A huge free-to-play game makes fun of its addicted players, and they love it

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled a man named Daigo who spent the equivalent of $70,000 on items and playable heroes in the mobile RPG Fate/Grand Order.

That’s a stunning figure, more than many enthusiasts will spend on their passion in a lifetime. Tales of exorbitant bills are pretty common in the world of loot box (or gacha) games, in which developers use a web of design strategies to extract thousands of dollars from superfans who, as Daigo explains, are so emotionally attached to unlocking the rare characters that they don’t set a limit on their spending.

This may seem like abusive behavior on the part of the developers, and you’d think that these strategies for squeezing the most money out of players would be hidden from view, or at least rationalized in some way that makes it sound fun and not like a dystopian brand of capitalism. But the game doesn’t just profit from these strategies — it makes fun of the players for buying in. Fate/Grand Order is very aware of how it makes money, and it’s comfortable turning it into a joke.

How the game is so cruel

Players don’t need to recruit the rarest characters to progress in Fate/Grand Order. But that’s hardly the point. Fans want to fight alongside and flirt with the important characters from the beloved Fate series, not the perfectly capable benchwarmers that the game gives out for free.

The game knows that a certain very profitable subset of users will spin that gacha hundreds of times — at about $20 for bundles of 10 spins — until they hit the jackpot, and the lady King Artoria appears before them. There is, of course, a very low chance of winning the best characters. But the most dedicated players don’t care, or they see the game as being worth the investment. Such is their love.

Indeed, Fate/Grand Order monetizes that love. It twists and squeezes it until cash begins to gush out. The game’s odds are cruel, its prices are high and its handouts are stingy. None of that has stopped it from sitting atop the revenue charts in its native Japan, even among competitors that hand out free premium currency like candy.

It’s profoundly unethical game design and, more than that, a bit of a mean thing to do to your fans. But a lot of games do all that; why single out this one?

What’s interesting about Fate/Grand Order is that the game’s marketing features a vicious caricature of dedicated players. She’s a slobbering, lecherous, gambling-addicted little monster.

Fans love her.

“Gudako” (literally, “Boring Girl”) is a nickname that stuck to the game’s blank-slate female protagonist character.

Artist Riyo curses poor Gudako with a very particular personality in the tutorial comics: the raw id and worst impulses of a gacha addict. The ensuing Understanding With Manga! comics are only technically “educational,” focusing instead on Gudako alternately berating, threatening and sexually harassing her Servants (the same heroes that players roll the gacha to recruit) while ignoring the game itself and fiending for her next hit from the gacha.

Kadokawa

Fate has never been afraid to make fun of itself, and its fans love a meta-joke. “Riyo Gudako” quickly became popular enough to supplant the original non-character in the minds of many players. Understanding With Manga! went into print and continued with More! and Yet More! sequels long past the point that the “tutorial” facade fell aside. Gudako even has an action figure effectively based on Riyo’s interpretation, meant to be displayed on a shelf gawking over a real-life fan’s own plastic collection of Servants.

Riyo Gudako steals the scene at official live Fate/Grand Order stage shows. The organizers keep her in character by having her kick her co-stars, actively resist her handlers and at one point leave for the food court. The biggest spenders from the game are certainly in the crowd at events like these, watching a mascot-suited caricature of themselves run wild on stage — and having a laugh at it.

Kadokawa

Though Gudako is monstrous, she’s the players’ monster. She shares in their despair and elation, and she describes her relationship with the gacha as a hell from which she cannot escape. Most crucially, this creature of pure id is, like her customers, driven by an unstoppable thirst for rare anime girls.

Kadokawa

Which brings us back to the fandom. Just like Daigo told us, Fate/Grand Order’s cruel genius is that it is not funded by a pay-to-win scheme as much as it is funded by raw fandom and character love. When you add insurmountable slot machine odds to the mix, that love can be exploited very easily.

Players struck out so badly attempting to get the hot new character Jeanne D’Arc Alter that Redditors were able to compile a collection of woeful posts from players who spent hundreds of dollars in hopes of recruiting the corrupted Jeanne, only to get nothing and feel rather corrupted themselves.

GrandGeneralGaijin/Reddit

Fate/Grand Order’s obscenely low drop rates (Jeanne was advertised with “drop rate up,” which neglected to mention that the increased rate is still a fraction of a percent) mean that not only are casual or non-spending players unlikely to get what they want, but that even $200 or $300 spent on the game is no guarantee at all. (Try this simulator to get an idea.)

Daigo ran up his exceptional bill thanks to one of the most exploitative rules of the Fate/Grand Order gacha: You have to get the same rare Servant five times to maximize its special attack. You begin to see how players wrapped up in the game can spend so much money, and how cruel the systems really are.

Most players aren’t Daigo the happy stock trader, with pockets deeper than the developer’s greediest dreams. They spent more than they wanted to, they didn’t get even one Jeanne and they have regrets. Many of them might be addicted, spending money they can’t afford. One poster who stunned even Fate/Grand Order regulars speaks of spinning the gacha until their credit card was declined.

The game had forced them into despair, because they’re not a cartoon character whose antics are played for laughs. This sort of unquestioning fandom is destructive, even if the Fate/Grand Order manga wants to make fun of it as a harmless stereotype.

As players look up from their 10th gacha spin and they still haven’t won Astolfo or Gilgamesh, they see stupid Gudako — who simultaneously surfs on waves of premium currency like Scrooge McDuck and complains that she has never once caught any of the best Servants — and that mirror is a laugh and a comfort ... albeit from the very source of their suffering. It knows them best.

This is the best argument against free-to-play games

So what does Gudako and her popularity teach us about the gacha, and thus the loot box mechanic?

First, that it is, inevitably and by design, a pit of despair. Players call it “gacha hell” for a reason. To experience it for yourself, watch this woman (via her popular virtual alter-ego Kizuna Ai) blow hundreds of dollars’ worth of premium currency, and sink into guilt and depression when she doesn’t get a particular variant card of her beloved Nico.

Second, players know the nature of the beast already; if anything, they know it best. Whether by addiction, extreme fandom or sheer disregard for cash, they nevertheless resign themselves to the odds and persist.

Is it their fault? In part, yes, but the game specifically targets and exploits their vulnerability, and its compulsive design keeps them playing all day and night like Daigo. People sometimes argue that more information about these systems needs to be shared with players, but Fate/Grand Order shows that all the education in the world won’t stop abuse. Companies are willing to cash in on people’s compulsive nature, and make fun of them in the marketing while doing so.

Jokes often whisper truth, and parodies reflect the world that brings them about. If a game developer builds a system like Fate/Grand Order’s, setting numbers that dictate that it will make a large portion of its players miserable, then of course Gudako will pop up. Fate/Grand Order’s most brilliant move might be that it realized it would create little Gudakos all over the world, and so chose to sell her back to them.

It is, at the very least, honest.