Genuine question out of curiosity - what do you get out spending that much on a game? I’ve heard some whales spending 10-20k a week and that’s probably not even the highest. Do you get genuine enjoyment out of it or do you ever feel fleeced at all?
If you're a bored prince with billions of liquid cash and even more billions of yielding assets, do you really care about 10-20k of weekly outlays?
Or reduce the scale, if you have 100k annual salary, do you miss that $3 a day you spend on coffee or $5 a week you spend on mobile gaming? ... or $15.99 a month you spend on Netflix?
Everyone has a thing and a threshold they are comfortable spending on. Some people want 4 wheels that will take them from A to B and other people are willing to spend $500 a month to get a Tesla.
We focus on digital goods because they have a perceived cost of zero to manufacture and are transient (one day the game will no longer work) but fail to spot that the value we heap on many material goods are social and most of us do not buy goods for life (hence why r/BuyItForLife is a subculture rather than conventional wisdom)
They don't consider the opportunity cost or feel the pain of lost potential, but get a rush of "feeling rich" whenever they spend $50 on a T-shirt they'll wear once.
It's cross-cultural, natural psychology, and I doubt it'll go anywhere.
I actually live a fairly frugal life, and I think acknowledging this is important: "do I really want or need this or am I just making myself feel better for a few hours?"
Just like some people dropping 100k in Vegas in a weekend are paying for the experience and VIP treatment and others just need one more bet to replenish Johnnys college fund.
I could see <18s getting into trouble but are there adults legit bankrupting themselves from paid-for cosmetics?
How common is the pattern for paid-for lootbox cosmetics (as compared to buy-it-now) cosmetics? Wouldn't say I'm particularly deep in either the RL/Fortnite ecosystem..!
But Pay-To-Win games like Clash of Clans? I don't have any research, but if I was a gambling man, I'd bet at least a few thousand.
So speaking from experience: there's probably a finite sum you can spend on Clash Royale. I found the beginning highly addictive and I did spend hundreds when I probably shouldn't have, but the acceleration/frustration and advantage you can buy is very quickly eroded by skill. Once you have a maxed deck, it's pretty hard to buy victories and any new card might buy you some wins but will quickly get nerfed, and players better than you will still beat you (and matchmaking will converge you onto that 49% win rate).
I doubt I'm a typical player but at this stage I've probably extracted more value (by time) from clash than they've extracted from me - even if I spent 2k (a very very generous estimate), amortised over 5-6 years of play, that's not a lot of money (30 a month which is a AAA game every other month, less than a coffee a day) and has definitely given me more than that in enjoyment. And at this point my expenditure has completely plateaued.
Can I see people staying in that honeymoon phase moving from game to game? Yes maybe - I suppose by law of large numbers it's more likely than not Clash Royale peaked at like 100M players so 1k having issues is believable.
I'm all for regulation in this space (it's pretty crazy that it's not that regulated) but without data, my own personal experience feels like this is not nearly as dangerous as gambling or alcohol/drugs. The game milks you of money but doesn't create those boom-bust cycles that the traditional vices do
Getting addicted to an F2P game and losing your time, while sad, is not within the scope of this discussion
I mean, sometimes they are kids (or the developmentally challenged)[1] but adults [2] too. There are more sad stories. One I recall was a developer who invited their superwhales to a launch of the new beta expansion in person. (All expenses paid) They sent one a plane ticket, but the the player never showed because they couldn't afford to get to the airport. I wish I could find that story online.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48925623
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/01/why-its-s...
> losing your time, while sad, is not within the scope of this discussion
I very clearly and explicitly said "money they didn't have" in my first post and was talking about financial costs.
fair - I missed that context when reading the immediate response replying to.
Thanks for sharing your anecdata - the industry is definitely in need of regulation something I've long believed. The ubiquity and ease of access is probably the most dangerous bit. It's astounding that mobile games were able to copy/hire all the knowledge acquired in building slot machines to create an industry that doesn't even have to pay out..!
Me and the kid got into Roblox entirely for free. Beyond all the games she enjoys even without any paid features, we got a dead-simple game creation platform with world-class MMO built in. I thought that was nice enough to warrant buying a few gift cards for her and the peers.
We got into GI for free as well. I was apprehensive at first because I heard from friends that GI is an evil gacha game preying on addict personalities. But once we started it we enjoyed the artwork and the game so much through the hours of main quest lines and beautiful content that I thought it was as good or better than Zelda BOTW so why not kick back at least the BOTW purchase price?
For P2W it's a treat after I've been grinding freemium for a while. It's like opening a beer on Friday after work. I don't spend 10-20k a week but I do occasionally spend that amount on one game during its whole lifetime. However, that also means I've gotten thousands of hours of enjoyment out of it.
But yes, while I'm only a 1000x (1000x compared to someone who just pays $20 upfront) there are certainly people who are 1000000x and much bigger whales than me. I can't speak for them.