at the time of this page's creation, the vast majority of articles regarding gacha games essentially boil down to, "a gacha game is a game where you gamble for jpeg waifus. a whale is a person who spends money on gacha games :)" which, like. aside from calling the waifus "jpegs" (they're actually pngs when static images), it's not wrong, but it feels to me like saying that there are fish in the ocean.
like, congratulations! you are technically correct in some ways!! but there is so much more to it than that. we're realizing that the only people who know better are those within the community itself, who simply explain the terms to newcomers as they're loaded in, and so to our knowledge, there exists no proper compilation of terms by people, who, like. fucking live here lmao.
so truly, what better place to chuck our own attempts than the shrine of cringe devoted to one pathetic wet sock's gacha game fanfiction? at least this way no one can tell us that we haven't proven our passion for gacha games lmao
anyway, if you've already been Into gachas for a long period of time, then you can just skip this page, since it likely won't cover anything you don't already know.
whale
the people who keep their games afloat.
in the mainstream, this is typically understood in the financial sense: whales are the people who spend massive amounts of money on their game afloat. in actuality, there also exist people whom nat calls "time whales" – people who devote massive amounts of their time to in-game grinding to reap its rewards.
however, because the financial whales are most visible in the mainstream due to their showy nature, it is safe to assume that when someone refers to "whales", they mean the financial type.
whales are categorized by the fact that they can and will spend massive amounts of money on their game(s) of choice without batting an eye simply because they can afford it that easily.
dolphin
people who will spend a moderate amount of money on their game of choice– whether they remain within their means or not will vary.
sometimes they pay because they really enjoy their game(s) of choice and want to support it financially, but at other times, they pay because they lack the time or willpower to grind in-game for the things they want.
very hard to pin definitively pin down in terms of spending, as there are no widely agreed-upon upper or lower bounds, with some people even subcategorizing the people between genuine whales and f2p/low spenders into ever-cascading classifications of sea animals. however, they will spend on more than just the monthly pass bundles.
f2p / low spender / minnow
"f2p" stands for "free-to-play" and is also sometimes abbreviated to "ftp" instead. pretty much excactly what it sounds like: the players who spend little-to-no money on their game(s) of choice.
sometimes f2p and low spenders get lumped into one category called "minnows" or similar. regardless, they make up the majority of gacha players, and the upper bound for their spending before they graduate to dolphins is whatever the price for always buying the monthly pass bundles is for that particular gacha.
premium currency
the in-game currency, which can be amassed through gameplay or bought with real money via microtransactions. buying premium currency directly is referred to as "buying top-up" and is usually exchanged for "pulls/rolls" regardless of source.
pulls / rolls
refers to the amount of times one can exchange their premium currency for a chance to win. players often say, "i have x number of rolls saved up."
like in gambling, one rolls the dice to see if they will win, and gacha players "pull" for their desired characters/items by rolling in their banners. the term "pull" is most likely derived from the act of pulling trading cards from their packets, as early gacha were compared to collectible trading cards.
see also: cards
also used as a verb, wherein people will say they are "pulling for x character or
item", which can either mean they are currently exchanging their premium currency in that particular banner, or they are currently saving in order to roll in that banner.
cards
a general gacha term for the prizes one may win when rolling.
more common in gacha with multiple versions of the same character, such as rhythm games, as the different card variants will have different art or in-game abilities
you can also go to some specialty shops and purchase actual, physical cards of certain gacha characters', well, in-game cards.
pity
a concept in gacha games wherein after a certain number of rolls, if a player doesn't get their desired gacha card, the game will have "pity" on them in some way.
different gachas will implement this differently, but most common is to have drop rates for the high-rarity cards increase with each subsequent failed pull.
soft pity is the point when the drop rates start increasing with each failed roll; in genshin this happens at around the 75th roll. hard pity is the point when you get so pathetic from all your loss that the game just gives you a high-rarity drop.
monthly pass