What is Gacha Life? What is Gacha Club?
From the Google Play Store:
★ Welcome to Gacha Life ★
Are you ready to start a new adventure? Create your own anime styled characters and dress them up in your favorite fashion outfits! Choose from hundreds of dresses, shirts, hairstyles, weapons, and much more! After designing your characters, enter the Studio and create any scene you can imagine! Choose from over a hundred backgrounds to create the perfect story!
GACHA CLUB is the sequel app with a similar, role-playing premise. Just a new location (a club), new backgrounds, and new characters. It’s a recycled version of GACHA LIFE.
(From the Apple App Store) for GACHA CLUB:
★ Welcome to Gacha Club ★
What club will you join? Get the party started and create your own anime styled characters and dress them up in your favorite fashion outfits! Choose from thousands of dresses, shirts, hairstyles, weapons, and much more! After designing your characters, enter the Studio and create any scene you can imagine! Add pets, objects, and choose your favorite background! Customization is 100% free, there are no in-app purchases!
App Category:Â Role Playing
Corporate website: Lunime
APP Stores ratings:Â
- 9+ Gacha Life Apple
- Everyone Gacha Life Android
- 9+ Gacha Club Apple*
- 10+ Gacha Club Android
- This game is also available for PCs.
*Apple just doesn’t get it – Gacha Club requires users to be 10+ when opening the game for the first time. There’s even a mini age-verification, which is great. But Apple’s rating is 9+!
What do parents need to know about Gacha Life and Club?
When you read the app reviews, there are a strong mix of opinions. Some believe the app is a wonderful outlet for creativity and safe from creepers. Others are creeped out by it – there’s Gacha Life-themed porn videos using the characters, which is a good reason to be leery.
This comment from Common Sense Media’s forum includes both sides of the scale in the same comment!
This app is OK for children in my opinion. It’s just the community. The only problems is that the community is toxic, and some of the content made from this game is disgusting.
Some parents also are a little freaked out about the overall anime feel of the game. I’ll admit that anything anime just weirds me out a little, but that’s just me (I know, it’s a “BOOMER” attitude). Others enjoy anime.
One of the game’s most significant risks has nothing to do with playing the game. Trouble starts when kids head to YouTube or Google “Gacha Life videos” and, if there’s no filter, they are inundated with pornographic versions of Gacha video content. It’s really quite disturbing, but not surprising.
Other important terminology (there’s a whole Wiki Fandom for this app/game):
- NPC – non-player character, in the game who the gamer can’t control.
- Stamina – you run out of it after certain activities, can sit still or buy more.
- Idling – the act of sitting still to increase stamina.
The bottom line: Is Gacha Life and Gacha Club good for kids?
TBH (and this is totally showing my Boomer side), the game is just unusual. If you’re going to let a 10+ use the app, I wouldn’t let them use it without me and probably only on the parent phone. Not only to keep an eye on that YouTube video curiosity that I mentioned above, but in order to build digital trust, too.
What if I have more questions? How can I stay up to date?
Two actions you can take!
- Subscribe to our tech trends newsletter, the PYE Download. About every 3 weeks, we’ll share what’s new, what the PYE team is up to, and a message from Chris.
- Ask your questions in our private parent community called The Table! It’s not another Facebook group. No ads, no algorithms, no asterisks. Just honest, critical conversations and deep learning! For parents who want to “go slow” together. Become a member today!
