Monday, November 18, 2013

The Gacha Show Premieres on Templar


By DrFran Babcock

I am not an oldbie, but I have been in Second Life™ long enough to have witnessed many ideas sweep the grid. Some come and go, and some stay. Right now gacha madness is in its ascendance, and few residents are without at least some awareness of what it’s all about.

What is Gacha?

The main gacha event is the Arcade Gacha ( http://thearcadesl.com ) held several times a year. Major content creators are asked to create a series of items, and place them in a machine where residents pay a fee to get the prizes that have been placed within. Most creators make one or a few items RARE, in that the odds of getting them are more difficult. The real coup in designing this event is that the items in the gacha machine are no modify, no copy, but transferable. This means, if you don’t like what you got in the machine, you can trade it for something else. An entire Gacha Culture has sprung up with residents running yard sales to sell their extra and unwanted items. In addition, some items that are RARE, especially items from earlier gachas fetch prices of several thousand Lindens! There is even an entire sim devoted to the sale, auction, and display of gacha items: Gachetopia.

Gachetopia is a sim-wide yard sale along with several stores dedicated to selling items from the past gacha events. The sim is the work of Morbid and Luke Templar, who are dedicated gacha addicts. They have been selling items and holding auctions for a while now, but on Saturday, November 16th, they hosted the first of what should be many live shows called: The Gacha Show. Each show is planned to host a content creator, and an interview with them to explore their work, their lives, and their gacha goods.

I am fascinated always by the content creators with consistently innovative, detailed and improving work. For the first show Morbid Templar interviewed the genius behind O.M.E.N.: Damien.

Damien and O.M.E.N.

A sampling of the wise words of Damien is below. Damien was very measured and wise in his responses, and the crowd was clearly eating out of his hand. He even got a marriage proposal from someone in the audience by the end.

 I found out that O.M.E.N. actually stands for Ominous Meaning Elude No one, that Damien created as a comment on all the business names in SL that actually mean nothing.

Creative inspiration that might be saleable is hard to come by, and Damien admits that he does rely upon his manager, Aarin Jennifers, to help him with his creations. He has several ideas that were rejected by his manager  (farting tacos ), but he has held on to them for the future. His personal favorite gacha creation of his own is the Panda Sushi (http://www.flickr.com/photos/75496317@N07/8799819073/ )

Morbid bodly brought up the subject of the odds on the machines. My own experience has been that some RARES in the machines are harder to get than others, and my visits to yard sales have confirmed that certain objects are much harder to find. Damien felt that no RARE should be impossibly hard to win, especially if someone plays a machine very often.

He was asked what other creators he admired and he mentioned two of my favorites, Apple Fall and Anya Ohmai (Nu’ville), and one I didn’t know: Rose of Olive. Of great interest was the fact that all of the designers in the Arcade Gacha Group get free copies of the gacha items. This tidbit had the crowd murmuring in jealousy.

However, no matter how much the crowd begged, Damien would not let people know what would be in his December 2013 Arcade Gacha, but he had sage advice for new content creators: Be willing to embrace being small to be big.

FREEBIES!

A big surprise was announced after the show. Each person who had attended was treated to a detailed globe made by Luke Templar that was only for this show, and would be retired. In addition, Damien promised a free gift to the attendees of this first Gacha Show.

The next guest is already lined up, and is Contraption, who makes…well, contraptions. It is set for November 30th on the sim of Templar, and if it is run as professionally and welcoming as this first show, it will be a hit.

If you are interested in joining the Gachatopia group, you can teleport to the sim here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Templar/121/179/41

DrFran Babcock

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