The Gacha community right now
part 1
As a female gacha fan and an active participant in fandom culture, gacha communities are making me sick right now. This isn't just about "oh this game is better than that game" or "genshin could never" or "wuwa just has girls with big boobs", it's about a polarized community, a split between male and female gacha fans.
Female gacha players had very few options before; for us, it was either playing as girls barely wearing anything or over-designed, poorly funded games that wouldn't last long. Genshin changed that by making attractive male and female characters, having both male and female travelers, interesting backstories, great exploration, and lore crumbs that kept us coming back. Over time, Genshin released less and less male characters, and in all of Natlan, the last actual nation before Szhenaya, we only have one male 5-star, who, by the way, had so little screentime it was silly.
Then wuwa came along and as a 1.0 player i hate where the game has gone, I saw cantarella and i felt so sad, what could have been a complex character will eventually be boiled down to fan service for more money and the company won't stop this pattern anytime soon cuz people will spend a ton of money to pull for her (someone was trying to compare her to Bayonetta but like apples and oranges) and then i took into account the male character drought and realized they were prioritizing their male players first, even the new girl is so poorly designed (in my opinion).
But most of the male fans don't care, they don't care if the characters are becoming caricatures of them selves, if the character has no personality besides a gimmick or even if the story goes no where when it comes to actual character development, why would they care when the main reason some are interested is the flat sex appeal. Examples being a character like Varesa or Citlali. Both had potential but were ruined by fan service. Varesa is a poorly hidden fetish, while Citlali blushes for the traveller over such dumb stuff, you would think it was a fan-made MMD of Ayaka fawning over the traveller.
And what happens when women in the gacha community talk to them abt it? they claim that liking yaoi/bl makes u a gonner and hypocrite, but that wasn't even a part of the convo. The convo is abt the game having more male-adjacent fan service. No one cares if u goon for a character like at all, but liking ship art and yaoi doesn't make you a gooner . they are plunging Gacha back into the male-only/male-centric games. I only ask for at least equality in character release, and that these people realize that simping and shipping are fandom pillars that are usually fanon and not canon. Lastly, I ask the men to understand that just because they are being catered to by these games doesn't mean they should close their eyes to these problems.
if this becomes the new status quo, what we're gonna get is not another Bayonetta but rather another NIKKE (in terms of fan service), we ARE going to lose the plot, we ARE gonna lose old players and lose poteitial players, we ARE gonna have to compete with otome games and dating games for men because at the end of the day, when everything is removed but fanservice it will devolve into nothing but sofcore porn and un reached potential.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying fan service is bad or that having more female characters is bad, I'm saying games advertised as for all audiences shouldn't focus on fan service that would only appeal to male players. Also please consider some of these points as dramatized to put more emphasis on these points the points themselves
