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Episode 731: The Amiibo Shuffle ft. Zachary Ty Bryan

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Guillaume Veillette - July 18, 2021, 12:33 pm EDT
Total comments: 6

This Mii goes for 80 grand.

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Karen joins us for a very New Business heavy show! In fact, she's here to explain outwardly-inexplicable Miitopia. How does a game that expects you to have a backlog of friendly Miis fare on a system that's not exactly "post-Mii" but at least "late-era Mii?" Turns out its pretty fun. Karen and Guillaume have also been playing Gears of War 5; your surprise is by design. Gui has also been scratching his point-and-click itch with Unavowed. James is up to no good with Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!, a game he literally feels like he can't talk about. He's also deep into Ys IX, a game that asks you to map a highly-populated city. Jon is on the hunt for "the first remaster" with Super Mario All-Stars, available as part of Switch Online.

After a break, we dive into Listener Mail. This week we: cite Greg's news sources, decode the purpose of "limited time games," and debate the morality and economy of mobile monetization strategies. You can pull "acceptable" figures from the air by sending us an email.

This episode was edited by Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Perry's SoundCloud. The Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See more of his work at his website.

This episode's ending music is Sailing the Sand Sea from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Composition by Takeshi Hama It was selected by Greg. All rights reserved by Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Talkback

TOPHATANT123July 18, 2021

The limited time digital releases are artificial scarcity capitalist bs. Has to be one of the worst developments in the gaming space in a long time. Such a transparent unjustifiable cash grab, I'm not supporting that.

I wonder if the majority of business practices would shift and merge the free to play / predatory practice of gatcha  and a flat rate, creating that cap (The Kirby Clash game comes to mind). Perhaps a subscription service is a looser version of that, where the option to partake in gatcha is removed and instead you are drip-fed said rewards throughout the course of these timed events. With this, it’s a way to not hit a ceiling so quick, and people don’t feel like the game they pay for is unfinished.

I’ve been playing a lot of Nintendo’s mobile game’s, and some of them don’t really represent what I expect from the series. Take Pocket Canp for instance. It’s events expect you to check in every three hours for two weeks (for that one event) to alleviate having to use premium currency to get all of the items. And the multiplayer component of this is strictly menu based. Not really what I expect from the series. Maybe conceptually, but this is a bit extreme.

EnnerJuly 22, 2021

Good show, especially with that tough question of the predatory monetary practices common to free-to-play games, gacha systems, loot boxes, and EA's FIFA Ultimate Team schemes.

Let me tell you of the demons of gacha so you may never have to feel it for yourselves!

Dragalia Lost, the original mobile game from Nintendo and Cygames, does have a system where you are guaranteed to get the 5-star (the maximum) character from a given gacha banner. This system is present in Cygame's web-based gacha JRPG, Granblue Fantasy, and is colloquially referred to as a "sparking" system. Basically, you gain a special token for each gacha pull in Dragalia Lost. 300 of those tokens can be exchanged for any featured character in the current gacha banner.

The "best practice" in the gacha space is that each 10-pull is equivalent to 25-30 USD. In Dragalia Lost, they sell a premium currency pack of 1230 Diamantium at US$24.99. You need 1200 Diamantium for a 10-pull on a gacha banner. So, discounting the free gacha currency, free summoning tickets, the pity rate system, the maximum amount a player can spend in getting a desired 5-star character in Dragalia Lost is (napkin math) about 750 USD.

If you wanted to know about the hot gacha-anime-ARPG-BOTW of Genshin Impact, that has the "best practices" of limited time banners, bonuses for pulling 10 times at once, and a cost rate of $20-27 per a 10-pull (depending on if you buy the worse value or the "best value" pack of premium currency. Genshin has a "guarantee system" where at 90 pulls you get the coin flip (50/50 chance) of getting a banner's featured 5-star character or weapon and at 180 pulls you are guaranteed to get the banner's featured 5-star. So, the napkin math to that is a player could be spending a maximum of US$360-480 to get their waifu. Now the fucked thing is that there's a character perk system where getting extra copies of a character (up to six extra copies, meaning pulling the same character seven times to unlock all the perks) will grant them bonuses that are sometimes very powerful, depending on the character.

Finally, you have Fate/Grand Order which has a 0.6% of summoning the featured 5-star Servant per pull and no pity, sparking, or guarantee system whatsoever. As you can guess, there are salt/horror stories of people spending a grand or more and not getting the limited-time 5-star Servant.

But what if... you didnt

This is a great writeup but I'm struggling to understand how the FOMO is this powerful

Order.RSSJuly 24, 2021

Quote from: Enner

Let me tell you of the demons of gacha so you may never have to feel it for yourselves!

When you say "best practices", are those determined to be such by the fans? Like is this considered acceptable/the line most paying players won't cross? Or is it determined by developers/publishers? Just sort of informal standards of equilibrium most game producers have wound up at?

EnnerJuly 26, 2021

Quote from: Discord.RSS

Quote from: Enner

Let me tell you of the demons of gacha so you may never have to feel it for yourselves!

When you say "best practices", are those determined to be such by the fans? Like is this considered acceptable/the line most paying players won't cross? Or is it determined by developers/publishers? Just sort of informal standards of equilibrium most game producers have wound up at?

I don't know the true history behind it, but I assume it's the settled and informal terms after years of A/B testing by mobile game developers and publishers and audience feedback. It's important to note that Japan mobile games have had a decade plus of implementing gacha systems going all the way back to feature phones.

Quote from: Crimm

But what if... you didnt

This is a great writeup but I'm struggling to understand how the FOMO is this powerful

Ah, that's rub with these character-based slot machines.

To put it bluntly: We all may joke about it around the anime circles, but have you every considered a fictional character to (in some degree) be your wife/husband?

One aspect of how the system preys on the audience is on the attachment some audience members have on characters. The fans that consider or have bought character goods such as figurines, art prints, keychains, plushies, and other merchandise are the targets of a gacha RPG. Now you have a digital, living version of your favorite character that you can take on digital adventures (read: grinding)! This even works in new IP such as Dragalia Lost where you present a story around a fun character and then release a recruitable party member version in a later gacha (ex. Mym).

The other vector is the game's meta. Beta testers or early adopters who test out all the characters will make tier lists and will shout out who is the OP character to save up for and try to get. Case in point, Genshin Impact's Venti who has a powerful ultimate attack that stuns most enemies and gathers them in a wind vortex for easy elimination.

And the last and most dangerous part is for the obsessive compulsive that must have a big or complete collection of things.

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