For this critical play, I played One Punch Man: World published by Crunchyroll Games and A Plus Japan for PC, iOS, and Google Play for fans of the One Punch Man franchise (rated Teen). This game leverages pre-established parasocial connections to licensed characters to motivate players to obtain them through the game’s gacha system. In other words, to get them at risk for addiction through the low probability of obtaining characters. What makes One Punch Man: World particularly notable among its gacha game peers is how predatory it is despite being so unengaging.
Licensed Games
Since it is easier and more reliable to draw from a pre-established returning consumer base, many franchises release related games. For franchises such as One Punch Man which have a large cast of beloved characters, the foundations for a gacha game are already there. It directly draws characters and plot points from the first season of the anime. For this game, developers made the deliberate choice to create new characters to provide the player for their base gameplay. So to use the the characters you got the game for, you must unlock them from the gacha system where you must spend in game currency to “roll” to obtain characters or items with different rarities. These can then be further locked behind limited banners.
Gacha Games as a Genre
This gacha system is nothing unusual. It has been so normalized that it has become a genre. In line with its peers, One Punch Man: World features several incentives for daily play: a battle pass system, daily quests, and login rewards. The rewards of which fuel the gacha system. In other words, all mechanics are but supporting beams to the character lottery or collecting characters through other means (quests). There is inherent lost content to the player for each character they do not obtain, so the player undertakes these menial tasks and quests. And especially because nothing in the gacha system is guaranteed, the player must get as many resources as possible to increase the chances of getting what they want. If not, they can shortcut to the rewards through the extensive shop which can actually guarantee items for specific characters.
Everything is gacha
Where One Punch Man: World truly differs from these peers is the extent that it makes everything within it a gacha. Obtaining characters to begin with is of course the main gacha reward as per normal conventions. However, even if you obtain a character, you do not automatically obtain all their skills. These skills are also locked behind the gacha, so you must also roll the gacha to unlock the full potential of the character. This does means that you can obtain skills for characters you don’t even have. It is truly a system that enforces chance, and that enforces an addiction or reliance on daily engagement.
The game does try to pretend otherwise. It offers a starter banner that you can reroll on until you like the result. However, this is locked behind the premium in game currency that is primarily obtained through in game purchases. Many of the beginner friendly mechanics aim to create a sunken cost fallacy by baiting the player to spend a bit initially on the game to guarantee further playing.
One Punch Man: World could have been an alright gacha game given its passable open world experience and combat, but the extent of predation in its gacha system weighs the rest of its features down. Even you don’t care about obtaining new or rare characters, you are forced into the system to even upgrade your base ones.
