Gazebo

Banish the gacha

It’s hard to say this because I know it’s a very popular practice in SL economy right now, but I’m sick of the gacha overdose we’re currently experimenting in this virtual world. There is no single event in which at least a few participating stores offer their products using that seductive shopping modality, and I’m especially hating it when it’s actually the only way to purchase the items I would like to get. Maybe I’m only yearning for the days when store owners celebrated the release of new products in their own inworld locales… it seems ages ago. When it was done that way, back in the “old days”, you would never have to spend days just trying to get in to buy that latest cuteness on the grid; now it seems to take a week sometimes.

Gacha events are so in excess right now because their apparent low pay-to-play pricing is synonym of bargain to many a gamer, but the way the mechanism works may be contributing to create a gambling-like culture among residents that are becoming addicted to this market practice. When playing gacha, people tend to spend significantly more than they would normally pay to acquire their wares by other means, like regular old-fashioned shopping. From my point of view, if you encourage a habit, a bad one when people can’t self-control or limit their spending rationally, and start to exploit their obsession to your favor (even unconsciously, because I like to think creators “may not” be aware of this), then you start to tilt the balance to the negative side of the equation, me thinks. In that same way, you also indirectly subsidize the rapacious tendencies some resellers are mastering in yard sale camps. So I’m getting sick of those as well.

Gachas are also creating a surplus of crap, because anything that remains “unwanted” becomes debris in somebody’s inventory, or a tabletop item on a flea market after the hype is over and the product doesn’t sell. Then it turns into a small locus of lag that competes with the one belonging to new merchandise whenever they are added to the trade.

I know, it’s just me…

GazeboIn the pictures: more shots of Atelier Visconti’s Adria Gazebo (check yesterday’s post for details). I didn’t have any fitting images to add to this random rambling, so I picked two most closed at hand. I guess I should add this disclaimer: “The objects depicted in these pictures have nothing to do with the post’s message. They are not intended to illustrate any idea discussed in the text. They are for decorating purposes only.”