I run a private campground.
It’s been in my family for generations. For those of you with a rich family history, I’m sure you know how stories tend to accumulate. They get passed along haphazardly from one generation to the next, distorting as they do, and the truth grows muddy along the way. Land is like that too, except instead of gathering stories about Aunt Jodi’s scandalous first husband, it gathers monsters.
If you’re new here, you should really
start at the beginning and if you’re totally lost,
this might help.
There’s a lot to do to maintain a campground and I’ve been having to do a lot of the work myself around here. I don’t want my winter staff going into the deep woods without a good reason right now. Normally I’d send Bryan, as he has the dogs to protect him, but those are on loan. Also, I haven’t seen a lot of Bryan. He shows up, he gets the work done that he needs to, and then he just… vanishes for a while. I don’t know if he’s visiting his dogs or the fairy or both. And now that I think about it, Bryan tends to make himself scarce throughout the year. I guess I haven’t paid that close of attention before. He still gets the job done just fine so does it really matter if he’s off visiting his fairy bff in his downtime?
Unfortunately, even with the spiders’ help, I’m still battling the thorns in my chest. It’s taking a lot of my strength away and I’m getting winded easier. It’s made getting rid of these accursed things a priority. I know the fairy said they’d go away when they killed the fomorian, but as many of you have pointed out, they’re taking their sweet time going about that.
I do have a theory about the current stalemate, though. The fomorian probably wants the thorns to cover more of the campground. The fairy probably wants the sun to return, being of the company of Lugh and all. And both of them probably want less treacherous footing for their steeds.
I see the dapple gray stallion’s hoofprints in the snow sometimes. It makes it easy to avoid. I just turn around and immediately go in the opposite direction.
With this surefire way of avoiding my nemesis, I figured it was time to try a gamble. The fairy initially told me that I could try finding a way to banish the thorns by seeking out another entity of disease. I’ve taken that to mean the gummy bears. Their presence has brought sickness and rot before. The only problem was I really wasn’t sure how to find anything out from them. Did I use their bodies in an elixir? Did they have the answers themselves? There
was a human shaped gummy bear, at least until one of Byran’s dogs splattered it. Perhaps there’s more intelligence among them than I thought.
I decided to try out one of Mattias’s strategies. He learned a lot about these creatures simply by being close to them. Following their paths through the woods.
I figured the worst that would happen is I’d wander around the forest for a bit and maybe feel a little stupid.
...okay, that’s really not the worst that could happen, considering the upheaval my land is experiencing, but barring
any other catastrophe it wasn’t that dangerous of a plan.
Or at least, the first part wasn’t.
I got some dead mice from the pet store to bait the traps with. They weren’t very big, so I didn’t expect to attract any of the larger gummy bears. This was perfectly fine with me. I was in no hurry for another encounter like the last one, especially with the dogs on loan to the fairy. I baited the traps and left them scattered throughout the deep woods.
Within a couple days the traps yielded results. I found the jellied remains of a rabbit inside one of the traps, staring at me with glistening eyes, its translucent ears quivering. I crouched beside the cage.
“I’m going to let you out,” I said. “Don’t try to bite me or I’ll drop-kick you into the afterlife.”
Just to be safe, I released the gummy bear with the cage door pointing away from me. The rabbit bolted and I sprinted after it, only to lose it within seconds. So the worst case scenario came true, I felt real dumb there, standing in the woods and belatedly realizing that I couldn’t actually keep up with a rabbit.
The second gummy bear I caught was a raccoon. That’s still not something I was convinced I could keep up with, so I took the liberty of breaking both of its hind legs before I released it. The bones snapped like dry branches. The gummy bear hissed wetly and bared its yellowed teeth at me, but otherwise didn’t seem to be in pain. I’m not sure if this qualifies as animal cruelty and frankly, I’m trying not to think about it too hard.
This time, I had no problem keeping up with the gummy bear once it was released. It dragged itself along by its forelegs, seemingly oblivious to the dangling appendages that trailed behind it. Our progress was slow and I impatiently began to wonder if perhaps I should have only broken one. There was nothing I could do about it now. The gummy bear would turn and hiss at me if I got too close, so I kept a healthy distance between us.
And I followed it. I honestly had no idea where it would lead me, but Mattias’s journal implies that he learned everything he did by being close to these inhuman things. The world is less stable when they’re nearby, he claimed. Things slip through.
It took a
long time. I was tempted to quit and go home repeatedly and each time I had to remind myself to have patience. Mattias surely had, as he didn’t have the siren call of the internet luring him away. The raccoon made a circle of the deep woods, its pace consistent, dragging its broken legs behind it. It moved with purpose. It stayed off the road, but I caught glimpses of gravel now and again through the barren trees. After a little while I realized that it was slowly but surely turning, heading back towards the hill that led up and out of the forest.
I was beginning to think this had all been a waste of time and I should just finish the thing off. Watching it drag itself all through the woods for the past couple of hours had stirred an acute sense of guilt about this entire affair. Killing something was one thing. That’s a matter of life and death, generally. But crippling something like this… perhaps there’s more of my father in me than I thought. He’s in the quiet spaces of my soul and most of the time I can’t hear him over the roar of my anger.
I heard him now.
I steeled my resolve and hefted the crowbar I’d brought along for just this purpose. Blunt weapons are the best tool for destroying gummy bears. Sharp edges can cut pieces off them, but that won’t necessarily slow them down. Even if you cut it in half you could get unlucky and the pieces might reconnect and join back together and then you got a gummy bear with its ass literally stuck to its shoulder flailing around and trying to bite you.
Blunt trauma, however, separated the parts beyond repair. Like dropping a cherry pie on the floor. You aren’t getting that back together in a cohesive form. And like an exploding cherry pie, the gummy bear burst into a gooey red smear that coated the nearby ground and splattered on the trees when I brought the crowbar down into the center of its body.
Something like smoke hovered over the ground. It was only there for a second. I might have missed it, had I not been watching. Ever since my encounter with the human sized gummy bear I’ve been thinking about what I saw and experienced and wondering if I’d imagined it. But there it was. A miasma. An ill wind carrying sickness to anyone that inhaled it. It rolled away from me, traveling uphill, and then it passed between two trees and was gone.
I almost walked away. But something stirred in the back of my mind, sluggishly connecting the pieces. Dropping each thing that had happened into place until the pattern was evident.
I’d followed it around the old woods. We’d made a circle and were now at where we’d begun. Except sometimes… when walking in a circle with intent… you don’t
actually wind up back where you started.
There are other worlds inside my campground. Many more than what I have encountered already, according to my ancestor.
I walked after the smoke and passed between the two trees and they creaked as I went by them, bending their heads to twine their branches so that I passed under an arch and then…
I was elsewhere.
The hall. I’d found the hall of the gummy bears.
I need to stop using such stupid names for the things on my campground.
The structure was of primitive construction. The ceiling was thatched and birds flew between the rafters. There were no windows and the only light came from candles burning in sconces on the wall. The air was thick with the stink of rancid fat and smoke. I tried to take shallow breaths and walked slowly forwards across the rushes strewn over the dirt floor. Small things rolled and broke under my feet. I did not look closer to see what they were. They felt like bone fragments.
The hall continued on for a long time. The darkness swallowed me up and I could only see a handful of yards in any direction. The columns supporting the roof blurred together, each one the same as the last. Round posts with the bark roughly hewn off, painted in ochre tones of yellow and red. Primitive colors made from the earth. This place was very old, a remnant from the earliest edges of human civilization.
I reached the end of the hall. At first I took the back wall for a mosaic, dark wood interspersed with ivory points of varying sizes. Then, as I drew closer, the shapes resolved themselves. Skulls. The back wall was covered with skulls. Animal skulls of all sizes. I recognized groundhogs, squirrels, deer, and a couple coyotes.
A platform of rough hewn stone was built against the back wall. On it sat a chair, backless, with a rounded seat of hide stretched between two ornate arms. The carvings that covered the legs and arms were the only intricate decoration I’d seen in this entire place.
I crept closer to the chair, trying to get a better look. It was then that I noticed there was something strange about the mortar holding the stones together.
It glistened in the faint candlelight, like a fatty cut of meat.
I drew up short with a sudden sense of unease. Nervously, I hefted the crowbar, taking confidence in its weight. I held still and listened to my surroundings, intently searching for any noise, any sign that something was urgently amiss.
A rattling in the corner. Like the scuttling of tiny claws. I pivoted to face it, just in time to see one of the skulls fall off the wall.
It did not strike the ground. It stopped just short, as if falling into thick snow, and then it tilted gently to one side and went motionless. Smoke condensed beneath it, barely discernible in the dim light of the candles.
It felt like it was staring at me.
Then it was gone, swiftly flowing out of sight the instant I blinked. Heart pounding, I watched the shadows, trying to discern where it had gone. But behind me I heard another noise, like the scrape of claws, and I turned to face it just as another skull fell from the wall. This, too, was caught by the smoke.
I felt like my heart was ready to burst from my chest. The rushing of my own blood echoed in my ears. I licked my dry lips and waited, my eyes darting back and forth in a vain attempt to watch all angles. The room was silent. I couldn’t depend on my hearing. How would smoke make noise?
The first came from my right. It swept in low, the smoke billowing like the incoming tide. I turned on my heel and brought the crowbar down in an overhead swing. It connected just as the creature surged upwards, the empty eye sockets leering. The mid part of the crowbar crushed through the skull and into the brain cavity and the smoke dispersed as if flattened, floating back down to the ground.
Blunt teeth raked against my shoulder. I hissed and spun, swiping sideways with the crowbar as I did. It passed through the column of smoke and the creature faltered, as if losing its balance, and a follow-up swing sent the skull tumbling away in three separate pieces.
More skulls were rattling on the wall. Three fell. Then two more. They were quickly swallowed up in the darkness, only to emerge seconds later, lunging at me from the shadows. I would dispatch one with a well-aimed blow and then turn to counter another. Or feel the bite of their teeth. I could only be thankful there was no jawbone with which to crush whatever limb they latched onto when they had an opening. Still, the teeth broke skin. I barely felt the pain underneath the adrenaline.
They were aiming for my throat. For my abdomen. And for every one I dispatched, another couple skulls would fall.
Then there was another sound, overwhelming the rattling of the skulls or my own frantic breathing. Laughter. A gurgling, wet laugh, emanating from the direction of the throne. I risked taking my eyes off the shadows and saw that the mortar holding the stones together was not… actually… mortar.
It was flesh. Jellied, translucent flesh. And it was seeping upwards, congealing on top of the dais, working its way up the legs of the throne.
And it was laughing.
“Send them all!” I screamed at the dais. “I’ll smash every skull on that damn wall if I have to!”
There were so many now. They crowded between the columns, lines of ivory skulls bobbing on a thick carpet of smoke. I exhaled slowly, trying to steady my nerves. I could do this, I told myself. I was stronger than them. Their teeth could not pierce very far and so I only had to outlast them and protect my vitals. And hadn’t Beau taught me how to outlast?
“Go on,” I growled. “My name is Kate. I’ve killed inhuman things before and I’ll destroy all of you as well if I have to.”
The chuckling finally stopped with a final, satisfied note echoing down the long hall. Panting, I pivoted, watching as the creatures receded into the shadows between the columns. Finally, only once the silence returned and nothing else came out of the darkness at me, did I turn and give my full attention to the mass at the fore of the room.
It covered the throne as a shapeless mound of flesh the color of an onion. A quivering lump fully the height of a human and just as wide, the chair hazy behind the translucent jelly. As I watched, small shapes detached from the dais. Stones, two the size of my fist and the rest the size of walnuts. These slowly made their way up through the entity’s body until they floated in the middle of the space between the arms of the chair. The larger stones positioned themselves as eyes and the rest became teeth. The teeth split apart and it began to speak.
“Have you brought me tribute?” it gurgled.
“No,” I replied.
“Then you are an intruder.”
All around me, the skulls shifted, moving forwards a pace. I resisted the urge to raise my weapon once more.
“That is not my intent either.”
“Ahhhhh.” The teeth spread into a smile. “Then you are a
supplicant.”
“Are you a king of the Partholanians?” I asked.
Those ancient people of Ireland who died of disease.
“It has been a long time since I’ve heard their name,” it replied thoughtfully. “We are
of them. They had a name for our hall. It has since been forgotten.”
I briefly considered telling it what we call them, but quickly squashed the idea. I didn’t want to cause myself more problems by naming it and I certainly didn’t want to name it “the hall of the gummy bears” I mean that’s a terrible name.
DO NOT CALL IT THAT IN THE COMMENTS.
“There’s thorns on my land,” I said. “They’re rotting the trees.”
“So you seek us?”
“They say the Partholanians died of disease.”
“You
are a supplicant, here to beg a boon,” it hissed.
My heart sank. Another bargain. It named what it wanted with no small measure of malicious joy and I knew before it finished that I would not be able to grant what it wanted.
It asked for bodies. Human bodies. Not these weak animals that they steal here and there, filling their wretched, dead corpses with the spirits of its people until the flesh dissolved to pieces around them and they came fluttering back here, to this last refuge of its kind. It wanted living flesh. Strong flesh, that they could inhabit and walk among the living once more.
I said that wasn’t possible. I offered it dead human bodies. It was something, at least, and I could obtain those. The funeral home might be willing to help. I only needed to fulfill the bargain long enough to get a remedy for the thorns, I thought desperately.
The creature refused. They were tired of inhabiting dead things, bodies that had already given up on life and could not be restored. It wanted a heart that remembered how to beat and lungs that knew how to breathe.
“And what of the person that inhabits that flesh?” I asked.
“Perhaps the soul will stay. Perhaps it will depart. I do not care.”
If I did this, it said, it would give me what I needed to stop the rot. I took a deep breath. And I agreed to its bargain. It shook with pleased laughter.
“One last question,” I said. “Why can’t you get a body of your own making, like how the other creatures on my campground have?”
Beau says he remembers being on my land, walking down the road looking for someone to share his drink with. He came from
somewhere, as did the hammock monster and the lady with extra eyes and all the others.
“The watcher will not let us pass,” it hissed. “We are too weak. We cannot take form. We can only steal, scavenging the scraps. It is a shameful survival. Do you pity us?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“Nor do we pity
you. We see your death sometimes, lurking in the woods.”
“My death?” I asked desperately. “The beast? Or something else?”
It chuckled, a sickening gurgling sound, like boiling mud.
“Bring me bodies,” it said, “and perhaps I will tell you more.”
I recognized the dismissal. I turned and walked away, the skin on the back of my neck crawling under the weight of all those empty eyes watching me go. The doors to the hall hung open for me and when I passed through, the trees unwound themselves and the arch and the hall were gone. There were only the snow-laden branches of the campground.
I’m a campground manager. I have no intention of honoring this bargain. I admit that it
is tempting to give some of my more problematic campers to them. Heck, for some of them, being a flesh vessel for the decaying soul of an unborn monster of ancient times would probably be a personality improvement. However, as I’ve discussed before, the town does not look kindly on bargains with evil things. They turn a blind eye to the campground for the most part since we contain the evil things, but I feel this might cross a line. There’s no direct benefit for the townsfolk, after all. I’m not keeping something away from them. The gummy bears are stuck here already. If anything, I’m throwing innocent people into their maw just to make them stronger.
I don’t think they’d accept it being worth the sacrifice to get rid of the thorns, either. They tend to be rather short-sighted. It would take the thorns consuming the campground and overflowing into
their land for them to accept the necessity of such a bargain. I don’t have enough time to wait for that.
And I don’t know… it’s kind of nice to be the heroine sometimes. Maybe this is my father’s legacy coming out. He always wanted to save people.
So I’m going to cheat. That’s one of the strengths of humanity. We can freely use deceit. I just need a willing accomplice.
And I know exactly who to ask.
[x] Read the full list of rules. Visit the campground's website.  | Hi all, Two weeks ago, The Boys published their video on gacha games. This inspired me to conduct a survey on this subreddit on your thoughts and experiences with gacha games. Thanks to your support, there is a lot of data to sift through and a lot of interesting results so far. Due to IRL deadlines, I wasn't able to examine the data in full capacity, so I will be posting results in two or more sections. This first section will primarily deal with the surface-level headline data. I will also cover some of the reasonings and inner workings of what went into the survey and results (for those interested in the data scientist portions of things). A subsequent post/posts in the near future will cover topics I wasn't able to get to as well as more technical analysis of the data (regression, model-building, etc.) These posts will be presented in a semi-formal fashion, i.e., I'll lay out the posts like a research paper but I'll add personal interjections from time to time. (If you want to really get into the meat and potatoes, you can just skip to the "Results and Discussion" section.) With that said, allow me to introduce my initial findings: Our Trash Taste in Gacha Games: An Informal Community Survey Analysis on the Nature of TrashTaste's Experience Regarding Gacha Games Abstract The recent rise of "gacha games" has been bolstered by a number of intersecting trends. These include the mass popularity of anime or anime-like products, the increasing ubiquity of smartphones, and introduction of lootboxing mechanics by game publishers as a means of profiting off "free to play" or "freemium" games in the digital sphere. A recent episode from the anime-centric podcast "Trash Taste" explored their experiences and opinions regarding such games. This post intends to further explore the general sentiment of gacha games through the podcast's official subreddit, TrashTaste, and discuss the results. Motivation A little bit about my background. Anime, anime-like products, and manga have been a huge part in my life. I remember watching Detective Conan, Pokemon, and Keroro Gunso and being introduced to Gundam and MapleStory when I was young. Since it seems to be a trend on this subreddit, I'll throw my hat in the ring and show my 3x3: [If you want further discussion about these and other related series, feel free to comment below or DM me] From left to right, up to down: Ah! My Goddess, Hayate the Combat Butler , The World God Only Knows, Carnival Phantasm (+ Fate franchise), Pastel, Q.E.D.: Shoumei Shuuryou, Yandere Kanojo, Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter, The Gamer As I mentioned in my first post about the survey, I am a graduate student working on my masters for data science. I also completed a bachelors in economics. All of this combined made me not only interested in gacha games as an avid consumer, but also as a research subject. The Boys simply were the catalyst for spurring this project. Data Collection and Survey Construction Data was collected via Google Forms on the TrashTaste subreddit. The post that contained the survey was released several hours after the video was posted. Survey responses were collected for a period of 1 week from January 22 to January 28 (though there was a massive decrease in the rate of respondents after the fourth day). The survey was constructed based on my own experiences with gacha games as well as general demographics that would be useful to examine on a macro scale. Regarding demographics: asking respondents on several aspects of demographics is a tricky subject since not only does it mean divulging a group of variables known as protected classes, these could be markers that could reidentify anonymized people; thus, I stuck to "safer" questions (age and gender). I then asked which otaku material was preferred. The next set of questions dealt with those who were currently playing gacha games. I asked the number of currently played games, which ones (with an open-ended aspect since I knew I would miss some) and the top 3 games. For each of the top 3 games, I asked how long they have played, which server, how long the game was around, how consistent did they play, how far they were, their current level of commitment, how much they spent (open-ended), spending title, whether the game had PVP, hype moments (some open-ended), and why they play (some open-ended). Finally, based on the central theme of The Boys' video, I asked whether games should be regulated and what their policy recommendation would be (open-ended). Limitations and Oversights This survey is, obviously, limited by the research environment and my experiences. Academic papers have pondered about the effectiveness regarding survey reliability using subreddits, which may be interesting and impactful from a statistically-minded formal research. In addition, there were a total of 678 respondents which, while certainly plenty in any regular volunteer statistical number crunching, pales in comparison to the 104K members in this subreddit alone; this is going to affect the power analysis of these results. Submitting the survey hours after the video was posted (when the user activity likely peaks) likely limited user exposure. Therefore, this post will be much closer to the next video. Then there are questions I didn't ask due to oversight on my part - I'm only human. - The biggest oversight, pointed out by u/Mareek, was
Welp I answered that I don't play any gatcha games, but it didn't give me a chance to say why I don't play them or if I played any before.
There should at least be a question for why/why not play them.
I probably would have asked something like: If you responded "no," why do you not play gacha games?
- Not interested
- Not trying to get addicted
- Trying to stop gambling addiction
- Bad luck/greed sensor
- Used to play, but lost interest
2) As pointed out by u/Paoda and u/gzavwunt, I forgot to add visual novels into the "primary source of otaku source material" question! As a Fate fan, this was a massive oversight I regret (don't worry, I did at least watch the full visual novel playthroughs of Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia). 3) There were a few questions that were open-ended that in hindsight definitely backfired. The biggest ones were the "how long has the game lasted" ( u/ShinyMilo ) and "how much you spent" questions. They are a mess to deal with, even with all the regex expressions I know, so I ultimately had to throw them out. The former in the end was merely a curiosity and the latter was somewhat salvaged by the "spending title" questions, so I'm not too bothered by it, but something I'll keep in mind in the future. Results and Discussion Here are the initial results, and I think there's some interesting trends we can look at. First, let's look at the demographics. - Let's start with age distribution:
Figure 1 There were 678 respondents. There appears to be a considerable right skew (aka a skew towards a younger audience). There are a lot of zoomers among the respondents, though there are a considerable number of millennials as well. 2) Next, take a look at gender distribution: Figure 2. Male: 87%, Female: 9.3%, Nonbinary: 1%, Prefer not to say: 2.7% Well, somewhat not surprisingly, of the 678 respondents, an overwhelming 87% identified as males. Connor as "the 93%"? More like the survey as "the 9.3%." 3) For the final aspect of demographics, let's look at the distribution of answers for "What is your preferred consumption of otaku source material?" Figure 3. (to the nearest tenth of a percent) Anime and Manga Equally: 33.8%, Anime: 32.4%, Manga: 16.7%, Anime, Manga, and Light Novel Equally: 9.7%, Manga and Light Novel Equally: 4.1%, Anime and Light Novel Equally: 2.2%, Light Novel: 1.0% Of the 678, respondents, 32.4% prefer to watch anime, 16.7% prefer to read manga, and 33.8% prefer to consume anime and manga equally. Light novel readers (either as the preferred choice or read it equally with other mediums) amount to about 17%. Hot take here: I am one of the 16.7% that prefer to read manga/manhwa (pitchforks in the comments), but only because there are so many series that I like that either have only become adapted recently (Horimiya, HameFura) or haven't been adapted yet (Shuumatsu no Valkyrie). Next, let's look at gacha by the numbers. - First, let's look at the number of gacha games people play:
Figure 4 Of the 678 respondents, 232 did not currently play and gacha games, 194 did currently play 1 game, 117 did currently play 2 games, and so forth. The most surprising finding was that there are a few people that currently play at least 10 games, with one even playing 17! 2) Next, let's look at the top 20 games that were the favorite, second favorite, third favorite, and overall most popular: "...Yet in most companies, the so-called “80/20 rule” applies: 80 percent of a data scientist’s valuable time is spent simply finding, cleansing, and organizing data, leaving only 20 percent to actually perform analysis." - IBM
Figure 5 Holy cow, the quote above really hit for this particular question. There were about 75 replacements I had to do to make the game title uniform, with 15 related to Princess Connect alone! As for the analysis: you read that correctly. There are a whopping 103 total gacha game titles that the 446 respondents play. Genshin Impact comes as the clear frontrunner for the most favorite game, second-most favorite game, third-most favorite game, and overall most popular game. However, the top 5 games in each category are the same: Genshin Impact, Fate/Grand Order, Arknights, Azur Lane, and Fire Emblem Heroes. Garnt is certainly attracting his Fate peers here, including me. As a side note, I have to give props to respondents who were honest about their stances. There were a few that put 'H***** Gacha Game,' 'Taimanin,' and 'AGA' (Anti-Gacha Army). 3) Next, let's look at the distribution of how each person categorizes themselves terms of spending: Figure 6 This is a very interesting finding. For their most favorite game, about half of the respondents were free to play, a third were minnows, about a sixth were dolphins, and the small bit left were whales. As we move towards less favored games, the number of F2Pers increase and the number of whales decrease until there's none left for the third-most favorite game. It's an important lesson for natural resources and gacha game publishers alike: overfishing can lead to less species diversity. As an aside, I am personally a dolphin for Fate GO. I have no qualms sharing that I spend some cash rolling for (ironically) Gilgamesh and NP5ing Sheba during Gilfest 2018 or even spending some New Year's allowance on Spishtar last month. fite me 4) Next, let's look at what aspects made the gacha game most "hype:" Figure 7 The top answer was the introduction of new characters, anniversary events, and animation/art. It seems that many go for the "Anni is the Planni" strategy. 5) Next, let's look at the reasons why respondents play or continue to play their gacha game(s) [Note: I aggregated the numbers from favorite/second favorite/third favorite, so some users are double or triple counted, so numbers may look a little inflated. I will work on this for a future post]: Figure 8. Top 15 answers. The top answer for why respondents play or continue to play their gacha game was for "the waifus/husbandos" followed by "I enjoy this as a standalone game" and "I love the source material." The 114 of you who chose "Because jokes are the deepest lore," I see you Fate fans. Probably the most interesting and concerning reasons that were not shown here are the sizable number of people who responded with either learned helplessness of their situation or frustration with the gacha-industry complex. These include "Sunk cost fallacy" (shown on the graph), frustration over rerolling, feeling like it's "a second job," stating that they're "addicted and can't quit," or flat out "dunno, it's kina there." The Future of Gacha Games Learning about these trends are good and all, but how do we consolidate these opinions into actionable thoughts? This is where the last half of The Boys' video about what to do comes in. Here's the community's reaction. - First, it was asked "In your opinion, should gacha games be regulated?" 678 respondents responded:
Figure 9 83.8% of respondents said "Yes," 5% said "No,", and 11.2% said they need to do more research to come a conclusion. 2) Finally, I asked respondents an open-ended optional question that "If you could have a serious discussion about gacha games with a gacha game developer or lawmaker, what is the one policy recommendation you would suggest?" Surprisingly, 473 people responded to the question. In the given timeframe, I could not read through all of the suggestions made; I will make sure to point out the most salient ones in the next post. In lieu of this, I decided to resort to a "quick and dirty trick" in natural language processing: n-grams! Simply put, I first removed common stopwords such as "you," "have", etc., and tokenized each response (i.e. separated each response into a list of word "units"). I then counted the frequency that each set of consecutive words appeared in each response. I counted frequency of the top 20 unigrams (one word), bigrams (2 words) and trigrams (3 words). Here is the result: Table 1 This is incredible stuff. The top two unigrams are "limit" and "spending," and other frequent unigrams include "gambling," "amount," and "time." Bigrams tell a broader story, with the top bigram being "(spending, limit)." There are other bigrams that expand upon policy recommendations such as "(hard, limit)", "(gambling, addiction)", "(drop, rates)," and "(pity, system)." Finally, looking at trigrams, we get an even fuller picture: the top trigram is "(limit, much, spend)." Other prominent trigrams include "(hard, limit, spending)," "(thing, connor, said)," and "(treat, like, gambling)." While the suggestions of limiting spending are quite frequent (following the footsteps of Connor), this is a fairly well-researched topic in the realm of behavioral economics. In particular, it looks at the encompassing topic of intertemporal choice. This is a pretty complex and field-specific topic that is too long to discuss in entirety in this post, but I'll boil down the critical points relevant to gacha games. [WARNING: some math ahead] First, say that you have a set budget that you're going to spend over several periods of time. When we spend money in a time period, get gain joyfulness (called "utility" or simply "U") at that time period. Second, we typically discount the amount of utility we get in the future. We usually assign this as a set rate called the discount factor ( δ ) . Thus, we get the following equation: ∑ (U_t) * (δt-1) = U_1 + δU_2 + δ2U_3 + ... + δT-1 \) U_T
This simply means the total utility we get over a time period is the sum of all utilities of all periods based on today. All the above is considered in "classical economics" as exponential discounting. This assumes that - people have a constant discount factor and are impatient (δ < 1),
- that people treat amounts as "bursts" of consumption," and
- that utility is linear in amount.
However, economists that study behavioral economics show that some of these assumptions are flawed through though experiments and empirical results. One way this has manifested into policy action is the concept of "nudge theory" by Richard Thaler. This suggests that consumer behavior can be influenced by small suggestions and positive reinforcements; the argument is that it reduces market failure and encourages desirable actions. However, this is hotly debated ethically as being paternalistic and may not even work. Another theory brought about via behavioral economics is the idea of "present-bias preferences" by Ted O'Donoghue and Matthew Rabin. The idea is that when people consider tradeoffs between two future moments, present bias gives more weight to the earlier future moment. In this scenario, we have two types of people: naifs and sophisticates. Sophisticates know that they'll have self-control problems in the future, so they plan ahead while naifs do not see the self-control problems. Depending on if there is a cost or a reward, these two types of people will "cave in" at different times. In general, the utility function (called β-δ preferences) is as follows: For all t, Ut (u_t, u_(t+1),...,u_T) = δt u_t + β ∑ δτ + u_τ |t+1 < τ < T
where 0 < β, δ <= 1
β is the present bias, and β=1 makes equation exponential discounting.
How do these relate to gacha games? Well, the former (nudging) is like the third party (iTunes store, Google Play) directly intervening on your behalf saying that you can only spend so-and-so this month. The latter (present bias) puts the self-imposed limit in your own hands, which a third party adds as a restriction. Consider these aspects in future discussions regarding regulations surrounding gacha games. [it's been a year since I've been fully immersed in this stuff, so econ folks please check if the explanations are suitable] Ending Remarks I hope these initial results illustrated some fascinating aspects of how our subreddit has viewed gacha games. I know that there are a few questions that I haven't covered here due to lack of time, so look forward the next part of the survey results! Let me know if there are specific statistical analyses you would like for me to examine in the comments. If you want to put friend requests for the gacha games I'm playing [Fate GO (JP), OPTC (JP) Dokkan (GBL)], DM me. In addition, I'm thinking about releasing a clean and anonymized version of the data in csv form not only as a measure of transparency, but also if you want to do your own data manipulation. If you (the community) approve at over 75%, then I will publish it in the next post. |
Here are my recommendations of games that I played for the first time in 2020. S-tier games that have become my all-time favourites made this list. 2020 was the year where I finally realised which games I actively want to play and it’s made my gaming experiences so much more entertaining.
Here are also some games to completely avoid with exaggerated opinions. These are some of the worst games I’ve ever played, ranging anywhere from confusingly irredeemable to malignant, insulting games that are only holding back video games as an entertainment and art form, and hate you for playing them.
I’ve listed some better games at the end of each review as much better alternatives with similar gameplay or style. Please vehemently disagree with me in the comments
Best: Resident Evil 2 Resident Evil 2 has everything I want from an action game. The core gameplay of running around a police department, escaping fights with monsters and zombies while working out puzzles is Resident Evil’s thing, and Resident Evil 2 adds solid gunplay, meaningful weapon upgrades and rewarding items for putting in extra effort. I only missed one which required some backtracking near the end of the game, and realised that about 5 minutes after a point of no return. The Tyrant chasing you around adds a lot of flavour to the game, forcing you to adapt strategies and plans. Resident Evil 2 also has my personal distinction of being the only game I’ve ever finished twice back to back, finishing Leon and then Claire’s story in a week.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Take everything I said about Resident Evil 2, plus frightening horror that actually got to me at points, a better story, and a first person perspective that works incredibly well, and that’s what I have to say about Resident Evil 7. Absolutely the best in the series as it amplifies what makes the Resident Evil games so great while adding equally interesting new ideas. The Baker family’s grotesque transformations and gory boss fights are highlights, chainsawing an old man’s face and shotgunning a crazy old woman is the most fun I’ve had this year.
Bloodborne It’s between Bloodborne or Bioshock as my favourite game of all time. I fear that I could spend hours typing what fascinated me about this game, so I’ll save my collected thoughts for another post. Bloodborne’s world is captivating from beginning to end. It unravels as you gather insight on the desecrated city of Yharnam, learning about the Healing Church forsaking the city with its endless hunts. My character, a woman who has left her land after her family were slaughtered by the same beasthood that ravaged Yharnam, fit perfectly with the story, and even thematically mirrored a DLC character’s past. By the way, The Old Hunters DLC is the best DLC ever, no doubt. If you’re going to buy Bloodborne go with Game of the Year edition, it’s spectacular. Of course you don’t need the DLC to fully enjoy the game, but it adds an impressive amount of gameplay hours, new story that adds to the main story, the excellent Research Hall level, the most dramatic boss fight and a pizza cutter weapon. Bloodborne’s gameplay is equally as fascinating as the story, with a fast-paced almost fighting game style combat system, a nearly completely connected immersive world, expert level design, some of the best bosses in any video game, and terrifying difficulty. For many players, these may seem too much or ‘not for me’, (always disappointing to see people give up on the Souls games, but understandable given the lack of beginner friendliness), and I certainly felt the same way at first. When I learnt to persevere and actively focus on the game, quitting out whenever a mild inconvenience in real life happened, it became a joy to play. I had mastered and overcome a godly challenge. I’m pretty terrible at games generally, so I honestly feel proud that I managed to beat this game and the DLC. Bloodborne’s cathartic moments, its incredible story and the pure art of the game which can be captured in a screenshot, or the masterful soundtrack, are all why it’s likely my favourite game ever.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Overlooked is an understatement. Made by the director of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, this game is metroidvania almost perfected. Almost, as there’s some inconsistent game design towards the end with a specific puzzle, but that’s my only real criticism. It’s also a well deserved ‘fuck you’ to Konami, with a pachinko boss fight and David Hayter practically voicing Snake. Gameplay is excellent with intuitive dungeons, bonus areas, RPG-style weapon, skills and armour customisation, and some crushingly difficult bosses. If you want a rest from the main game, you can always return to the beginning town and complete quests - my favourite is making meals for a constantly hungry old woman, as you can later buy and use them for permanent stat boosts. Shamefully, I really liked dressing up Miriam, the main character anime girl. Messing around with her skin colour and unlocking hairstyles is worth the £20 alone. With free upcoming DLC, it’s a perfect patient gamer game.
Spec Ops: The Line Spec Ops: The Line is a perfect game. Many criticise the cover shooting, but it twists the generic mechanics into something amazing. In games such as Gears of War or Uncharted, taking cover is used to stop enemies shooting at you, reload, regen health, have a cup of tea or anything you can do while crouching. Spec Ops, however, puts you against relentless enemies who will suppress your fire when in cover and move to flank you, meaning you are forced to move and take damage, or work out a strategy with your teammates on the fly. It’s not deep strategy, but it really adds a new dimension to the game which sets it apart. The level design is excellent too, with plenty of memorable combat arenas like a decaying stadium, a destroyed luxury hotel, and an abandoned mall, which all go hand in hand with the story, which needs no introduction. Dubai has been wiped out by a sandstorm, and a rogue US army battalion led by your former leader and some civilians remain. Each level adds another piece to the PTSD puzzle, as you mow down hundreds of American soldiers who scream out in fear and panic as the game slow-motions their heads being destroyed by one of your bullets, while death rattles of wounded soldiers permeate the arena. Walker, voiced expertly by Nolan North, slowly changes over the course of the game as his honest, heroic decisions turn out to be, well, not very heroic. One of my favourite details in a video game is how his reload and command voice lines change the further you go into the game, as the weight of his task to rescue civilians and extract his mentor becomes unbearable. Even the main menu changes throughout the game, representing the entropy of the city. I haven’t tried the multiplayer as there’s no one online, but the fact it’s there makes me appreciate this game even more. Spec Ops: The Line is video games as a narrative experience exemplified perfectly.
Rayman Legends Incredible 2D platformer that removes many conventions (lives, starting a level over, time) and is better for it. Each level has depth with collectables that unlock new characters and levels, and side challenges. The highlight is the music stages, which remix songs to fit the world’s theme, and the platforming is based on rhythm. Disappointing to hear of Michel Ancel’s departure from Ubisoft, as that means we’ll likely never get a sequel. I sympathise with you, Beyond Good and Evil fans. Now if only Ubisoft executives could stop trying to mount every female in the workplace and work on another of these games (Seriously though, fuck Ubisoft for the sexual assaults and their PR coverups).
Mario Kart Wii I never owned a Wii as a child. It pained me to see all my friends play Wii Sports Resort and Super Mario, but one game in particular eluded me: Mario Kart Wii. The speed, the soundtrack, the plastic wheel you put over the Wiimote - I remember being captivated by it and wishing I could have a gaming experience like that in my own home. 12 years later, the Wii and Wii U have as much grasp on popular culture relevancy as Game of Thrones, which is the perfect time to buy an old console and a copy of this game. Mario Kart Wii is exactly as I remember. Coconut Mall, DK’s Snowboard Cross, battle mode, plus all the tracks my friends never unlocked make this one of my personal favourites. I debated putting it on this list as I’d find it hard to compare to a game like Bloodborne or Bioshock, but any game that creates the same childhood wonder in me is instantly going in my favourites list. Mario Kart Wii is fun racing with enough depth to get good at, and even more exciting playing it with friends. Especially when you’ve got a spiny shell.
Worst: Rise of the Tomb Raider Basically ‘ok’ can only last so long before becoming tedious. Rise of the Tomb Raider does nothing notable with its gameplay. Most egregious is the plot that’s basically stolen beat for beat from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Mountains, evil super-Russians, and annoying bullet sponge mythical enemies at the end (although they’re better than the bootleg Thanos’ you fight in U2, but basically anything is). Lara Croft is insufferable, she has no personality and grunts and shoots her way through every situation. Definitely the best of the worst list as I finished only this and Detroit but I really shouldn’t have wasted my time. Instead play Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Saints Row Mid-2000s 50 Cent and Soulja Boy era hip hop aesthetics were always cringe. Saints Row goes for that materialistic objectify all women attitude without much irony and actually takes itself seriously. The beginning is every angry teenage white boy’s dream of various women trying to sleep with you, surviving a gang attack and then being recruited to this gang because they noticed you’re such a chad. I’m surprised he didn’t also win a rap battle against Eminem. It’s trying to be Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with its satire and comedy, but it ends up being cringy rather than funny when you’re listening to the stereotypical camp gay guy shouting down the radio without any smart jokes or wordplay. The game also runs terribly, even on my original Xbox One. I’m really hoping the other games in this series are as good as everyone says, and this is only a false start. Instead play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare I imagine the pitch for this game was ‘Consumers didn’t like consuming the new Halo’s that they’ve consumed. Anyway, fellow executive, how will we make consumers consume another Call of Duty?’ ‘Let’s make the consumers consume Call of Duty while ripping off Halo down to the weapon and ship designs and promise a sci-fi experience with 2016 relevant celebrities and the usual passionless gameplay, and completely break the multiplayer with pay-to-win weapons. That way we can consume all of the disappointed Halo consumers’ money plus the yearly sycophants’ who’ll buy our games every year anyway. Wanna test our brand loyalty by releasing the worst trailer ever?’ Instead play Halo 4
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 malignant and represents the worst of ‘live service’ microtransaction lootbox fuelled games. Literally a pay to win £50 (70 USD) game with overpowered weapons only in lootboxes that Activision promised not to include, no campaign and another cringy comedy zombies mode. Fuck this game and fuck Activision. I hope the executives’ spoilt and probably racist children are happy with the money they’ve got from gambling addicts. Instead play Doom Eternal
Detroit: Become Human malignant and represents the worst of emotional story-driven artistic pretentious wank games. Horrible storytelling about racism and abuse, no interesting or likeable characters, nonsensical plot twists and unbelievably miserable forced drama. Obvious and rudimentary observations about complex and incredibly serious social issues are constant. It feels exploitative and contrived to see humans try to rape and murder the harmless androids when in the game’s own context it makes no sense. I’m really sick of seeing this stuff in games and films, the obvious contrivances like stabbing a pregnant woman in the Last of Us by accident, ‘Now you must hate her, audience!’ Terrible writing. If you don’t make the choices the game wants you to make you’re railroaded until you play the game ‘properly’, so your choices mean nothing. I chose not to rescue a character who explicitly hated me because I was an android, which locked me out of a good (relative) ending, because your choices affect a good ending/bad ending binary system. Not playing the game the way David Cage wants you to? Bad ending, though the ‘good’ endings are equally poorly written. While I did actually finish the game, it is absolutely NOT representative of how much I enjoyed it compared to the others on this list. I only stuck around to the ending because my friends constantly recommended it, and because of the praise from reviewers desperate to give any high profile game a positive review if it increases their chances of working for a game company. See this year’s Game Awards as perfect example. David Cage has no ideas that aren’t already from much better movies, the talentless misogynist. I’m pretty sure he ripped the narrative straight out of Humans, a 2015-2018 UK TV show from the few scenes I’ve seen from it. At least Kojima makes good games when he steals from movies, and dubiously sexualises women. Instead play Batman and Batman: The Enemy Within (and watch Seven, Memento, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049)
Aliens: Colonial Marines it’s awful, but I’ll still take this over Black Ops 4 or The Division. Every level has basic and boring corridors with broken AI targets to shoot. I gave up after a broken stealth section. Pretty funny to watch, though. Instead play Doom
Knack memes aside, Knack sucks. Broken combat where every enemy is so vastly more powerful than you, no real combos in a beat ‘em up, strange Lego knockoff character designs. I can’t wait to play Knack 2 after I’ve finished literally every other game in existence Instead play Lego Marvel Super Heroes and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Dragon Ball Final Bout No idea why I played this, I don’t even like Dragon Ball. Anyway, it’s unplayable due to the abysmal controls Instead play Tekken 3
Wii Music Nintendo are pretty cool, but not free from making terrible games. Wii Music has no real gameplay. As soon as you put in the disc, you’ve won the game. Waving the Wiimote around without any rhythm or skill gets you through every song in the limited track list, which lacks any Killing in the Names or Through the Fire and the Flames(s). No fun at all, and especially disappointing from Nintendo. Instead play Tetris Effect: Connected
Tunnel B1 obscure mid-90s game. The colour brown. Best left forgotten. Instead play Star Wars Battlefront II
Tom Clancy’s The Division The Division proves that the gaming industry is often going backwards. It has less gameplay than Gears of War, another third-person cover shooter from 2006, released ten years before the Division. Even basic enemies are bullet sponges, meaning every encounter is hiding behind a chest high wall and waiting to unload 30 more rounds into them. The story is completely tone deaf and idiotic with a huge disconnect from the gameplay. If you’re a highly skilled operative why is one random thug so much more powerful than you? One of the most infuriating, lazy ways of designing combat, the anti-power trip. Life-wasting Ubisoft hollowness. At least I didn’t waste a weekend, as you can see all the game has to offer in about 4 hours. Instead play Spec Ops: The Line
submitted by And I know most people aren’t watching gambling anime for cuteness. But trust me, Saki is worth your time. 11. Mahjong Hishō-den: Naki no Ryū . Welp, here we’ve got even more mahjong. I truly didn’t know it was so popular until I started making this list! This series isn’t very popular, but while browsing Reddit threads I found that a lot of people seem to like this series. And so
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