Gaming or Gambling? Part 3

I didn’t just like these gambling games. I LOVED them!

I opened my first Pokemon Booster Pack when I was 5. Since then, every time mum and I would go to the mall, I would ask her to buy me ‘a pack’. This Booster Pack addiction simmered down in my teen years…but gatcha games took over! I would grind Tower of Saviours, Fate Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy daily. Occasionally, I would dish out some cash for a better shot at a ‘Holy Grail’ character.
Why was I so in love? What kept me coming back?

For one, I found the art of these games beautiful! This was especially so for the cards and characters attainable only through gambling (‘gambled products’). Honestly, I often found the aesthetics so beautiful they beat the daily views of real life. When I saw the characters before me, I saw art drawn from myths and legends all across the world. I was allowed to enter many a talented artist’s deepest imaginations. I never had constant access to art galleries till later in his life and these games became my portable art galleries. It was (and still is) immensely fulfilling to own art pieces I could access at a moments’ notice to brighten up my day!

The gambled products also changed the way the games are played. The game’s default products obey a minimum set of rules for the game to be played. However, gambled products often introduce new rules that make the game fresh and exciting. As a result, they lead to game developers having to tailor future game developments around them. As someone who gets bored of the ‘same old gameplay’, I found these ‘game-changing’ gambled products exciting and compelling. I did not want to get left out of new developments of the game!

Last, and most powerfully, chasing ‘gambled products’ was a social experience! Most friends and family around my age played gambling games like these and we would come together to ‘gamble’! We experienced many strong negative emotions - we’d cry when none of us got a ‘good’ gambled product (‘bad pulls’), envy the lucky son of a gun who eventually did (‘God roll’), and rant over how our individual gaming experiences would change. We experienced many strong positive emotions too! We would pat each others’ backs at bad pulls, yell at the top of our lungs at God rolls, and at the end of it all, have a great big laugh about how absurd these games are.

In these ways, I loved (and in many respects, still love) gambling games. I do not regret playing them as I got so much personal and social fulfillment out of them. However, I play these games far less often than I used to. I have even developed a sense of repulsion towards them. In the next piece, I will explain why.

(Originally written 9th June 2025. Edited 11th May 2026)