Plot beats, characters, and setting in a game’s narrative can be as important, if not more so, than the gameplay depending on the genre. No one can say that Drakengard was a fun game to play. But the story more than made up for its clunky controls and repetitive missions. Because so much of a gacha game’s monetary pull comes from its characters, as either units in battle or characters to enjoy following, companies naturally want to make sure that it makes its male and female characters as appealing as possible. To make things simpler, there are games that are cater for people who enjoy seeing a particular gender. But there are games that are like a family-friendly film, in that they’re marketed for a pretty general audience. Yet in spite of their premise, as time goes on, some companies start to shift the balance of characters offered.
Gacha games are a pretty contentious form of gaming, considering its entire model uses the same tricks and allures as real-life gambling. While there are plenty of gacha games these days with legitimately good stories or characters, the company’s ultimate goal is still to make as much money as possible and how it does that is to make sure that it can tempt players into opening up their wallets. There are a few things that will definitely catch people’s attention when marketing certain products and one of those things is: sex.
Sex appeal is a great way to hook in a potential customer. This can be through implications that you’ll get some hottie with a body if you use X product or that you’ll be the hottie with a body if you use Y perfume. Stuff like that. That’s actually another reason why some people look down on gacha games or gacha players. The idea of spending real-life money on a JPEG or 3D model of a handsome guy or a pretty lady, just because they’re sexy, is ridiculous to some.
Hey, I’m on the side of the people being judged. I’ve mentioned in the past that I spent over $2000 on a single banner alone in Honkai: Star Rail for Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae. Conveniently, the game that prompted me to write this up actually is Honkai: Star Rail! HoYoVerse released the drip marketing for Sunday on October 8, 2024. About a week later on October 16, 2024, Reddit user “Thhaki” noted that Sunday has become the drip marketing with the most likes on Instagram. At the time of this Reddit post, Sunday had 264,000 likes versus Firefly’s 263,000.
This is very significant. Firefly is your defacto mecha girlfriend in Honkai: Star Rail. No matter what your personal feelings are about this girl, she will always have lots of ship teasing with your protagonist. It doesn’t matter if you play as Caelus or Stelle. Firefly is also a very cute girl in terms of her design. But there’s just something about a tortured soul who’s an extremist with good intentions, I suppose. People ended up eating Sunday up.
The popularity of Sunday proves something though. And no, this isn’t a joke about how people love the weekend. It shows that male characters are not an automatic flop when it comes to player interest in gacha games. Honkai: Star Rail has been pretty good in this regard among other gacha games, in that it feels like there’s a fairly even division of new male and female characters we get. Genshin Impact—from the same company, so it’s easier to compare—was kind of an equal split. But if we look at the characters who debuted between Version 4.0 and Version 5.1, we have 7 male characters and 14 female characters. Quite literally double the amount. Around 57% of those male characters are 5-stars (this makes them easier to get, ironically enough, as well as make them more desirable). Meanwhile, a whopping 71% of those female characters are 5-stars.
There are some games that are clearly geared towards a certain audience. Since we were talking about HoYoVerse, I’ll use Tears of Themis as an example. It’s for the otome crowd. So it would be kind of silly to ask HoYoVerse to add in a girl. Look at Goddess of Victory: Nikke. That’s for people who like to see girls’ assets. Also, Shift Up’s accuracy when it comes to the guns is amazing so I assume firearms nerds love it too. But I digress. Since it’s for people who are into female characters, it’d be silly to play Nikke and then complain about the lack of guys. If you’re adamant on getting male characters, why play the gacha game marketing itself with women showing off their assets in skin-tight clothing?
Different strokes for different folks. Different games for different aims. But what about games that developers market for a more general crowd, either through the story or marketing or character options?
Moving away from Chinese and South Korean developers, let’s look at Fate/Grand Order. Even if you want to argue that Fate/Grand Order is a spin-off of former eroge Fate/stay night, Grand Order has evolved into its own separate beast at this point. Despite the popularity of characters like Merlin or Oberon (for both unit and character reasons), there’s still far more female characters in the game than male ones. This wouldn’t be too bad on its own. But while female characters get alternate versions for Christmas and summer every year, male Servants only get a costume for summer. Karna was the only male Santa. Actually, that might say more about Karna than it does the developers.
Jokes aside, I’m not sure why this is still happening nine years into the game. It’s true that you’re guaranteed to receive a costume provided that you complete the in-game quests. Even if your luck is in the gutter with the gacha, you can probably walk away from a summer event with at least one male swimsuit as a souvenir. The thing with a separate Servant is that they get new animations and ascension arts, as well as a library of new voice lines. When comparing a costume versus an entire new Servant, it can feel like we’re being cheated. Some of the girl’s outfits aren’t even swimsuits, for crying out loud.
As a disclaimer, I don’t automatically dislike female characters in stuff. I play as a female character whenever I get the chance, and I love dolling up my gals in games like The Sims. I’m just not sure if I want to shell out money for female characters all the time when I’m more interested in male characters. And I don’t believe I’m the only one. In Honkai: Star Rail history alone, we not only have Sunday beating out Firefly in terms of Instagram likes, but we also have Jing Yuan literally breaking the HoYoVerse top-up site in China because so many people wanted to whale for the man. It’s one thing to expect a disproportionate amount of a particular gender in a game that’s marketed for a specific audience. It’s another to see it happen in a game that seems like it’s more for a general audience.
You might’ve heard the old adage of “Girls don’t play video games,” much like the ye olde “Girls don’t watch [insert show that companies market to boys].” In 2024, that saying really doesn’t hold up considering the prevalence of female-presenting streamers and YouTubers who make a living off of video games. Outside of that anecdotal (and perhaps inaccurate evidence), a study from 2022 showed that almost 50% of players worldwide are female. They’re paying money too. Love and Deepspace, which is very much a game for the otome fans, actually made more monthly revenue than Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle. So the idea that companies don’t need to market to or consider what female players might want when making games for as many players as possible is pretty outdated.
Some incel gamers can get pretty crazy though. At best, they straight up boycott a gacha game if there’s even a whiff of playable male characters. Not to keep using HoYoVerse as examples, but some Chinese netizens committed actual real-life crimes out of sheer hatred towards Scaramouche after Genshin Impact Version 3.3. At least two people killed cats (due to the “Scarameow” design, Scaramouche has an association with cats) and shared videos of the deed. They attempted to doxx HoYoVerse employees too. These are the most extreme incidents. To be fair, female players aren’t all taken with Scaramouche either. He’s just kind of a polarizing character for a myriad of reasons.
From a less serious angle, some players seem to treat the introduction of playable male characters as a personal affront or a declaration of war on their ideology. And yeah, as I mentioned a short while ago, they boycott the game. So I get it from a corporate angle. Even if it’s a disappointment to normal players, both male and female, I can understand why companies might choose to err on the side of caution.
So long as a game is fun, then the gender divide of characters shouldn’t matter. While doing this article, I noticed for the first time that only about 24% of the characters in Identity V are female. It’s interesting I never caught that while playing the game considering for a year and a half, I played four hours minimum every single day. A character’s appearance is even a deciding factor in whether I learn them or not. When it comes to gacha games that also include a story and characters as a selling point though, there’s not as many factors to distract you from this kind of stuff. It’s a little unfortunate that the people who prefer male characters have less potential “husbandos” to ogle over whereas people who like female characters get to enjoy the certainty of knowing they’ll see a new potential waifu sometime soon.
I can’t remember if I saw this as a response on Reddit or Twitter or YouTube. But I saw someone argue against complaints about female-character-preferring-fans getting preferential treatment by saying that there are otome games for a reason. That if people want male characters, they should just go play those. The thing is that we’re talking about games that companies are marketing towards everyone, and do people who like male characters not count as “everyone”? Why must we be the ones to move when we’re also doing our part in shelling out money or participating in the fandom?
Unfortunately, with the toxic corners of fanbases, it’s probably impossible for certain gacha games to maintain a 50:50 gender divide even if the companies want to. Like we’re not talking about hurt feelings or failed expectations here. Some people are so nuts they’re willing to commit actual bodily harm over this stuff. Appeasement may have been a cause of WW2 but in this case, appeasement really might be the best option these companies can take.
Sunday, the Honkai: Star Rail man who sparked this in the first place, will appear in Version 2.7.
Published: Oct 29, 2024 09:00 am