2026-10-06 · essay
Is Gacha Play or Gambling? Two Kinds of Coin in the Same Machine
The egg machine in Puzzle & Dragons accepts Magic Stones you found in a dungeon and Magic Stones you paid for. The gacha in HoloCure only takes coins earned inside the game. Which is play, and which is gambling? I sat Caillois, who called games of chance "alea", across from Mill, who wrote about gambling-houses in On Liberty. They ended up standing together not in front of the machine's design, but in front of where the coin comes from.
