Most modern Asian mobage ("gacha" as they call it. Short for "gachapon/gashapon" inspired by the gumball machine esque toy of the same name) are like that these days. They are well past the days where they focus on selling solutions to hard levels.
They can "simply" create an entire culture around a game or even individual characters and use that parasocial relationship to grip players. Within the game with stories and bond mechanics and whatnot, and outside the game with animation, merch, Youtube personalities (as it's called today, Virtual Youtubers, or "VTubers"), and even concerts. And I didn't even get into the fanart side of this.
It makes for better game design at least. but what they are doing is much larger thinking than those old school arcade grift strategies.
For example, I have a friend who is into ウマ娘 (Uma Musume - Horse Girls) by Cygames. It's a "horse racing" game with anime girls with horse ears. There's a whole ecosystem around it with several anime series, concerts with music from the game with the voice actors singing and dancing on stage, variety shows with the voice actors, YouTube channels, lots of limited edition merch you can win at convenience stores.
My friend (who only has a part time job and lives with her parents at age 25) has spent over $700 upgrading just one of her characters. "But she's so cute!"
If your friend can afford that, it's honestly none of your nor our business to tell her how to spend her money.
If your friend can't afford that, why is the problem Uma Musume and not your friend? We could regulate gacha games into extinction, but that only means your friend will just find another avenue to spend $700 dollars of unaffordable money in.
If anything, I would at least take solace in the fact your friend isn't spending her money on things that would matter of factly cause tangible harm like drugs and alcohol instead.
Seems a lot like victim blaming. "Just have more willpower than teams of full-time psychologists and billion-dollar marketing budgets can erode" is basically "Worried about being mugged? Just be stronger than all the muggers, lol."
In case you weren't aware, the vast majority of people have "more willpower than teams of full-time psychologists and billion-dollar marketing budgets can erode". There are a few who unfortunately do not, but the world shouldn't have to bend over backwards to save them from themselves.
Who’s “bending over backwards” here? When gambling is regulated, nothing of value is lost. Also, when a ‘few’ people are capable of propping up an industry worth hundreds of billions, your definition of ‘few’ is pretty suspect.
I'm definitely not judging, I also spend too much money on stupid things and we're friends - we commiserate about it.
I just meant it as a concrete example of how the parasocial marketing tactics GP mentioned in these games get people to spend way more than they had planned to (or that you even could spend in "classic" games)
I agree spending beyond one's means is bad, but why is that blamed on what the money is being spent on rather than who is spending that money in the first place?
We never seem to blame the source of the problem in any of these discussions, blaming one scapegoat after another in a frantic and futile attempt to blame anything but the actual problem. It prevents any meaningful answer from coming to bear.
Not much you can do. This is stuff pretty much what every form of modern advertising wants to do, especially these days with social media like Twitter/Tiktok/Instagram/etc. It's no different than how modern musician artists aren't selling you music anymore but a "brand" and "personality". Because music doesn't make the money (not for the artist at least), it just drives fans into buying merch/concerts/etc.
It's not exactly new either. Toy lines were doing this as early as the 70's by leveraging colorful mascots in commercials and commisioning thinly veiled ads they called cartoons to keep the brand awareness. We simply have better tools to do this today.
At what point are you going to stop or finish eliminating those "manipulative business models"? The guy who keeps wasting his money is just going to move onto the next one.
No, the source of the problem are people who can't responsibly manage their finances. Whether that stems from something within their control or not is irrelevant.
It's worth mentioning that gachapon is enjoyed by people of all ages young and old, including kids. Yes, kids. It's "gambling", spending money for a chance at obtaining something, but gachapon is just a part of ordinary life in Japan.
Combined with more serious forms of gambling like horse racing (keiba) and pinball (pachinko), there simply isn't a stigma against gambling like there is in the west.
They can "simply" create an entire culture around a game or even individual characters and use that parasocial relationship to grip players. Within the game with stories and bond mechanics and whatnot, and outside the game with animation, merch, Youtube personalities (as it's called today, Virtual Youtubers, or "VTubers"), and even concerts. And I didn't even get into the fanart side of this.
It makes for better game design at least. but what they are doing is much larger thinking than those old school arcade grift strategies.