I have a confession to make – I used to be addicted to gacha games. The keywords are “used to”.
I got into gacha games when Final Fantasy Brave Exvius began growing, and that was when my spending started to get out of control. I’d do pull battles with other players in the community and due to my strong fear of missing out, or FOMO, I bought lots of premium currency every time a new rare unit came out. I never kept track of this spending out of fear of facing the reality that I have committed what my parents would view as a sin-laden act – wasting my money. For years I couldn’t kick this habit and new games kept me on a leash. My memory is a bit hazy but notable gacha games that I spent on were Knights Chronicle, Ragnarok Online Mobile – Eternal Love, Seven Deadly Sins Grand Cross, Genshin Impact and SINoALICE. So how on earth did I manage to quit these games? I couldn’t do it cold turkey since whenever I quit one game, another one came up to take its place, but there were 4 types of reasons that helped quit these games over time.
- Bad pull luck
FOMO normally is the reason to spend but for me there were times when FOMO was beaten by the frustration of bad luck when pulling on banners. This happened particularly for Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, as I remember the Hyoh banner coming out and I pulled and pulled but I only ever got 1 unit of Hyoh and that fact pushed me right to the edge of frustration. The final nail in the coffin was the Halloween banner afterwards. I pulled and pulled and didn’t get what I wanted and just quit the game out of rage then and there. Not the best way to quit the game as by that point too much money has been spent and it wasn’t intentional, but the silver lining is that no more money will be spent on that game. Just don’t start another one, which I unfortunately did…
- Player vs player frustration
I’m a sore loser, which means getting frustrated with player vs player (PVP) is inevitable for me. With Knights Chronicles and especially Seven Deadly Sins Grand Cross, I raged a lot because these games encouraged pulling for the newest characters to dominate against others in ranked PVP. I should mention also that I have a short temper, so there have been times when I’ve bashed my hands against my poor keyboard and I’ve destroyed a mouse, which was a cheap one thankfully, due to slamming it against my desk. This wasn’t great for my mental health and I felt so unhappy that one day I just decided that enough was enough and I decided to stop logging in and eventually uninstalled the games. Once again not an intentional and great way to stop playing a game, but at least my sanity was salvaged and remained intact, I think.
- Obsession with a non-gacha game
Ragnarok Online Mobile Eternal Love and Genshin Impact were such games that I gave up on due to another game, mainly Final Fantasy XIV. What happened was that a new Final Fantasy XIV expansion would come out and being a long-time player I would drop almost everything, take some leave, and immerse myself in the main story scenario. This led to less interest in doing dailies, hence falling behind, then eventually I lost interest in the gacha game altogether. I would point to this as in my opinion being one of the better ways to quit a gacha game if one can deliberately find a non-gacha game to occupy your time with over a gacha game.
- Pregnancy and parenthood
Yes, becoming a parent helped me quit a gacha game too. Specifically a game like SINoALICE, which I was tied down to due to loyalty to certain guild members. During my third trimester of pregnancy though I was so exhausted that I had to regularly ask for leave from guild vs guild duties since the associated matches were usually in the early mornings and I just needed sleep, and this caused a prolonged absence that made me lose devotion to the game gradually. When my little one came into the world I realised quickly that I couldn’t commit to SINoALICE anymore, but I gave it time to make sure that was the case. Finally, after a few weeks of raising a newborn, I threw in the towel and announced to a small number of people my departure. By the way, I’m not saying go and become a parent to quit a gacha game…
So if there’s any lesson to be learnt from my gacha gaming journey, other than don’t listen to anybody and start a gacha game because an addiction could arise like in my case, I would say to quit a gacha game intentionally find something that takes up so much of your time and energy that gacha games just don’t fit in your day anymore, whether it’s a game, another hobby or even real life priorities. Gacha games just aren’t worth it, no matter how good the base game is. I just hope that I don’t jump on to any gacha game bandwagon ever again…