It was really a matter of time, though, lbr. I am a shipper at heart

[yvannairie]

Oh, also, despite making gentle fun of Cookie Runners for having ships I've also now developed one in Pomegranate/Millenial Tree solely on the basis that the context of their relationship is kinda fucked up and I'm into that.

Comments

[rhodanum]

"their relationship is kinda fucked up and I'm into that" is absolutely excellent basis for shipping and I should know, judging by my list. 😂

I'm honestly surprised that a mobile game based around cookies managed to have lore and characters interesting enough to spark intense shipping (I knew something was up as soon as I saw artists drawing human-sonas for the cookies) but that's probably how they managed to grow in popularity and attract so many players. That and probably fun and well-tuned mechanics (wouldn't know, it's very difficult for me to play games on a small screen).

[yvannairie]

Yeah, like... Gacha games traffic on the likeability of their characters (which is why IP gachas like TFEW and SW: Battlefield do so well, I am also admittedly deep in grind he'll b/c Give Me My Wheeljack You Piece Of Shit Gacha), which in Cookie Run comes mostly from giving them all distinctive game play gimmick. If you like the way a cookie plays, you'll gain affinity for them, which unlocks their relationship page, which introduces you to new cookies, which feeds you more lore as you read up on their stories.

I feel like at least a part of CR's like ability is attributable to the gameplay genuinely getting pretty challenging as it goes on, so there's an actual opportunity to form a ludic bond with the characters. My favourite ones are the ones I like playing, and I can kinda just enjoy them in a vacuum b/c of that, and then I form ships around the ones I really don't enjoy for their ludic content alone to make them more interesting :D

[rhodanum]

Aaaah, all of this rings very true of my experience with SW: Galaxy of Heroes, the only mobile game I really tried to get into (had to quit due to aforementioned vision problems and horrible grind). It came in strong precisely due to my love of SW characters and my desire to have a collection of my all-time-favorites. I'd imagined that it's a bit riskier / a bit more difficult to build this bond for the makers of gacha games without a very strong and well-known IP behind them, but Cookie Run certainly prove my assumption wrong, from what I can see.

[yvannairie]

There's definite a lot of gacha games that rely Solely On The Pretty (husband/wife collection games like Love Live and Touken Ranbu come to mind) but those also heavily rely on merchandising (and the porn professional fandom generates, lbr). This is also technically the second Cookie Run game, so I'm not actually sure of the extent of the Korean fandom :|c