Making games requires testing them. For microtransaction-fueled gacha games, that means putting your own money on the line to sample the merchandise. That’s apparently what led Street Fighter 2 producer Yoshiki Okamoto to spend over $500,000 of his own money on his own game’s loot boxes.
Monster Strike is one of Japan’s most lucrative gacha games and it’s one Okamoto helped create after leaving Capcom in the early aughts. You shoot monsters into one another to earn points and buy lottery tickets to acquire stronger characters. The mobile hit peaked a few years ago but has brought in over $8 billion in lifetime revenue. It almost singlehandedly saved the social media company Mixi and spawned Nintendo spin-offs and anime adaptations.
All of which is to say it’s made Okamoto, whose old startup had been failing before that, pretty rich. He recently told Fuji TV (via Automaton) that Monster Strike‘s unexpected success led him to go from trying to eat on only two dollars a day to making over $7.81 million a year at his new company, Deluxe Games. Prior to that, Okamoto was known for his work at Capcom and Konami, including the arcade shoot ’em up Gun.Smoke that inspired Red Dead Revolver.
But a surprising amount of that money was sunk back into his games so he could experience them like a player would. Those include newer releases like last year’s Meteor Arena Stars and Outrankers. Okamoto said he does this to understand the feelings of fans who are spending tons of money and to keep the whales satisfied and coming back. Too stingy and they’ll get mad. Too generous and they’ll get bored.
He suggested in a follow-up post on X that this would be impossible if he just used admin privileges to unlock all the rewards in his games automatically. Yes, sounds terrible. Definitely not something players would ever want. Who wants to play if you can’t pay?