How Striving For Beauty Led Me Astray

In this post, I want to tell you the story of how gaming led me away from my natural tendency of looking for beauty, and trapped me in an endless loop that ultimately cut me off what I really wanted to achieve.

I still remember the day when I took Pokémon Blue in my hand: the fresh, new feeling of living in a "new" world for the first time. I was just a kid, and the idea of exploring a world I could "dwell in" was something I never experienced: platformers like Mario and Wario don't give you the feeling of "staying within", being mostly a "passing by" weird, colorful places.

I clearly remember kid-me thinking: "This world has houses: isn't that amazing??". The idea of a place where I could "stay" - even in a single player game - was comforting and exciting at the same time.

Pokémon was the first experience where I could start an adventure in a world where, I'd find out later, would've kept me for more than 30 years, even though through different cartridges.

I've been trying many other games through the years. My next important stop was about 15 years later, with Ultima Online. UO was my first MMORPG with roleplaying elements, where I could be my character and share it with other people. That was my next big next step into virtual worlds. All the details counted: the experience was brand new, and I couldn't resist it. The world of magic and knights in a traditional fantasy world was my companion during the first University years.

Meeting other people online, through their characters, has been one of the most immersive, meaningful experiences of my life - not only as a player.

The aesthetics of Ultima was different from the Japanese games I was used to, but it didn't matter, as long as my focus was on interpreting my character, and existing in a world.

I still harbored love for design, but my focus was shifted on the social aspect of gaming, and the beauty of a shared narrative - which, on its own, is about beauty and a good design.

After a few years, I finally dived into the world of Final Fantasy XIV: it was the amazing aesthetics that Ivalice-like worlds like Eorzea bring with them, that made me stay there.

It wasn't for the upgrade from 2.5D to 3D: I really loved the design of the little things in the world YoshiP cares so much about.

Even if I still loved free, sandbox roleplay (mostly in the form of D&D, after I left Ultima Online), and, of course, the cute, charming design of Pokémon creatures, that I still kept playing on the side, Final Fantasy XIV felt like the world I would've stayed in, not only for the time being, but "in general", as a player, as long as it existed. Or so was what I thought.

I remember I was playing with my Hikari, an idol-inspired character, together with other players that wanted to roleplay a band - with some inspiration from BanG Dream, in the themes. One of them, a girl that was into fashion, as far as I remember, mentioned the existence of Genshin Impact, a wonderful game we all had to try.

I was skeptical at the beginning: why would a Unity-made mobile game that looked like an indie interest me more than a full-fledged MMO by Square Enix, with the incredible art direction I was used to? I decided to give it a shot anyways, as a side game, or brief experience.

They're really good at sneaking in their logo in every screenshot!

Yes, it was Unity, and yes it was simple. And yet... it was really captivating. Something I couldn't understand, at the time, was my high sensibility to design over quality. Design isn't defined by the engine, or by the number of polygons something has. Genshin just had a good design, as much as pokémon creatures in their game. It's hard to explain "why" they are so beautiful, but it's extremely easy to understand to humans, as a shared feeling.

Beauty is easy to spot to the eyes of someone that is ready to understand its value. On top of that, the world and its colors weren't the only thing that made me feel charmed by Genshin's world.

The first banner my eyes laid their attention on: it was already a silent pact.

A banner with a character. At a first glance, it looks a very simple concept, and it can be a "simple" concept in two ways:

• If you're not a gacha player, you just see the artwork of cute characters

• If you are, you just see a normal element of your game

At the time, though, it was clear, at least emotionally, what that "banner" stood for.

As humans, we bond with characters. Characters are like "special" people, and we are a social species. Anyone loves "special" things, and I'm not only talking about magic, but mostly about the power of stories and meaning.

Venti was... something that draw my interest in. A rare character that could accompany me on a journey. I already knew it was just the first the game had to offer, and still... he was there. Winking at me. Together with the four star characters that accompanied him, of course.

My first experience with a character-focused game was re-discovering the feeling I felt when I found "a house" in Pokémon Blue. No other game ever hyper-focused on characters, outside the player's one. The feeling is different, as it's like "meeting someone" more than "being someone". Gacha games are about connections, more than personal development. The protagonist is never the point, and is usually "the one that brings every special hero together". They usually have some kind of potential, but they definitely aren't as talented as all the other sparkly heroes, every one of them specializing in something.

That was the beginning of the journey, for me, into meeting as many characters as possible, and creating bonds with them.

Creating a bond in a gacha game is different than meeting a hero in an RPG story: it's more than having them in your party, even, if they're playable. It's establishing that they will serve your cause from there onwards. You are their manager: you train them to be as strong as they get, and they fight with you.

If you're making the connection as me: yes, it feels like Pokémon, but with characters. This formula would've stayed with MiHoYo, now Hoyoverse, for the entire course of its story. After a couple of months, a new region came out, and I still played Genshin, leaving my engagement with Final Fantasy XIV behind.

I was still playing Genshin at Christmas, and I clearly remember I was with my cousin at my grandma's place. We were both playing an element reaction focused team, with Sucrose, Fischl, Chongyun (even if it doesn't make sense) and Bennett, or Barbara.

My first team was something like this, with Fischl instead of Fiona! I don't have Genshin installed anymore, and couldn't find my exact team. The feeling of creating it freely, with readily available characters, was amazing.

I loved the feeling of mixing elements: that feeling would've been with me alongside the entire experience with gacha games. Sucrose was the core element of the team, the glue bringing everyone together, and I really loved the colorful explosions her skill and ultimate brought.

That was the time Genshin introduced the alchemist Albedo to the mix. He was seen as a "stronger alternative to Sucrose", at the time, and a nice addition for the elemental team.

And I wanted him. I wanted him so bad. I was loving my team so much, that I wanted to crown it with Albedo.

Albedo and Dragonspine was one of the most involving experiences I ever had in a game. Both positively and negatively.

And, of course, he wouldn't come from my free pulls. I wasn't used to gacha games yet, and I first experienced the feeling of "missing out a piece I'd have loved".

Genshin was being a lot of fun, for both me and my cousin, and I wanted to share a great experience, so I told him: "What if I buy a pack, and we keep trying getting Albedo?". My cousin told me "You're crazy!", but he was amazed by the idea.

In the end, of couse, I got my copy of Albedo, by spending 100€, or something like it. "That's gonna be a one-of", I think I thought, at the beginning. Or, maybe, I didn't even think at all: it wasn't something that would've ever worried me. It was a "crazy" choice, that made me happy during Christmas. A gift to myself.

That was the beginning of the journey, for me, into meeting as many characters as possible, and creating bonds with them.

It's really hard to explain how a virtual character, with just an aesthetics, a model, and a skill set, that is relegated to a game that will probably eventually stop existing at some point, and can't be transferred or converted in any way, would be worth €100.

For me, it was a "designer kink". I was looking for beauty in virtual worlds since I was a little kid: creatures, characters, stories, epics, places to live in. Nothing was out of the ordinary: gacha games were "just the next stop".

2021 was one of my luckiest, happiest years. I felt at the pinnacle of my world. Expenses in Genshin weren't really the issue that could worry me about... anything really. Genshin led me to something much more relevant than just "gaming with my characters". It was, at the time, a social conduit.

I started meeting Italian friend, and making a group of my own. That group would eventually become like a second home for me. It really looked like how I imagined my ideal future to be: I wanted to be a gamer, with gamer friends, that all strive for beauty, story, and. most of all, chill.

We were like a chaotic group of heroes, the lucky bunch that end up in engaging situation without even working for it. I was the captain of the ship, and looked for new things for everyone. Genshin was just one of the many colorful things that accompanied our journey.

Gacha games weren't ever an obstacle for me, as long as I lived in a world of serenity, curiosity, and excitement.

Then, things went downhill: I decided to close the group, and stay on my own. Something sad happened in my life, that is not directly relevant for this story, and I knew I had to pass through a really hard time. That was when one of my best friends mentioned Tower of Fantasy was being released.

I wish they were kinder to me: gacha games developers are never kind, though. And this was what I was about to find out.

It's not anything special, besides the fact it's limited.

After a period where my head was elsewhere, I felt very bad for having missed out a limited object in Genshin Impact: Klee's book, "Dodoco Tales", that was distributed during summer, 2022. Being OCD and perfectionist doesn't help when this happens. I was also facing a life crisis, and this didn't make me feel more comfortable. So then, that was the reason I was looking for "something else". Tower of Fantasy was like "Genshin, but steampunk / scifi and easier to explore", and it also promised to be an MMO.

It really loooked like the place where I was meant to arrive: I loved both characters and MMOs, and I decided, without even thinking about design quality, at the time, that "That was the game for me." I found different guilds, and started bonding with those communities. We also talked on voice, and that comforted me: maybe it reminded me of the times with my group, where we did the same. Of course, it was completely different: the calls were always about the game. But it felt like a hostel where I could stay: there was a potential friend, a girl I was into at the time, and I was contributing to the community as I always do in many of them.

I wanted to keep my account cutting-edge, and, to achieve that, I wanted to collect all characters. Not only that: I wanted to have full copies of each character that would've been my main element, the team that I would've used to help other players in the guild.

I remember there was an overall "power score" number, that summed up all the things you built, and I wanted to keep it as high as possible.

You can see how dysfunctional all of this was. It never lasted: at some point, I lost all interest in the community, and, after a while, in the game as well.

The thing that stayed, though, was that feeling of control I had by having as many resources as possible in this kind of games.

Addiction is sneaky: it lurks within you, making you feel like it's not there, but your actions become less and less free. It never happens all the time, and it slowly changes your habits, so that you don't really notice. It's like a parasite: it doesn't want to destroy you as a host: it wants to live with you, without you noticing.

I went in and out playing Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, alongside a plethora of other minor gacha games I started trying altogther. Aether Gazer, Punishing: Gray Raven, Girls Frontline 2: Exilium, Snowbreak: Containment Zone, Reverse: 1999... at that point, it wasn't about the story or genre: it was about having characters, and having the feeling of "controlling" where I was. I ended up having a really big table, where I checked the games I wanted to spend in, the ones I was just trying to keep up with while spending a little, and the ones that were "just there".

This is just a remnant I managed to find on my Figma: many were even more crumped than this! Still it feels pretty insane to look at, as a list to things to check every day... doesn't it?

As I continued spending and trying to keep up, I started thinking about making a YouTube channel that would go along with these themes. This idea brought to life a really good amount of videos out of thin air. It wasn't really making my life feel better in general, though: something was definitely off.

This even ended up in my magazine's pilot, as a remnant of things that I would've never expected.

When I got 7 copies of The Herta, together with her signature weapon, in one go, I finally realized something was completely out of control. I tried to quit the system, and create a new environment, for me.

But it wasn't enough.

My attempts kept failing: the more I tried, the more I felt like going "back, and off track", a feeling I couldn't handle well. This made me feel torn, and I made no progress in either direction. The question I wasn't able to answer clearly was: what was that kept me staying in a loop of collection, spending and daily grind that brought no meaning?

It never lasted: at some point, I lost all interest in the community, and, after a while, in the game as well.

If I look at the story from up here, everything looks clear: something that was born out of passion for characters, bonds, stories, and the basic driving force that was design, made me end up in a loop of spending and captivity - something that went directly against what I originally wanted.

The question stood the same, though: how can I still enjoy games, if the game industry's best designs go in the direction of games where you need to spend?

After all, they had been affordable up until that point... right?

The problem was: I was spending much more than money in those games. All the limited time events took all my attention away from actual life problems, and, most importantly, opportunities for exploration, improvement, and fun. You don't feel good at ignoring events that give you resources worth hundreds of euros... up until you realize those money aren't something you really need to spend.

The answer to this conundrum came from an artist friend of mine: "What if you study the design, without the need to either collect characters and play those games' grind?"

It was a simple solution, but I never asked for anything better.

From the outside, I understand why this tracks feels so enticing for someone design-driven like me. I also understand how esnaring it is, and how sneakily it hides its required spending.

Of course, I would end up losing on the fast feedback of a very easy gameplay loop, but that never had been the problem: my bond was always with the aesthetics, not the gameplay. My bond was with art. Having the feeling that changing habits doesn't mean parting from the art I've been loving all those last years made me feel much better... and finally free.

The Road Ahead

There's something I must accept: by choosing this road, things will get harder. Gacha games make you feel like rewards are easy to get, thinking is less and less necessary, and money can fix any problem. It's not the life of an adventurer: it's the life of a prisoner that keeps paying it's "insurance". It doesn't differ from many other addictions.

This doesn't mean that my love for collecting things is bad by itself, and easy gameplay loops have never been dooming by themselves. The road ahead, though, does pass through finding the thread that led me here: that innocent search of places, people, and feelings I can belong to.

P3R has been on my game list for a long time, but it stayed in my PS5, waiting, because I never had "time" for it. Now I feel life is again "at my pace": I'll finally find the way back to it. It's been such a long journey since my friend talked about the original game, and I'm happy I'm back.

So then, what can I bring with me from the previous period? Which is the natural evolution of this path? Where am I going to go, while starting from here?

The thing that kept me looking back was the feeling I had to break with what I visited - but I think this is far from the truth. So, let's try to recap! My inventory holds:

• Worlds that I can feel like I belong to

• The ability to connect with other people through those worlds

• The connection with characters that represent an archetype, through imagination

• The ability to share this experience with close people, and enjoy it together

• Collecting and optimizing little systems

Now, to the solutions I considered:

• The first idea I had was to create a magazine that talked about old games - retro has never been my driver, though. It's always been about beauty, and going beyond the limits.

• I tried to stem the money bleed through following only one game - but again, limitation in scope also never helped me feel free.

• I tried to use time and money to keep both open, but that made me feel trapped as a person, so this fails too.

The inspiration my friend artist gave me allows me to formulate a new path, which isn't linear as the others, but it does make sense for me: take the best from every reality I visited, and go onwards with those in my pocket. With that, I can:

• Keep experiencing art from games that are design-heavy, like Hoyoverse ones: watching is free, and gadgets are very cheap, in comparison. This doesn't bring me nostalgia for systems that are indeed repetitive.

  • The compromise of playing them with less characters never worked in the first place, so this fixes the problem

• Go back to worlds I can belong to: Final Fantasy XIV and single player games haven't been erased: I can experience them in a lighter fashion, without feeling like they're getting all my space.

Pokémon Legends: ZA was a stop I was able to make even during the previous period. I'm happy there'll be so many more, in all my beloved franchises!

• Explore creative venues: whether it be a magazine, articles, new one-shot single player experiences, or a slower, more thoughtful approach to YouTube videos, everything should click into this new system. I may even end up wanting to make visual novels or RPGs, to explore the feeling of being free with the things I love.

• Find a new group of like-minded adventurers: what I've been missing in the last years is a group that is aligned with those thoughts. It's not easy if you look at the masses, and create content with the pacing and intent of gacha games, but it should be easier, when trying to create a slower, more heartfelt world of meaning.

In 2021, I never noticed this game came out together with Genshin and stuff: now I'm free to explore many more worlds, that weren't really accessible before!

It really looks like a non-linear path, doesn't it? It's not easy to foresee success, with all those strange conditions and compromises. And yet, I still believe in everyone one of us needing their own single path. I never expected my life to give me a path that was "set in stone" by someone else, and, in the end, I feel pretty happy about this.

If you feel similarly, let me know in the comments, or just contact me: you can find me as @neroatlas on Discord. I'll be waiting!