Journal
GAMES AND CULTURE
Volume 17, Issue 7-8, Pages 1075-1092Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/15554120221077728
Keywords
gacha games; rationalisation; gambling; grinding; economy of time
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Funding
- Lee Kong Chian Fellowship, Singapore Management University
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This paper offers a counterpoint to existing research on the associations between gacha games and gambling. Through qualitative data from players in Singapore, it explores how discipline, desire, and deferred value affect players' resource-maximizing behaviors.
This paper offers a counterpoint to existing research that explores the associations between gacha games and gambling. Whilst existing research tends to advance a view that playing these games is equivalent to gambling, I contend that such assertions rest on analyses that focus almost exclusively on investing money in the game. Moreover, they tend to view the game as separate from the structuring forces of everyday life. Arguing that players are embedded within a double structural frame that moderates the extent of seemingly 'irrational' playing behaviours, I reinterpret grinding as a form of temporal investment that is motivated by more 'rationalised' engagements with the gacha mechanic. Drawing on qualitative data derived from Singapore-based players of gacha games, I explore how discipline, desire and deferred value can lead to resource maximising behaviours that are rooted in a time-money trade-off. In turn, these agentic patterns of play can be seen to 'game-the-game'.
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