Another thing I wonder about with Gacha Games is how the various communities with them interact with each other, in terms of them being competition and such. Is there infighting between fans of different games because of how competitive the games are with trying to get market share? And has that intensified when Chinese Gachas started getting popular
There was not that much "rivalry" between different gacha game fandoms pre Genshin. Ie Granblue, Fate/Grand Order, Azur Lane, etc. It's really this new wave of high production value 2020s Chinese gacha games that have
some rivalry between them, namely Genshin and Wuthering Waves. Wuthering Waves is the only real individual gacha game fandom that rubs up against others, as WuWa was the first non-Mihoyo Genshin-like released as an alternative, and a lot of people jumped ship to that (for people who preferred more detailed designs or the tacticool aesthetic, slightly older looking characters, enhanced combat, etc). So it is something of a meme that there are WuWa fans who keep insisting that their game is better than all of these other games.
Part of the thing is that because Genshin was the first mover in this market and captured most of the audience, every game releasing after Genshin has to try to step up to compete to draw people away with it. Genshin launched with 90 pulls to guarantee a 5 star character, and 50/50 chance on banners of getting the one you want (hard pity being 180 pulls to get the thing you wanted). So when WuWa launched, they had it require 80 pulls (160 max), and no 50/50 on the weapon banner. WuWa also gave you more pull currency than Genshin did, and during its first few years threw more freebies at people. So you had people citing that to say "see? WuWa is better. Genshin could never be as generous!", though ofcourse once the audience stopped growing Kuro began winding down the generosity to squeeze more money out of the customers they did have.
Within the broader gacha community, there is something called monthly mobile revenue PvP because a website called SensorTower estimates monthly mobile revenue through mobile appstores for most gacha games. It does not track everything, namely #1. Granblue Fantasy which is humongous in Japan but is played via chrome browser and you pay through a mobage web page rather than using a mobile app store. And #2 SensorTower can't track console and PC revenue, which has become important for gachas releasing from Genshin onwards. Especially for WuWa and ZZZ which have more buttons, are faster paced and not great to play on a small little screen.
When the monthly SensorTower estimates/rankings come out, there is some discussion about which games are stable, which ones are dying and thus you shouldn't invest in them, etc. Again, SensorTower can't track all revenue. If you go only by the SensorTower rankings, then ZZZ looks pretty bad compared to Genshin making $10 million USD per month on mobile while Genshin makes $40 million USD per month on mobile during a dry patch. But if you factor in PC and consoles, then ZZZ is probably making $30+ million per month. Most game devs could only imagine making $30 or even $10 million USD per month. Etc. It's only the games that are way, waaaay down the list that are probably in danger of being put into managed decline and eventually EOSed, but most people don't talk about those.
they think of it as a nationalism issue too?
I have been mainly talking about the Western gacha game fandom. Generally, actual mainland Chinese gacha game fans stick to their side of the internet on Weibo (Chinese twitter), Billibilli (Chinese youtube), and NGA (biggest Chinese game forum) and don't really come over to participate on forums or reddits here outside of some organized brigading.
- In China, a man broke into Mihoyo's offices armed with a knife intending to assassinate Mihoyo founders Cai Haoyu and Liu Wei because Mihoyo previewed a Japanese bunnygirl skin for Honkai Impact 3rd (Mihoyo's biggest game prior to Genshin's release).
- The Chinese female VA of Rover in Wuthering Waves, Gui Niang, got doxxed and framed by Chinese WuWa fans and accused of bullying someone online, and was then fired by KuroGames. The truth then came out that the messages had been carefully edited to make her look bad, but she never got her role back.
- South Korean fans of Genshin Impact found out that Furina's character designer was also South Korean, and they found her old social media posts connecting her to a feminist movement, and then hired protest trucks and a blimp to go around Seoul.
- South Korea fans of Nikke froze a frame of a trailer that they interpreted as the character making the okay sign with their fingers (which in Korea is associated with a girl wrapping her fingers around a penis as a form of mockery that its small), and hired protest trucks.
- The Chinese fandom of Girls Frontline hired protest trucks when they discovered background lore that one of the girl characters had talked to another man besides the player character.
Bear in mind that economically, the situation for Chinese and South Korean men is even worse than the West. China also suffered from the one child rule until recently, and it was common for parents to kill their baby if it turned out to be a girl and try again and hope for a boy. So there is a huge imbalanced ratio between Chinese men and women, and a lot of young Chinese men today will never get a Chinese wife. And there is a fierce gender war in South Korea. So you're going to have more young energetic guys there who snap and go a little crazy.
Also, have Western fans also tried to antagonize Gacha Game fanbases too?
Western Anime/JRPG/gacha game fans are largely in a different sphere from mainstream Western stuff and don't really think about or interact with each other. There is not that much crossover. Within recent memory, probably the most amount of antagonism from Eastern media fans towards Western fandoms was the FF14 vs WoW stuff from several years back circa 2020 through 2022, when new FF14 fans were being very vocal about how better and perfect their game was, before the honeymoon phase wore off and they were sobered by the issues with the game that had alienated veterans.
with Cygames's policy against Umamusume porn art, and brutal violence and political messaging with them is also forbidden, do they actually file DMCAs on those types of art to get them off the internet?
Yes, but Cygames doesn't do it via American DMCAs. Most Umamusume content is produced by Japanese artists, with the premier Japanese art hosting platform being Pixiv. The Japanese artist's version of Patreon is Fanbox, which is also owned by Pixiv. Cygames just asks Pixiv/Fanbox to delete the stuff that they don't like. Western image boards like Danbooru probably have lewd Umamusume stuff but I'd doubt Cygames would care enough to try to DMCA that.
Do those Gacha fans disregard the older Gachas like THE iDOLM@STER series
I don't think the Idolmaster had an official English version. It's not really talked about by Western gacha fans. Granblue Fantasy had a similar issue where it it was humongous in Japan, but while it did have an inbuilt English translation, it just was not promoted in the West until recently. Outside of the few people like me who were playing the gacha, most other people discovered the franchise via the ArcSystem Works fighting game spinoffs, and now Cygames' new Relink action game.
In general, the pre-Genshin gachas that are still talked about in the West are FGO, Azur Lane, and Arknights.
And are those older Idol-based Gachas and their franchises as a whole also been in decline?
As with any franchise after its explosive growth period during the first few years, yes. It's also generally harder to convince people to spend their time joining an older pre-Genshin gacha that won't have as high production values, will have years of systems and terminology piled on that creates more friction, etc.
