I might hate gacha games with mixed genders, actually. "Actually" because I believe I didn't feel that way before, but some things happened that left me disillusioned. I'm no longer the bear I once was.

What happened exactly to shift my feelings and perception like this? That is what I'd like to talk (rant) about in this post.

Preface

What is a gacha game with mixed genders? Of course, it's a gacha game that features both playable female and male characters. Sometimes they're called "balanced" genders, though that's not very accurate when things aren't exactly balanced (such as in numbers). A very popular example of this would be "Genshin Impact" and "Honkai: Star Rail", both by Hoyoverse.

A lot of gacha games cater to male players. In other words, they feature only or a lot of female characters, often having focused aimed at male players. Of course, there are gacha games catering to female players, but they're smaller in number and less popular. They tend to get ignored or even get looked down upon by the gacha games community at large. At times, even female players said these gacha games have less quality and gameplay than other gacha games.

The above applies to any other media in general. Anime, manga, light novels, non-gacha games...you name it, and female customers are often treated the same - as merely secondary customers. Even otome games, the games supposedly catering to female players, are not exempt from this, but I digress. This is a sad fact plaguing this world, and it is no different in gacha games.

That being said, of course, some people are different. Some girls prefer to play games with a lot of female characters in it, for example. As such, I'll refer to different groups of players to be catered to as "husbando enjoyers" and "waifu enjoyers" from now on.

Do you like your gacha games to have mixed genders, girls only, or boys only? That is a question I saw in Reddit the other day. Though the idea for this post came before that Reddit post, I'll still link to that Reddit post as it is related to the topic and the varied answers are pretty interesting. I'll also link or even quote some related comments in this post.

As I said previously, I shifted from "I don't really mind either way, but mixed is great" to "maybe mixed is not so great, after all".

From what I've seen, even in the case of these mixed genders gacha games, it's not unusual to find unfairness. Here, I'll talk (rant) about some problems in the mobages (gacha games) I'm currently playing.

Note: I'll be referring to playable male characters simply as "male characters".

Arknights - Not As Fair As It Seems

"Arknights" is a Chinese gacha game by Hypergryph. It's a fairly popular gacha game. well-known for being less fanservicey than other gacha games in the market...even though there are still some fanservice, but I digress.

It is also known to be one of the better gacha games in mixed genders department and in its treatment of male characters. While yes, I admit it might be one of the better ones, it's not the best, either. Reality is not that sweet.

The ratio of female and male characters is still skewing heavily to female characters. A lot of male characters are relegated to be welfare (free) units, rendering most not great gameplay-wise. Some examples:

• Passenger is a gacha 6⭐ who infamously started off VERY BAD. It was only after backlash that he got buffed, but even so, some players still say that he's a very bad character. He's not as meta as other characters for sure.
• Vigil is a free 6⭐ unit with a very cool design and voice, but he's infamously bad. He especially pales in comparison to a LIMITED 6⭐ in the same class and sub-class. Hell, some people even argued that he's even worse than the 4⭐ counterpart, though their roles are different. That absolutely feels like a slap in the face to me. He just got a module (which usually helps units become more viable through adding stats and maybe changing their talents), but it remains to be seen how good it is. He is one of my favorite characters, so this fact is very frustrating to me.
• Minimalist is a free 5⭐ unit. He is a "mech-accord caster", a "caster" with less ATK but can attack enemies outside their range as long as their drones are attacking that enemy. BUT HE CAN'T DO THAT. NONE OF HIS SKILLS ALLOW HIM TO DO THAT.
• Hung is a gacha 5⭐ unit. He is a "guardian defender" that can heal allies. However, he's hard to use because he needs to get hit by enemies to charge his skills. By that point, he might've already died.

And the list goes on, you get the idea.

Even worse, A LOT of them end up in "guard" class, even though there are other classes to be filled in. Even after 4 years, there is still no male 6⭐ AA (anti-air) sniper. Hell, it took A WHOPPING 3 YEARS for a male 5⭐ AA sniper to appear. That is pretty insane to me. There is also still not a single male "incantation medic", and so on.

Here's an image list of 6⭐ male operators currently released (I found the original on Facebook, it was outdated so I updated it myself. The class with the most operators is "guards"):

(Should I make a version listing 5⭐ and maybe even 4⭐?)

It's also still not brave enough to do a gacha banner with only male characters as the rate-up characters, unfortunately. A male character will always be accompanied with a female character so far, even if he's the 6⭐ and she is the 5⭐. Also, there is only ONE limited male character so far, namely Chongyue (who got popular overnight, by the way) - everyone else is female.

Does that sound balanced? Is it all fair? I don't think so.

Yes, there are a few good (even meta) characters like SilverAsh and Mlynar, and good free units like Tequila, even if the bad characters far outnumber them. Yes, there are bad female characters, too. But these can't override the fact that the game is not balanced (in mixed genders characters) overall, with the reasons I've stated above.

Neural Cloud - Do You Hate a Man That Much?

This is a long rant as what happened in this game is what sparked this post in the first place. In fact, this is what I wanted to rant about the most, but I expanded the topic as I'm playing other gacha games being affected with the same problem (though this might be the worst case in this list).

"Neural Cloud" is a Chinese gacha game by MICA Team. It's a prequel to "Girls' Frontline", an older gacha game, which, just as the name implies, only features female characters as playable characters, though there are male NPCs (a lot of them are important to the plot at large and some are beloved by the community). Unlike its sequel game, however, "Neural Cloud" features both female and male characters.

"Neural Cloud" global server (EN, JP, KR) is about a year younger than the original CN server. This allows global server players to have what the gacha game community calls "clairvoyance" - knowledge of what characters/units and events are coming in the future, whether they're meta or not, and whether they want that character or not. It allows players to plan their rolls and builds wisely.

However, the global server doesn't follow the schedule in CN. This was apparent since the very beginning. Gacha banners and events are swapped around, making clairvoyance a bit unreliable. This isn't exactly unusual for global servers. Some people like it, some people hate it. "Girls' Frontline" also has a degree of randomness to it, though "Neural Cloud" seems even more random. Thus, players called this phenomenon "MICA dartboard" for laughs - it means that MICA threw dartboards to decide which banner and event comes next.

I'm lukewarm towards it. As a very small low spender, it'd be better for me if the order is the same, but I don't really mind some randomness, either. However...surely there is a limit to that randomness. There is a limit to how long I can wait for a character who came earlier in CN, but came much, much later in global. In fact, to the day of this post, he hasn't arrived yet in global.

That character is Dupin.

He arrived in CN on 24 November 2022. The order of events and banners surrounding him got rearranged, and thus, his debut was pushed back. It's a bit disappointing, but I can wait...except...it's been so long now, even plenty characters that debuted after him in CN have debuted in global already.

A few days ago, the official Twitter account announced that the collaboration with STEINS;GATE is coming soon. And thus I ask, once again...WHERE THE HELL IS DUPIN????? It's insane how many times this have happened. I seriously wonder why MICA would do this. Do they hate him that much??? The first few times were admittedly funny, but not anymore.

Someone hoped that Dupin will come before the collab. But whether he comes right before or after the collab, it's all the same. Debuting before collab means not a lot of people want to roll (though I suppose the number of people who want to roll for Dupin is very small already as he isn't a meta character) as they want to save up for the collab limited characters. Debuting after collab means not a lot of people can roll as they've depleted their savings for the collab limited characters. Either way, he is screwed. Similarly, Penumbra was screwed on his debut in CN as he came right before collab.

And then, MICA might look at the statistics and say, "Look, nobody wants male characters, after all!" in order to justify the lack of male characters. That's very negative thinking from me for sure. I simply echoed a sentiment someone said when Penumbra was released. As much as I hate the thought, I think that person has a point. It'd be very aggravating if that were the case.

Before Dupin, there was a similar case with Sueyoi, whose debut got reordered in global. He was even cut off from the key visual showing off costumes as he wasn't released yet at the time, unlike in CN. It was both hilarious and absurd, but Dupin's case is on another level entirely.

Let this image of CN server characters release order with the dates and EN release dates by Aventa on Discord speak for itself (CN order from left to right):

Yes, some female characters got their debuts reordered as well, like Jiangyu arriving before Clotho, Dupin, and Undine in global, when Clotho was first in CN. HOWEVER, WHOPPING NINE BANNERS (TEN CHARACTERS with event reward) THAT CAME AFTER HIM IN CN ARRIVED IN GLOBAL ALREADY. No other female characters got this level of treatment. Nothing came to mind on why MICA did this, other than the fact that he is a male. It's utterly absurd.

(For comparison, Sueyoi arrived after being passed by 6 banners and rearrangement of 2 major main story events, one of which he came with. Yeah. MICA even rearranged major main story events!! And for what?! Nobody knows.)

I'm genuinely so done with this shit. I'm so sick of it. This might just be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. My dissatisfaction in the game has been growing for a while as it's becoming increasingly apparent that the game is leaning heavily to cater to waifu enjoyers - or to be more precise, those who enjoy fanservice aimed toward male audiences - more than it ever did before.

Yes, admittedly, ever since the beginning, the game has always been mainly a waifu game, with the ratio of male to female characters being very terrible, skewing heavily on female characters. I know a lot of husbando enjoyers would be turned off by this already, and rightfully so. But I'm admittedly a MICA fan, I'd like to support them however I can, and as bad as it is, I'd be happy to get even the smallest bits of food.

I also thought that "Neural Cloud" is a game MICA created to get more diverse player base and demographics, hence the inclusion of male characters. I remember hearing Yuzhong said it before (citation needed). It also didn't start with an egregious amount of fanservice, unlike "Girls' Frontline", which I'm also a fan of. That game is how I came to love MICA and even play "Neural Cloud" in the first place. The fact that I love a waifu and fanservice-laden game like "Girls' Frontline" may seem weird and even paradoxical, I know.

But it's simple - I know I'm not exactly the target audience of the game, I'm the periphery demographic (though I do love girls with guns genre). There are plenty of fanservice I don't like there, but I can ignore it because it is that kind of game, and these things are mostly cosmetic, anyway - they're not important. There are also plenty of things I like enough to outweigh the things I dislike. I don't have any particular expectations or wishes in playable characters.

"Neural Cloud", however, is another thing entirely. I was told I'm one of the target audiences, so as low as it was, I had expectations. I was actually surprised to see some bits of fanservice, but I thought, "Well, a little bit once in a while is fine". But they kept ramping it up until today (this is subjective. At the very least, that's what I feel. How about looking at it yourself?), while also sidelining the male characters more and more. There are less male characters being released and less costumes for them being released. My expectations were shattered. To put it in a hyperbole way, I was betrayed. As a Redditor said, "Don't cater to us if you don't want to be consistent." Yes, frankly, I've come to realize how insulting it is.

At the very least, we got this spicy Aki's battle pass costume (which I of course paid for, by the way)...but they haven't done anything similar after that. In fact, there are no other battle pass with a male character after that!! How disappointing. I guess they don't want my money.

In a more blatant example of unfairness, Gin's 2nd costume was initially not Live2D despite the other costumes in his batch being Live2D. If that's not blatant, I don't know what is. Thankfully, they added Live2D after a backlash from CN fans. Thanks, CN fans! Thanks MICA for listening for once! (I wonder what CN husbando enjoyers think now? Or have they left already? I don't blame them if they've left, honestly. I'm on the verge myself.)

Male characters also tend to get relegated as welfares (free from event), which is great for me who want to collect all husbandos, but free units are usually not very good gameplay-wise. Sounds familiar? Yes, this happens A LOT in "Arknights".

Last but not least, I'm VERY bitter and disappointed in Eosphorous/Eos. With spoilers redacted, they're different yet have connected. We could've gotten a cool and handsome ex-antagonist to our roster. But no, of course they gotta be a sexy waifu with big boobs when they become playable!! What a lost potential. Her costumes are pretty revealing, too. You can't tell me that's not fanservice.

Reverse: 1999 - Not So Different

"Reverse: 1999" is a Chinese gacha game by Bluepoch. While the gameplay is simple, it got pretty popular as it has a nice art style and native English/British voice acting, though the quality varies. It also has some unique character designs and different aesthetics than most other gacha games, being set in the 90's rather than some futuristic dystopia/post-apocalyptic (which isn't bad, but it's becoming increasingly common).

Despite everything I've written previously, I don't actually feel very negative about this game, perhaps because I don't have any expectations in the first place. I didn't even think I'd still be playing this game for so long, it's just a nice side game. That said, some husbando players clearly have some grievances and feel that the game isn't fully catering to them, and I understand their sentiment.

I clearly see it: just like the other 2 gacha games here, "Reverse: 1999" has a problem with the female to male characters ratio skewing heavily to female characters. You see the pattern? Also, I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, but from what I've seen, most male characters (even 6⭐) are support characters instead of DPS. I don't exactly know how to feel about that.

(Judging by this comment on Reddit, it might be a problem, after all. And what they said about "balanced" not being balanced, with the terrible ratio and being weaker - harsh, but true.)

The terrible ratio between female to male characters skewing heavily to female characters is clearly a trend among mixed genders gacha games. I remember my friend ranting about a Japanese gacha game "Aster Tatariqus/アスタータタリクス" being the same. In a way, it feels like some gacha games simply release male characters once in a while out of necessity to diverse their characters and players, without putting the required care. It's like being thrown small scraps of food on the ground and they said, "Here, that's enough for you, right?". Okay, that might be too brutal, but you get my point.

One might say, "quality over quantity!", and there is truth in that. But surely there is a certain limit to how much somebody can take. I took solace in these words before, but look at me now. Do we, husbando enjoyers, not deserve numerous great male characters, too? Is it so wrong for us to feel disappointed? To seek fairness? As consumers and even payers, do we not deserve to let our voices be heard?

To make it clear, I'm not angry at waifu enjoyers. I'm angry at gacha games companies who decided to cater to both waifu and husbando enjoyers, but ultimately didn't serve husbando enjoyers very well.

Companies - gacha games companies included - are not your friends. At the end of the day, they're business entities, trying to make money as much as they can. Pandering to only one group of players is one of the ways they can get a lot of money. That much I understand, but one can't help their humanly feelings and emotions sometimes.

And precisely because they're companies trying to make money, there are times when consumers should speak up and demand fairness to not let them get away with whatever they want. Their wishes usually come at the consumers' cost.

I just wanted to rant about my personal feelings, but this post sure became something else, for better or worse. With all that said, ultimately, I'm not asking for too much. It'd be nice to have more usable male characters, sure. It'd nice if the ratio between female to male characters becomes better, sure. But for now, my wishes are simple: 1) for "Arknights" to get more male operators in other classes, especially those unfulfilled, 2) for "Neural Cloud" to RELEASE DUPIN FROM JAIL ALREADY!!, 3) For "Reverse: 1999" to release more DPS male characters.

In the end, is it better to have a gacha game with mixed genders, or not? I don't know. That's not something I can answer. I see good points in both. I'm personally into plenty of works with multiple demographic appeal and I can see how it plays into the success of some works by appealing to multiple demographics. On the other hand, I can see the downside.

A well-put argument against mixed genders gacha games, by a Reddit user:

Mixed games tend to have a heterogenous fanbase that will have friction with each other because they all want different things. Waifu players probably won't like content for the fujo players, both won't like content for the yume players and the three groups won't like the content for the yuri players. And the same for every other group. The people who want more fanservice would clash with people who want less fanservice. The eternal loli debate. Eternal ship wars. Those who like heterosexual ships vs those who like homosexual ships. Etc, etc.

There are other comments of the same ilk as well. I see the point with the community of mixed genders gacha games being full of frictions as they all want different things. "Genshin Impact" fandom is infamous for being chaotic (to put it very mildly), for example. Segregation between various sub-groups who focus on different things exists, but sometimes, fights still happen (though of course, it happens in one gender game gacha games' communities, too). However, there is no doubt how successful that game is, and I believe it is by part the mixed genders of the playable characters. Clearly, there is a way to be successful by having mixed genders, and a way to be successful by only having one gender (female or male only). In the end, it all depends on execution, and perhaps some luck.