred Value in the Playing of Gacha Games. Games and Culture (2022), 15554120221077728.

[46]

Jun Yang, Antung Liu, Ping Qin, and Joshua Linn. 2016. The effect of owning a car on travel behavior: Evidence from the Beijing license plate lottery. Resources for the Future Discussion Paper (2016), 16--18.

[47]

Wanshan Yang, Gemeng Yang, Ting Huang, Lijun Chen, and Youjian Eugene Liu. 2018. Whales, dolphins, or minnows? towards the player clustering in free online games based on purchasing behavior via data mining technique. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE, 4101--4108.

[48]

Michael Yin and Robert Xiao. 2022. The Reward for Luck: Understanding the Effect of Random Reward Mechanisms in Video Games on Player Experience. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1--14.

[49]

Yi Zhao, Sha Yang, Matthew Shum, and Shantanu Dutta. 2022. A Dynamic Model of Player Level-Progression Decisions in Online Gaming. Management Science (2022).

[50]

Amelia Zollner. 2021. Genshin Impact Pity System: What is Pity and How Does it Work? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/genshin-impact-pity-system

Cited By

Gong AHuang YLiu KSugiura K(2024)Getting hooked on mobile games: Strengthening purchase intentions towards mobile games using investment model and parasocial interactionsMobile Media & Communication10.1177/20501579241257907Online publication date: 5-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579241257907
Cao RZhang WSun F(2024)Price discrimination in mobile gacha games: A comprehensive study of the scarcity–pricing, gachaing–user profiling, and recharging–profiting modelsManagerial and Decision Economics10.1002/mde.4192Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.4192
Fok RWeld D(2024)In search of verifiabilityAI Magazine10.1002/aaai.1218245:3(317-332)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/aaai.12182

Index Terms

Gacha Game Analysis and Design
1. Applied computing
  1. Electronic commerce
    1. E-commerce infrastructure
  2. Operations research
    1. Marketing
2. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Design

Recommendations

Gacha Game Analysis and Design
SIGMETRICS '23

Gacha game is a special opaque selling approach, where the seller is selling gacha pulls to the buyer. Each gacha pull provides a certain probability for the buyer to win the gacha game reward. The gacha game has been enthusiastically embraced in ...
Loot Box Pricing and Design
EC '20: Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Economics and Computation

In the online video game industry, a significant portion of the revenue is generated from microtransactions, where a small amount of real-world currency is exchanged for virtual items to be used in the game. One popular way to conduct microtransactions ...
Gacha Game Analysis and Design
SIGMETRICS '23: Abstract Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGMETRICS International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems

Gacha game is a special opaque selling approach, where the seller is selling gacha pulls to the buyer. Each gacha pull provides a certain probability for the buyer to win the gacha game reward. The gacha game has been enthusiastically embraced in ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems

Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems Volume 7, Issue 1

POMACS

March 2023

749 pages

EISSN:2476-1249

DOI:10.1145/3586099

Editors:
Augustin Chaintreau
Columbia University
,
Leana Golubchik
University of Southern California, United States
,
Zhi-Li Zhang
University of Minnesota, United States

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2023 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 02 March 2023

Published in POMACS Volume 7, Issue 1

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Tsinghua University
Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
4,077
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)2,833
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)325

Reflects downloads up to 22 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Gong AHuang YLiu KSugiura K(2024)Getting hooked on mobile games: Strengthening purchase intentions towards mobile games using investment model and parasocial interactionsMobile Media & Communication10.1177/20501579241257907Online publication date: 5-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579241257907
Cao RZhang WSun F(2024)Price discrimination in mobile gacha games: A comprehensive study of the scarcity–pricing, gachaing–user profiling, and recharging–profiting modelsManagerial and Decision Economics10.1002/mde.4192Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.4192
Fok RWeld D(2024)In search of verifiabilityAI Magazine10.1002/aaai.1218245:3(317-332)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/aaai.12182

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents