Going into this soft launch with so much confidence is bold.īut weeks after the game has been launched, industry veterans began to weigh in and started noticing the cracks in the design. Many have already dismissed the game as an unlikely game to launch, despite having a massive following already from streamers and e-sport fans. Currently, the game is sustaining in the top 10 grossing in Canada and driving a massive community around it. Despite the concerns, this game could end up being a surprise hit due to the strong multiplayer gameplay.īut ultimately as a game designer, what I see from Brawl Stars is an amazing game that is weakened by a poorly designed gacha system. It fails to deliver on what a gacha system needs to do, and it will ultimately not last in its current incarnation. Comparing the system to Clash Royale, Brawl Stars system is considerably weaker and will result in lower revenue on a per player basis. While I believe the game is incredibly fun to play and may just succeed based on its multiplayer component alone, ultimately the game will be weak on a revenue-per-player basis.įrom this analysis, it begs the question: Even if Supercell can drive downloads organically, this will hold it back from where it could be. What is it about the Brawl Star mechanics which weakens the Gacha? That comes down to Depth.
Something to clarify is about how designers look at depth of a gacha system, and why this matters. The depth of a gacha system ultimately defines how long it will last, roughly what the maximum spend a player could spend to reach the end of content, or how long a player would need to play before reaching the end of content. This is usually defined as the number of drops it takes to complete the gacha. Ī “drop” in a gacha is defined as giving away a single item. For example, in Clash Royale a drop would be synonymous with a single card dropped from a chest.
Some designers also call this a “pull” - but for this article, I will call them drops. Keep in mind that a drop does not mean a chest. A Chest has multiple drops in the case of Clash Royale, but a chest in Brawl Stars only contains a single drop.