Uh-oh, I think I'm finally all gacha'd out

I have been thoroughly gacha-brained and RNG-pilled for a decade now, what some might call an unfortunate long-term symptom of being a rabid rhythm gamer who grew up with no nearby arcades and long, boring commutes to school that I relieved with mobile romps like Love Live! School Idol Festival. (Image credit: miHoYo) (Image credit: NetEase) (Image credit: Cygames) Prior to this year, it's genuinely difficult for me to recall gaps where I wasn't neck deep in some free-to-play currency multiplicity. I jumped ship to dress-up game Love Nikki, and then to Bang Dream! Girls Band Party. But hey, at least these things were only contained to my phone. At least I'm not juggling them across my console and PC, too. (Image credit: Infold Games) Except, oops, now it's 2020. The world's gone to shit, everything's still on lockdown, and little-known Chinese developer miHoYo has just put its Breath of the Wild clone Genshin Impact on my newly-purchased PlayStation 5. Surely that thing won't usher in a new age of gacha games, broadening their appeal to the masses and inviting a plethora of even more open world free-to-play action games riddled with real-money purchases, right? Right? Unless you've been in a coma for the last five years, you'll know that is, in fact, exactly what happened. Gacha games are bigger and more prevalent than ever. Many of them still remain on mobile, sure, but an increasingly large percentage have set up shop on more powerful hardware. And there's something for everyone: dating sims, turn-based RPGs, dress-up games, shooters. All revolving around the same monetisation structure. I have, for the last half-decade, more and more found myself bouncing from gacha to gacha. Genshin made way for Honkai: Star Rail, which was dropped in favour of Nikke, which survived a surprisingly long time in my rotation before being dumped for Infinity Nikki. All the while I dabbled in mobile-exclusive ventures like Project Sekai on the side. Oh, and a surprising bonus stint from horse girl gacha Umamusume: Pretty Derby. Gacha a handful But here's the thing. I think that maybe, quite possibly, there are simply too many of them now. And I'm burned the hell out, y'all. This is the first year in a very long time where I've gone several months without being chained to my dailies in the same way I know I should brush my teeth twice a day and wash my hands after using the toilet. It was habitual, to a fault, and now I've broken free I'm not sure I can find an opening to dive back in. (Image credit: miHoYo) And ultimately, I really do believe it boils down to the sheer volume of things coming out. That's true of the industry at large, sure-Steam has seen a dizzying number of game releases in the last two years, more than it ever has-but for me, gacha has always existed in a space where I've been down to try them all at least once. Even the bad...

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