The affective embeddings of gacha games: Aesthetic assemblages and the mediated expression of the self

Abstract

This article argues that the motivations for investing money in gacha games can be a function of the affective embedding of players within the game, and the game within broader circuits of cultural affinity and appeal. While research on gacha games – and the specific role of loot boxes therein – has emphasised their associations with gambling, I contend that affect is another trigger that can motivate seemingly irrational playing behaviours. The affective embeddings of gacha games motivate players to curate aesthetic assemblages of virtual content that enable the mediated expression of the self. Drawing on qualitative data generated among young Singapore-based players of gacha games, I explore how the acquisition of characters, skins and collections can be motivated by the emotional payoff that comes from relationality rather than gambling.

Keywords

Affective embeddings late capitalism loot boxes mediated self

Introduction

The advent of pervasive online gaming has brought about a reimagination of the economic transactions that bind players to industry. Perhaps the best example of this reimagination is the proliferation of free-to-play (F2P) games, in which players access basic content for free, but have to pay money throughout the game to unlock new content, develop their characters or access new features and benefits. Of these, gacha games – so called because they incentivise players to spend real money in return for the chance to open a loot box and receive a randomly selected virtual item – have arguably attracted the most attention, controversy and debate. While it has been projected that global spending on loot boxes could reach US$50 billion by 2022, critics have called for stricter regulation of gacha games on the grounds that ‘they are unfair, predatory, or could be considered gambling’ (McCaffrey, 2019: 483). Indeed, while research has so far focused on demonstrating how opening loot boxes and gambling can both bring about ‘similar increases in physiological arousal’ (Brady and Prentice, 2021: 1), the fact remains that ‘loot boxes share little in common with traditional forms of gambling’ (DeCamp, 2021: 1). Loot boxes offer the promise of virtual rewards – new characters, cosmetic upgrades known as ‘skins’, and other in-game accessories – whereas traditional forms of gambling offer a potential monetary payoff. More expansive understandings of why players invest money in gacha games are therefore needed. These understandings must recognise the wide-ranging appeal of gacha games on one hand, and player motivations for obtaining virtual items on the other hand. Accordingly, this article develops an understanding of how the affective embeddings of gacha games motivate behaviours that could be interpreted as gambling-like on one hand, or as the fulfilment of desire on the other hand.

My argument is that the appeal of gacha games draws on affective triggers that emerge from outside, and thus extend beyond, the gamespace itself. These triggers serve a dual, and self-reinforcing, purpose that reveal multiple ‘embeddings’. One, they embed gacha games within broader circuits of cultural affinity and appeal, thus causing players to see them as more-than-games. Two, they embed players within the game, thus causing the game – and the characters therein – to be imbued with a relationality that can determine alternative ways of rationalising playing behaviours and spending decisions (Woods, 2021a). Combined, these processes of embedding can moderate players’ engagement with the gambling dynamic by causing monetary value to become relativised by the affective value of play. This value can be seen to expand, but also diminish, and sometimes even replace the rational underpinnings of homo economicus. By embedding the player within the game, affect is the emotional trigger through which these processes play out. It operates alongside, challenges, and needs to be balanced against the realities of non-gaming life, and thus contributes to the ‘ongoingness’ of player-subject formation (Wetherell, 2012: 125). Importantly, gacha games are known for their Japanese origins and integration with anime and manga cultures. They resonate among fans of these cultures, as the characteristics of characters are often shared across mediums. When players pay money to open a loot box to secure or upgrade a character, they are not just reacting to the lures of the gacha mechanic, but to a wider, culturally embedded, and more relationally complex set of cues, desires and emotional and economic drivers as well. Gacha games are one node in a broader economy of Japanese cultural products that is playful, aestheticised and typically hyper-sexualised. Embedding within this economy causes players to develop relationships with their characters that go beyond them being avatars through which gacha games are played. They enable the mediated expression of the self, and provide the ‘rationalizations and normalizations’ (Thornham, 2009: 141) that motivate investment in the gacha system.

The contributions of this article are threefold. One, the idea that players curate aesthetic assemblages to rationalise behaviours that others might associate with ‘gambling’ provides an important – and hitherto overlooked – counterpoint to the existing psychological research on loot boxes, which is ‘rife with discourse surrounding both the moral and ethical implications of in-game microtransactions’ (Brady and Prentice, 2021: 2). Despite the normative nature of the discourse, the fact remains that ‘empirical research on the subject remains in its infancy’ and presents only an ‘initial step in understanding this emerging phenomenon’ (DeCamp, 2021: 1). While I do not discount the normative perspective, I contribute a more holistically informed, and contextually nuanced, understanding of why loot boxes are appealing. Two, to make these arguments, I draw on qualitative data generated by conducting in-depth interviews with Singapore-based players of gacha games. Existing empirical work on loot boxes is almost exclusively quantitative, and draws on online survey data, typically from Western countries, to examine the gacha-gambling interplay (e.g. Drummond et al., 2020; Kristiansen and Severin, 2020; Zendle and Cairns, 2018; Zendle et al., 2020). Moreover, the fact that all participants were Singapore-based – a country in which Japanese cultural influences are strongly and widely felt – provides insight into the ‘new paradigms of gameplay’ (Jin, 2017: 3) taking root in Asia. Three, by bringing an understanding of affect to bear on the motivations for spending money on gacha games, I contribute to theorisations of the affective underpinnings of late capitalism by exploring how it ‘can be actively manipulated for commercial and economic ends’ (Ash, 2010: 654; see also Massumi, 2015; Schüll, 2005, 2012). Indeed, the idea of ‘affective embeddings’ encapsulates these manipulations and is a key contribution of this article.

Late capitalism and the affective compulsions of digital worlds

The integration of the digital into everyday life has brought about a reimagination of the social, the cultural, the political and the economic. Altogether, these integrations can be seen to create ‘digital worlds’ that traverse categories of interest and understanding, and that can trigger new forms of affective compulsion. While recognising these integrations is not new, embracing the role of affect in motivating individuals to act, shaping their actions and rationalising the outcomes of action, is (Woods and Shee, 2021a; Woods and Shee, 2021b). This is especially true when digital worlds are accessed through the playful interface of online games, as these games have the ‘capacity to take us into different emotional territory [more] than any other medium’ (Isbister, 2016: 131). In this vein, Ash (2010) has explored how videogame designers strive to create ‘positively affective outcomes’ from the ‘relation between the code space of the game and the embodied techniques users generate in response to these environments’ (p. 653). Gacha games add a new layer of meaning to these affective outcomes. The contingencies they reproduce draw on the ‘new consumption practices’ (Macey and Hamari, 2019: 21) that stem from the opening of loot boxes, and the aesthetic resonances that cause gacha games to be embroiled within the affective worlds of Japanese visual culture more generally. These distinct layers can be seen to define gacha games, while also revealing their affective embeddings, and complicating their associations with gambling-like behaviours. The two subsections that follow develop these ideas further. First, I explore how digital mediation can foreground a reimagination of what gambling is, or could be; then, I consider the role of affect in embedding gacha games within the playful compulsions of digital worlds.

The expansive logics of digitally mediated gambling

For many, the compulsion to gamble is rooted in the potential of the win. ‘Winning’ often relates to the recouping and maximising of an initial monetary investment, or otherwise receiving something that is perceived to be of value. Whereas gambling was once engaged with in a place-specific way – around a table, in a casino, at a racetrack or bookmakers – digital mediation has caused access to gambling to become pervasive. With it, ‘gambling’ has become a more expansive construct that remains rooted in its traditional forms, but which is now engaged with through new channels of delivery. Of particular interest for this article is its integrations with online games. Integration calls for critical exploration of Kuss and Griffiths’ (2012) assertion that ‘with the Internet, a new playground has emerged’ (p. 279). This playground is one that blurs the ‘boundary between high involvement or passion versus problematic use or addiction’ (Griffiths et al., 2016: 194, original emphasis), and which can therefore problematise extant understandings that treat these ideas as (falsely) distinct. While psychologists have explored the predictors of online versus offline gambling, and the socio-demographic skews therein (McCormack et al., 2013), there is a need to keep exploring and expanding the epistemological boundaries of what it means to ‘gamble’ (vs ‘play’) online, and how ‘winning’ takes on different meanings when it becomes a digitally mediated construct. I suggest that digital mediation can cause obsessive behaviours to be accessed, nurtured and rationalised, which in turn can lead to what some may interpret as gambling-like outcomes. I view the distinction between ‘gambling’ and ‘gambling-like’ as qualitative, and based on the premise that the latter is a more expansive construct that situates the value of the reward within a holistic suite of desires and trade-offs. This blurs the distinction between problematic and unproblematic playing behaviours. Thus, while ‘gambling’ is often treated in uncritically problematic terms, ‘gambling-like’ embraces a spectrum of judgements that might blend problematic and less problematic behaviours into one, more encompassing, modality of play.

The socio-technical interface paves the way for alternative understandings of what motivates players to engage with gambling-like behaviours, and what a desired outcome – a ‘win’ – might entail. Existing research provides insight into these alternative understandings and outcomes. Notably, Schüll (2005, 2012) demonstrates how gambling addictions are not just internalised psychological states, but are also shaped by human–machine interactions. Her ethnography of machine gambling in Las Vegas explores the ‘asymmetrical collusion’ between players and their machines. A key insight is that players do not play to win elusive monetary rewards, but rather to enter a psychosomatic zone through which they can escape from the anxieties and disappointments of everyday life; contrariwise, ‘the gambling industry is playing to win all along’ (Schüll, 2012: 75). For players, the ‘zone’ is the reward, meaning they play to enter a state in which ‘conventional spatial, bodily, monetary, and temporal parameters are suspended’ (Schüll, 2005: 73). Accordingly, to ‘win’ is to enter and stay within this zone for as long as possible; to ‘lose’ is for this state to be rendered inaccessible or otherwise disrupted by, for example, an interruption from casino personnel, or, more paradoxically, actually winning a monetary jackpot. In more recent work, Schüll (2016) provides further insight into how ‘winning’ might be reimagined online. Drawing on interviews with online poker players, she explores how the quantification and cultivation of skill using digital tracking software leads to situations in which players play not for the risk, or the potential monetary rewards, but for a feeling of ‘completeness’. Online poker becomes a ‘vehicle for self-fashioning’ (Schüll, 2016: 566) through which players strive to achieve perfection in their playing strategies. In both examples, digital mediation causes the objective of gambling to shift away from monetary payoffs. With it, ‘winning’ becomes a more expansive construct that goes beyond quantifiable calculation, and includes affective processes of self-realisation and/or escape instead.

Looking beyond the human–machine interplay, and the cultivation of ‘zones’ and skills therein, my concern is the digital worlds of avatars, aesthetics and narratives that online games evoke. These are characteristics of online games that reach out into, and integrate seamlessly with, the socio-cultural lives of players. This means that their affective pulls are multi-faceted, and strong. Among online games, gacha games have become a focus of scholarly and public concern due to their potential to trigger gambling-like behaviours. These triggers are understood to be predicated on immersion within the game; the more engaged a player is, the more likely they are to invest money in opening loot boxes (Balakrishnan and Griffiths, 2018). While I do not question the link between immersion and spending behaviours, I contend that in light of Schüll’s (2005, 2012, 2016) contributions, there is a need to understand the range of (desired) outcomes that motivate such behaviours. Indeed, given that ‘there has been limited attention given to understanding user behaviour towards in-game purchases’ (Balakrishnan and Griffiths, 2018: 238), I call for greater attention to be paid to the affective embeddings of gacha games within broader assemblages of psycho-social cues, aspirations and payoffs. As much as gacha games can be seen to manipulate players’ desires for escapist fantasy, so too can they expand reality along new planes of experience and becoming. Moreover, refocusing attention on the affective embeddings of gacha games will provide insight into the role and power of affect in shaping the new realities of late capitalism.

The affective embeddings of gacha games

Just as the digital has become integrated into all walks of life, so too can such integrations be seen to reflect and enable the spread of capitalist logics. The digital is, however, more than just symptomatic of this spread. Rather, it augments it, creating slippages through which affective resonances can disrupt economic rationalities. Explaining this dynamic in a different way, Massumi (2015: 1, 47, emphasis added) identifies affect as a ‘rabbit hole at the heart of the market’ that can challenge preconceived ideas of ‘rational’ choice, and thus create situations in which ‘affectivity and will are in a zone of indistinction’. These indistinctions are exploited by game designers. Often, they are deployed to shape gaming behaviours in general, and spending on in-game purchases specifically (Ash, 2012). Affect exerts an emotional pull over players, folding them into the logics of the game and creating an aporia that players must navigate throughout their gaming and non-gaming worlds (Wetherell, 2012). Affective embedding causes new, emotionally driven, forms of player-perceived value to emerge; forms that can exist alongside, override or otherwise disrupt more rational understandings of what ‘value’ is, where it is located and how it is realised (Damasio, 1995). When these dynamics are understood in the context of the broader shifts outlined earlier, online games not only contribute to the epistemological expansion and reimagination of ‘gambling’, but also what it means to ‘win’. This is particularly true for gacha games, as there is only the promise of virtual rewards. The appeal of this logic is rooted in affective embedding; ‘winning’ a virtual reward reproduces this embedding, which becomes a sought-after state for players seeking to realise a mediated version of the self. The alternative logics of value upon which gacha games are based can therefore encourage players to act in seemingly ‘irrational’ ways.

Irrationality stems from the affective compulsions of play, which, in many respects, define gacha games. To obtain in-game currency, players must either spend a significant amount of time completing mindless, repetitive tasks (‘grinding’), or invest real-world money in the game. The outcome of either of these actions is the same – to obtain in-game currency that can be used to buy a chance to obtain a virtual item that might serve one of many roles; to help a player progress in the game, to change the look of their characters (by acquiring ‘skins’), to unlock game features and so on. While some view these items as offering an ‘aesthetic change within a game but no in-game advantage’ (Zendle et al., 2020: 2), others suggest that the optionality afforded by these items ‘allow[s] the player to interact with the game in many different ways’ (Hilgard et al., 2013: 1). This latter perspective is interesting, as it suggests that some are motivated to open loot boxes because they can help them progress in the game, while others open them because the products contained therein can increase the affective resonance and appeal of the game. This resonance starts from the act of opening a loot box – described as an ‘event in itself and is typically accompanies by lights, sounds, and other effects intended to make the appearance exciting’ (McCaffrey, 2019: 485) – but carries through to the immersions of the gamespace. It is these immersions, and the affective triggers that connect the gacha gamespace to other spaces within which the player is already embedded, that can cause them to become implicated in the gambling-like mechanics of gacha games.

Players are motivated by an economy of desire that encourages them to invest in the gacha mechanic until they are satisfied with the items they receive. Over time, these investments reinforce the affective embeddings of gacha games. Players invest in characters and skins despite their virtuality, because they increase immersion in the game. In this vein, the characters are ‘not just an interface in a neutral or descriptive sense, but a crucial modality of human integration into the nonhuman circuitry of new technology’ (Apperley and Clemens, 2017: 44; after Isbister, 2016). Through the relationality of characters, the game becomes affectively charged and players become more susceptible to affective embedding. This dynamic is further enhanced by the monetary incentive for game developers to embed players within the game, and thus reproduce the ‘asymmetrical collusion’ that Schüll (2012) evokes. Yet, the asymmetry of gacha games is more multi-faceted as it is based on the potential for individual customisation. That is, the virtual items that players desire can be assembled in many ways, which maximises the ‘material relations between components that make up an object and the absolute material thresholds that define an object by what it can do’ (Ash, 2015: 84). A skin does not just change the colour or clothing of a character, but it deepens the immersion, pulling the player further into the game and integrating the game more completely with the player’s non-gaming world(s). It becomes a more expansive representation of the self that encapsulates the player as avatar, as provider and as situated stakeholder in the economic worlds of the characters they are responsible for. I elaborate on these ideas later.

Methodology and empirical context

Existing work on gacha games – especially that concerned with the effects of loot boxes on player behaviour – is limited in its explanatory potential. This is due to a number of methodological biases that have come to define the discourse. Four are pertinent to this article. One, as mentioned earlier, it tends to draw on quantitative data generated from self-selecting samples (e.g. Zendle and Cairns, 2018; Zendle et al., 2020). As a result, explanatory nuance and insight is often lacking from the discourse. Two, the gacha-gambling association speaks to the disciplinary interests of psychologists in particular (e.g. Brady and Prentice, 2021; King and Delfabbro, 2018, 2019; Kristiansen and Severin, 2020), which can be seen to diminish the importance of socio-cultural (and other) influences on player motivation and behaviour. Three, research has tended to focus on adult players, rather than their younger counterparts (DeCamp, 2021), and four, on players living in Western countries (Drummond et al., 2020). These last two biases are important for this article, as this study focuses on younger players based in Singapore. Given the strong and long-standing influences of Japanese culture in Singapore, Singapore-based players have been shown to be immersed within, and responsive to, the affective lures of Japanese cultural products (Clammer, 2000; Jin, 2017). However, I develop this line of thought further by emphasising the complex relationality that underpins player engagement with the gacha mechanic, which goes beyond stimulus-effect responses. Accordingly, in late-2020, I conducted 21 in-depth interviews with regular players of the recently released gacha game, Genshin Impact. All players lived in Singapore, and were in their late-teens to mid-20s. All were full-time polytechnic or university students, or national servicemen.¹ The sample included two couples and one friendship pair. Interviews lasted 45–60 minutes, and were conducted by the author in English.

While all participants identified as regular players of various gacha games, they were united in that they were all players of Genshin Impact – an open-world gacha game released by miHoYo in September 2020. The game has been well-received in Singapore, with advertisements for it adorning train stations and buses, and infiltrating the YouTube feeds of many. While recruitment followed a snowball methodology – starting with my students and other personal contacts and branching out from there – it soon became apparent that nearly everyone I contacted had heard of the game, and could put me in touch with a regular player. An interpretive framework was used for data collection and analysis, meaning interviews were open-ended and loosely structured along the lines of key topics. These included gaming preferences and behaviours; interest in, and experience of, gacha games in general, and Genshin Impact specifically; and motivations for investing either time and/or money to play the gacha mechanic. All interviews were audio recorded, fully transcribed, and analysed using an open coding approach. Responses to these broad topic areas tended to cleave the sample into two groups. On one hand were competitive players, who were mostly male and keen to quickly progress through the game. Their affective embedding within the game was secondary to their ability to progress. On the other hand, and the focus of this article, were ‘lifestyle’ players, who gained a sense of emotional satisfaction from engaging with their characters, developing relationships with them, and immersing themselves in the gamespace. While this group was a mix of males and females, all expressed a keen interest in manga, anime and J-pop, and most engaged with their characters in ways that transcended the gamespace.

Aesthetic assemblages and the mediated expression of the self

Integrating gacha games into broader cultural matrices is a key factor that drives their popularity among younger players. Aesthetic similarities provide points of continuity that cut across different mediums, enveloping the player within a sense of affective resonance that pervades multiple spaces of everyday life. What gacha games bring to this matrix is a greater, but also more complex, sense of relationality, as players can actually engage with characters, and, through the gacha mechanic, can maximise their affective value. Through these games, then, players are able to create aesthetic assemblages that fulfil their own needs for visual satisfaction, engagement and fantasy. Not only that, but the relational aspect of gacha games means that players are able to – and many are motivated to – project themselves into the game through their characters. As much as players are motivated to spend money on gacha games, so too can such expenditure be reinterpreted as an outcome of the affective embedding of players into the game, which in turn enables the mediated expression of the self. Loot boxes might not hold anything of ‘real-world value’, yet the fact that they hold what can be understood as ‘desirable items’ (Brady and Prentice, 2021: 4) suggests that players do not necessarily engage with them according to the rationalisations of scholarly and regulatory concern, but on deeply emotive terms instead. The subsections that follow elaborate on these ideas.

The cultural resonances of gacha games

Even if they are not active consumers of anime and manga, it is rare to find a young Singaporean who is not aware of these cultural products. It is rarer still to find a player of gacha games who is not embedded within the cultural matrix that these products are part of. Embedding leads to a seamless sense of aesthetic and cultural resonance that motivates initial engagement with gacha games. Moreover, it creates a field of affect within which gacha games are subsumed, and which ‘primes’ players for irrational action (after Massumi, 2015). For example, Nikhita,² a university student in her late-teens, observed that Genshin Impact is ‘very obviously steered towards the anime audience’, while Kenzo, a polytechnic student in his mid-20s, explained that ‘out of love for the anime, you just want to try the game’. Players can be positioned on a spectrum according to the extent to which they are embedded within the cultural matrix of gacha games, and thus responsive to their affective pulls. On one end are what is known as weeaboos (weebs) who obsessively consume Japanese culture in a way that blurs the line between fantasy and reality. Jocelyn – a polytechnic student in her late-teens, and Kenzo’s girlfriend – represented this extreme. She identifies as a cosplayer, and came to our interview partially dressed in gothic Lolita style clothes and make-up. These medium-transcending consumption preferences revealed the motivation to spend money on loot boxes. As Kenzo explained, ‘if you watch [anime], then maybe the story of the character is interesting . . . So that can be one reason why you would want to try to get that character [in a gacha game]’.

On the other end of the spectrum are those that are less invested in the Japanese aesthetic, and thus tended to engage with the cultural matrix in a more selective way. These criticisms often spoke to the (hyper-)sexualised³ nature of characters found in anime, manga and gacha, and how engaging with these characters could be misinterpreted in Singapore. For example, Zhang Yong, a university student and competitive gamer in his early-20s, explained that weebs ‘behave in a weird manner’, were ‘more perverted in nature’ and brought a ‘stigma’ to the playing of gacha games. Izzy, a university student in her late-teens, reiterated this sentiment from a female perspective, complaining that female gacha characters were developed to ‘fulfil male fantasies’ and were therefore ‘very unrealistic, because how can they wear so little and go out and kill people with their swords?’ While Zhang Yong’s and Izzy’s views might appear idiosyncratic, they do reveal some of the deeper truths that drive the affective resonances of gacha games. Everyone I interviewed engaged with gacha games because of the characters, with Tony, a national serviceman in his early-20s, explaining in simple terms that players want ‘characters that are either good looking or they are very strong’. Tony identifies as a competitive player like Zhang Yong, and was also dismissive of weebs. He opined that

it’s degeneracy. Female gamers, female gacha gamers, they might see all the good looking guy characters as attractive. Same for the guys, for some of the gacha guy gamers [who see the girl characters as attractive]. And then there are little children characters that some people might find them cute, like ‘aww, I want them’.

As Tony suggests, the good looking characters tend to be more popular among weebs, while more competitive players prefer stronger characters that allow faster progression. Jocelyn validated this sentiment, telling me how she was particularly drawn to characters with red hair and black eyes, before going on to explain in more general terms how she is drawn to ‘really cute guys, or really handsome guys . . . Handsome because, you know, I’m physically, sexually attracted to them. And then cute guys because I just think they’re cute, they’re worth protecting’. Kenzo had a similar preference for female characters with ‘really short hair’, which, when asked why, Jocelyn explained as being his ‘fetish’.⁴ Agreeing with Jocelyn, Kenzo went on to explain how girls with short hair are, in his view, ‘more innocent . . . and have a more . . . I wouldn’t say sheltered life, but a life better taken care of, right?’ From these admissions, we can begin to see how the cultural resonances of gacha games stem from the multi-faceted ways in which players relate to their characters. They develop a sense of relationality that foregrounds, but also creates opportunities for, the expression of the mediated self in and through the gamespace.

Relating to, and the relationality of, characters

The affective resonances of gacha games encourage players to embed themselves within the game, causing their engagements and relationships with their characters to become extensions of the mediated self. As much as the player puts themself into the game, so too do they engage with their characters in ways that go beyond the game. Players tend to anthropomorphise their characters, causing the distinction between the virtual and real to be transcended. For example, Andy, a national serviceman in his early-20s and competitive player, was ‘amazed’ by the sheer variety of characters in Genshin Impact, which even for him ‘play a very strong part in storytelling . . . [they] bring us a more realistic experience, it’s more fun, more entertaining’. For players like Andy, virtual characters make the game ‘more realistic’ as they provide opportunities for him to immerse himself in the game, and thus enable the mediated expression of his self. These mediations were most acute among weebs, who would invest the most time, emotion and money into their characters. For example, Stanley, an undergraduate in his mid-20s, told me how his most desired character in Genshin Impact is an astrologist called Mona, who ‘refuses to earn money out of astrology because she believes that it helps people and she really wants to give it out for free’. The character is, however, flawed as ‘she’s really poor’, which in turn provided the hook needed to capture his interest, as ‘that’s something I really like in a character, the kindness, the sense of righteousness, so I wanted her’. When I put it to Stanley that he sounded like he was describing a real person, he retorted,

I don’t want to see her as a person, but I feel that these characters were designed to be relatable, and when they are relatable, you can’t help but think that you really want to take care of the character. So, if I have her [Mona] in my team, I could give her money, I could give her food . . . you want this character to be happy . . . I can’t help but see that person as a person, that character as a person.

The relationship that Stanley develops with his characters equates to that of a real-life friend. Stacey, a university student in her late-teens, echoed this sentiment, using it to justify why ‘I invest time [in the game] because I like them, so it’s like the way you treat a friend’. While Stacey describes here a sense of distinction between her virtual friends (who she invests time with) and her real friends (who she goes out with), others did not recognise such a distinction. Even Tony, a competitive gamer, described how his relationship with his characters enabled greater immersion into the game, as ‘it’s like you’re on an adventure with the character . . . so it’s like I’m projecting myself into the game’. Projecting the self into the game, and the character beyond the game, encapsulates how the affective embedding of gacha games is ‘constructed through the background context of a user’s relation with an image; and an ecological space constructed through the expressive relationship between body and screen’ (Ash, 2009: 2105). The gamespace therefore becomes an immersive space – not just in terms of realistic graphics and sound effects, but also in terms of the affective relationality that players develop with their characters. Stanley put it well in his assertion that ‘when you’re there [in the game], you don’t feel like you’re separated from your character’, while Jocelyn described the emotional payoff that comes with immersion:

I feel anger, I feel sadness, I feel all these weird, weird things . . . It’s just very weird because of the way I feel towards this person [character], like, I talk to him . . . but I only play through them during the game. So, whatever thought I have of them is just from my own fantasy.

Jocelyn’s ‘fantasy’ is an expression of her mediated self; a self that transcends the real, mundane and material, and can be projected into, and out of, the screen. The strong emotional pull is rooted in the aesthetic assemblage of the Japanese cultural matrix, triggered through the affective resonance of gacha games, and then monetised through the profoundly personal relationships that players are encouraged to develop with their characters. Kenzo described this relationship first as ‘nurturing’ and then as ‘taking care of a nursery where you have a lot of kids . . . you have to dedicate time to them’, while Jocelyn took to cosplaying because she ‘wanted to be a character’ and Stanley to writing his own fan fiction as ‘a form of projection; when you see someone relatable you see a bit of yourself in that [character]’. My point is that the distinction between character and player is overcome, causing each to merge with the other. Thus, while Kuss and Griffiths (2012: 283) interpret merging as symptomatic of ‘addicted’ playing behaviours, the situation is considerably more complex than their categorisation suggests. My interpretation is that merging renders gacha games not just affectively resonant, but also ‘social fulfilling’ (Karlsen, 2011: 194), the combined effect of which is that they reduce barriers to spending on loot boxes. In this vein, the relationships that players develop with their characters shapes their attitudes towards, and engagements with, the gacha mechanic, thus triggering gambling-like playing behaviours.

Curating aesthetic assemblages of characters, skins and collections

The affective resonances of gacha games in general, and the relationships that players develop with their characters more specifically, both serve to embed players within the game. They motivate players to spend. Through the manipulation of affect, players are motivated to engage with the mechanics of gacha. For example, Eric, a university student in his early-20s and competitive player, admitted that even for him ‘there’s the temptation to pull [the gacha mechanic] just because the character looks good, like it might not be as powerful or as unique . . . but sometimes the cosmetics plays a part’, while Nikhita added that ‘cosmetics’ can instil in her a desire for ‘an instant gratification feeling, so you just spend money [to get a character or skin]’. One of the most extreme examples of this was shared by Jocelyn, who admitted that ‘I go to the ends of the world to get [characters and skins]; I once cashed about $400 just to get a skin’. The relationship between players, characters and skins reveals a gradual process of players embedding themself in the game in order to realise the mediated self. The gacha mechanic is first played to obtain a desired character, but it does not stop there. Rather, to make the character theirs – aesthetically at least – players would then have to customise it with their own skins. As Kenzo explained,

Getting the character is one step. But then, when you get the costume [skin], I see it as an alternative look that I can put on the character. For most cases, these costumes may not be available forever, so it’s time exclusive. So, I feel like if I don’t get this costume, then I will lose out in a certain way. It won’t be complete.

Your character won’t be complete, or your experience won’t be complete?

My experience with the character. I mean, for most of the times you can always just go and Google the outfit and see the character online, but . . . It just doesn’t feel the same way as actually owning the outfit and the character so you can freely change it.

Kenzo describes a process of making the character his own through the acquisition of skins, the motivation being a ‘complete’ experience. Completeness is rooted in ownership, and having the ability to control how the character looks. In this sense, while skins might have ‘no direct effect on gameplay, being decorative items’ (Macey and Hamari, 2019: 24), they do influence the experience of the game, and the dissolution of boundaries between player and character. Reflecting on this dynamic, Andy shared how some players would have ‘a lot of effort put into just grooming a certain character because of the affection towards it’, while even Tony admitted that ‘it just feels good, after you grind very hard, then you get the resources needed to make your character very strong. It’s just, like, “oh, my baby, my child, I have spent so much time and resources on you”’. Even as competitive players, both Andy and Tony are implicated in the same dynamic of investing in their characters as Kenzo. Yet, beyond being a catalyst for better play and faster progression, skins are rarely seen as singular acquisitions. Rather, multiple skins are needed to consolidate the player’s place in the aesthetic assemblage of gacha games, which coalesce to form a collection of virtual items. These collections consolidate the evolution of the mediated self, as Jocelyn explained,

Once I like a character, I want everything the best for them. So, once they have this skin, or once the artist throws something [creates a new one], I’m, like, ‘OK, I need to get it’.

Why?

Collection. I have no other words, it’s literally a collection. I have to complete my collection for this person [character] to let other people know how much I love them.

So, if you don’t have a complete collection, it shows that you’re not committed, or not as committed as you could be?

Kind of, yeah. Like, if I really love this thing, I could have put enough time or enough money or something to getting that for them, but I didn’t. So, something might have outweighed my current goals.

The language of ‘complete collections’ and ‘goals’ reveals the extent to which players like Jocelyn invest themselves into the game. The mediated self becomes indistinguishable from the characters they play with, meaning the character becomes a conduit for self-expression and realisation. Rationalising why she spent US$400 on a skin, Jocelyn explained how ‘it was my, sort of, gift to myself for going through whatever I had previously [gone through] in the game for trying to get this character. I had this end goal: I want to finish my collection’. For games like Genshin Impact, the importance of the collection is embedded within the game logic, as you need to have a range of characters with complementary skills or elementary powers in order progress through the game. The affective embedding of gacha games is therefore sequential; it starts with getting characters, then skins, then completing collections. It is only once the collection is complete that players like Jocelyn can be satisfied, as the aesthetic assemblage has been realised. As the player progresses through the sequences, however, they become more and more invested in the game, as the sunk costs of time and money will be wasted unless the collection is completed. In turn, these costs become ‘affectively validating in the currency of satisfactions gained’ (Massumi, 2015: 16), thus causing the investment to be retrospective, but the desire to be aspirational. Enforcing this sequencing are various emotional triggers, from the thrill of securing a character, to making the character the player’s own through skins, to the sense of completion – of winning – that comes with a collection. Combined, the multi-faceted nature of these triggers underpins the complex relationality that informs player’s engagement with the gacha mechanic. Affective compulsion might be a driver of engagement, but so too are its effects part of a much broader suite of trade-offs that players make throughout their gaming and non-gaming lives.

Conclusion

The thing that surprised me the most when conducting this project was that the language of ‘gambling’ was one that I imposed on most of my participants during the interviews, suggesting a degree of dissonance between actual player behaviours and scholarly discourse. Of course, it could well be argued that the subtleties of the gacha mechanic mean that the psychological associations with gambling are not necessarily noticed by players until they become problematic (DeCamp, 2021; Drummond et al., 2020). But, by the same measure, so do such behaviours need to be understood holistically. The affective embeddings of gacha games advanced by this article is one such understanding. These games are embedded within the affective fold of Japanese popular culture, meaning the affective triggers do not start nor end with the game; rather the game provides a conduit through which the affective compulsions of players can be realised. These compulsions are rooted in the aesthetic appeal of characters, but go beyond that. They encourage players to develop relationships with their characters, with the gacha mechanic providing opportunities for them to curate aesthetic assemblages through which the mediated self can be expressed. It enables, in other words, players to ‘los[e] track of where the game ends and where reality begins’ (McGonigal, 2011: 20), and to become more expansive version of themselves. While the mediated self might be realised through gacha games, it does not stop there. It builds outwards, expanding the aesthetic assemblage through social media and further deepening the affective fold within which the player and their networks are embedded. By emphasising this point, I hope to disrupt the stimulus-effect relationship found in much of the literature on online gambling, and to foreground instead the role of affect in creating alternative pathways into, and outcomes of, spending on gacha. The payoff might not be monetary, but it does provide a sense of satisfaction that players might otherwise find to be missing in their lives.

The bigger point is not that players are compelled, manipulated or otherwise encouraged to put money into a game; rather, it is that they do so in search of an emotional payoff that satisfies their need for social interaction and self-realisation. That this payoff is anchored in nonhuman life reveals the expansive logics of affective embedding, and how they might be providing a new grounding for consumption in the era of late capitalism (Woods, 2021b). This is a grounding that renders the player more-than-human, in turn complicating the role of (ir)rationality – and the accusations of gambling therein – in influencing player behaviours. Through the mediation of the self, the distinctions between human and nonhuman life are overcome, and the virtual becomes a new basis for the differentiation and reimagination of the social (see Woods, 2019; Woods, 2021c). Building out Isbister’s (2016) call for ‘more nuanced and detailed appreciation for home game move players emotionally’ (p. 132), there is a need for research to explore how the mediated self might intersect, align with or diverge from, its unmediated counterpart. These explorations should start from, but also expand, the premise that gamespaces are arenas for subject formation and self-learning; they are spaces of becoming (Massumi, 2015; see also Woods, 2020; Woods, 2021d; Woods, 2021e). Extending this view further will enable an expansion of the discourse on gacha games in ways that better situate them within the desires, identities, aspirations and relationalities of players’ lives. In turn, these drivers might help to parochialise the role of gambling in spurring engagement with the gacha mechanic. As such, closer attention needs to be paid to expanding the discursive boundaries of what digitally mediated forms of gambling might – or could – mean, and how these forms might actually realise through the compulsion of affect, or those of play.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mugdha Jaruhar, Rena Tang and Rachel Teh for fieldwork assistance, and to the three anonymous reviewers for their critical readings of, and constructive comments on, earlier drafts of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Lee Kong Chian Fellowship, Singapore Management University.

ORCID iD

Orlando Woods

Notes

Author biography

Orlando Woods is Associate Professor of Humanities at Singapore Management University. His research interests include religion, cities and digital transformation in/and Asian. He holds BA and PhD degrees in Geography from University College London and the National University of Singapore respectively.

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