All I want for Christmas is more men in gacha games

Anyone who’s played a gacha game in recent years will know two things – one, they’re getting bigger and better all the time, and two, the playable roster is mostly made up of women and girls with a few guys sprinkled in.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you also have feelings about (or towards) male characters in gacha games. That includes the broody, the basic, the beautiful – you name it, all boys are welcome. But… why are there so few? Here, I lay out the issue and highlight the disparity between male and female characters. Unfortunately, I have no real answers as to why there are less, other than – supposedly – audiences for gachas are mostly male players who prefer pulling on women’s banners.

So, what’s the issue? The split between the amount of female and male five-star characters (or equivalent). For today’s case study, we’ll be looking at the recent updates – for Genshin, that’s since Fontaine’s release in 2023, from the beginning of Penacony in Honkai Star Rail, and since release in ZZZ and Wuthering Waves up to the current banners.

For the sake of brevity, and to stop this from being a 10,000-word essay, you can take a look at character rosters of other gacha games like Dislyte, Ash Echoes, and AFK Journey, to see how other companies fare. Hint, there’s a lot more diversity of every kind, including a more even split of male-to-female characters.

As for Hoyoverse (and Kuro Games behind Wuthering Waves), it’s not a pretty sight. Since the release of Genshin’s Fontaine region back in 2023 up to the 5.2 banners, there were eight male characters, with none upcoming – as in, none with drip marketing or official appearances confirming a future release. Compare this to the 15 female characters (including three upcoming) and you can see a clear divide.

Even in the swathe of character reveals ahead of Natlan’s release, we only saw two male characters. We’ve got tiny in-game teasers for Genshin Impact’s Ifa, but that’s still only three dudes for the entire region compared to at least seven gals. Wuthering Waves’ teaser of characters coming to version 2.0 includes one male out of five characters, and Honkai Star Rail has a whopping three out of nine in its own recent character reveal.

Also, what is it with Honkai Star Rail and imaginary-using males? Is it a joke because there are so few males overall that we have to imagine them? Look, I was glad to get one or two, but we have seven now. Seven! I can almost do both sides of the Memory of Chaos with just imaginary, tall, five-star men.

Perhaps 2024’s city-based ARPG Zenless Zone Zero may fare better. Well, at launch, there were four males in the game (only one of which was human, by the way), and in the first four patches, there have been three new men added to the roster. Cool, great, but there have also been eight new women, with two more confirmed female S-ranks on the way, too. More like Menless Zone Zero, am I right?

Despite all this, something rarer than snow in July happened recently – all Hoyoverse banners were five-star men at once. Sunday and Jing Yuan in Star Rail, Zhongli and Neuvillette in Genshin, Lighter in Zenless, and even Xiangli Yao was available in Wuthering Waves, too!

While not the focus of this piece, it’s also interesting to see the split between four- and five-star rarities of male characters. In Honkai Star Rail, the only four-stars that came to the game since 2.0 were males. As for five stars, we got Aventurine, Boothill, Jiaoqiu, and Sunday – but how many female five stars are there, you ask? Ten, with Fugue and Aglaea coming up. Fun fact time! Two of the male four-stars – Gallagher and Misha – are canonically dead or nonexistent, and neither Aventurine, Boothill, or Jiaoqiu got the fancy Myriad Celestia trailers that most female five-stars have. Seems a bit unfair, really.

OK, so maybe there’s a better divide in the Zenless Zone Zero character roster? Oh, you sweet innocent mind. It’s even worse. Since its release in July 2024, there have been back-to-back female S-rank banners. It took 3.5 patches to get the first male. Zenless falls prey to the lack of lower-rarity characters across the board – ZZZ’s Seth is the only A-rank we’ve seen since release and there are currently no others confirmed or leaked. So, a win for the boys I guess, but a loss overall.

I wish I could say that Wuthering Waves in its ‘Genshin-killer’ style had fixed this problem a bit. Alas, no. We got false hope with Jiyan being the debut banner, as there’s only been Xiangli Yao surrounded by six female five-stars and two female four-stars since its release earlier this year. That’s even despite seeing Scar and Geshu-Lin, two male characters featured in the story with tacet marks to show their rarity and presumably playable status. Where are they, Kuro? Why haven’t we got them yet?

It’s also interesting that across these particular gacha games, all the free five-star units we’ve gotten are… men. We got Honkai Star Rail’s Dr. Ratio, Wuthering Waves’ Xiangli Yao, and ZZZ’s Harumasa for free. While this is great for my wallet and they’re all very good damage dealers, why is it we’ve never had a girl for free? Is it because the companies know people are more likely to spend on a pretty lady, or is it because they know that we want more dudes so they give them out as a little present?

It’s not like the market isn’t there. Genshin Impact’s Wanderer holds the crown for the most liked character’s drip marketing tweet over everyone else with a whopping 375k likes, as did Sunday for a brief time before The Herta came out – he was perhaps the most anticipated character in Penacony, and a lot of people were simply outraged that Genshin Impact’s Ororon turned out to be a four-star. Hell, even Wriothesley’s birthday artwork got more likes than the official drip of the pyro archon herself.

The argument tends to be “Oh, Chinese players don’t pull for male characters”. Let me turn your attention to Love and Deepspace. Consistently in the top few entries of Sensor Tower’s revenue charts – here’s September, October, and November for reference – the dating game took the world, and especially the Chinese market by storm. Our favorite shielder Honkai Star Rail’s Aventurine got a set of magazine covers over in China early in the year to celebrate his release. So clearly there is a market that is alive and well, and eager to spend on new boys.

It’s not even just the girlies that want more male character options. While researching for this and just scrolling along in my own time, comments and posts pop up on all social media sites, under adverts, and on Reddit of people lamenting the lack of cool dudes most of the time from all kinds of people. It’s not just from the r/honkaihusbandos sub, either, and not just recently.

Alright, let’s quickly address one of the elephants in the room. This could be a whole piece in itself so let’s keep it brief. I love women. Hell yeah, Honkai Star Rail’s Acheron slicing her way through the entire Memory of Chaos and looking pretty doing it. But when it’s a sea of jiggling body bits and close-ups of behinds – I’m looking at Zenless and its wipeout screens and Wuthering Waves’ quite frankly ridiculous boob physics, it gets a bit old and feels a little weird, to be honest.

Not to be too crass, but dear old Wriothesley made people realize that men can, in fact, have the cake – though Itto is left in the corner with his noodle arms – it hasn’t really translated over to outfits or anything else. Even Lighter, boxer champion supreme in ZZZ, is completely clothed from fingers to toes – though his story artwork shows actual nips! Sorry Cyno, you’re not allowed any. Eagle-eyed fans (hi, it’s me) even notice that Lighter has a wee bit of a thigh jiggle going on.

What’s my point here, exactly? Do I just want jiggling pecs and rotund booties clad in short shorts? Maybe, or do I just want some sort of equality across the board? It’s the second thing. That’s not to say I don’t think Hoyo’s (many) boxer dudes wouldn’t suit a sport-themed shorts outfit, I just wish that everyone got cool full-coverage outfits more often, and maybe give a guy a mesh shirt once in a while. Even it up a bit.

We may not ever get truly accurate numbers about who plays and how they spend, and I don’t expect Hoyo or Kuro to come out and say ‘Yeah, we just make more money off female characters’. That said, the creators of BrownDust 2 did confirm in a livestream that they’re no longer making any male characters. Aether Gazer also cut down on releasing men into the game as playable characters. Hopefully in the future, even if sales slow down, Hoyoverse won’t follow suit. Maybe upcoming games like Ananta (previously Project Mugen) may give us a truly equal character roster – only time will tell.

For now, we just need to keep sending feedback via surveys, spending on those male units when they do release, and taking part in their rerun banners. Please, Hoyoverse, just give us a Genshin Impact Wriothesley rerun already – it’s been over a year since he disappeared.

To see who is on the current Genshin Impact banner, you can check out our guide. Don’t forget to grab the new Wuthering Waves codes and Zenless Zone Zero codes here too so you can save up for the next husbando – whenever that may be.