this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Many game companies specifically target vulnerable people, who end up spending their entire pay check every month, and are called Whales.
I'm on a game, Whiteout Survival, you've probably never heard of it. I haven't spent a penny, but I was curious about how much one obscure "upgrade" cost. Mind you, there are hundreds of purchases in the game.
It was $100 US, and it said 29,000 had been sold... in the last WEEK!
2.9 million dollars a week for NOTHING. And that's just that one obscure item, far from their biggest seller.
And that's just in one game you've never heard of.
You're a non-monetizer, just like 95% of the players. The game will make you some form of offer in order to convert you into a paying minnow, dolphin or whale. Whales are rare, less than a percent of the players, but they generate a significant amount of the revenue.
Companies compare their conversion rate with each other and have specific goals to meet. 5% for example is good. If your company has say 3%, you'll want to focus on improving that. Each product will have a specific goal here, and otherwise is shut down because there's a customer acquisition cost. Games easily cost more to market than to develop.
A lot of effort is spent on the first offer. This is where you'll see a screen that makes an amazing offer you'll seriously consider. It'll have something that is high value but incredibly cheap and so temporary. This isn't to earn money, it's simply to convert you. Because after you've spent your first dollar you're likely to keep spending.
Yeah it's been showing me that banner every time I start the game since the very beginning.
And I nope it every time.
Yeah not the best design
I knew multiple people who spent several ten thousands USD in State of Survival. A fucking mobile game.
A buddy of mine spent several thousand on Marvel Heroes. He wouldnβt go out to lunch with us, and finally I asked him what was going on. He eventually told me, we had a βdudeβ¦we are adults and canβt be doing that shit. Imagine the hookers and drugs you could have bought!β
He quit, but still tells me he thinks about it and is immediately filled with regret.
One time I nearly cut a job due to being asked to make something gambling related, but when I worked on an addictive mobile game I simply didn't realize what I was doing. Honestly, I couldn't have known unless I had asked about their monetization strategy before they brought new people on to implement it. And at that point the game was as good as done. I remember walking through Barcelona and seeing all these kids on their phones in the park and not playing or having fun, it felt surreal. I bawled my eyes out and didn't return to the job. You know I genuinely just wanted to give people some fun in this world.
The issue with mobile games is that nobody is prepared to pay even 5 euros for a game. So for mobile game developers it is business as usual to do it this way.
Itβs crazy to me how we went from buying a complete game for $50, and now we get an enshitified, half completed mobile game for free but people spend hundreds of dollars playing it.
And itβs nowhere near as good.
It's highly likely they fudge those numbers or outright lie.
Reason for saying that?
BTW: not the company reporting those numbers. Google Play's numbers.
Because every single thing about those games is a psychological ploy to get people to spend as much money as physically possible. They run studies on what tweaks get people to spend more or less and I guarantee the numbers they show in the store have been studied.
Also, who's going to call them out on that? What court wouldn't throw that out immediately? And even if you did win, the company wouldn't even notice. You probably signed away the right to be part of a class action lawsuit in the Terms of Service anyway.
I was suckered into the shark cards on GTA Online, I worked terrible hours and it was my escape.
I bought shark cards for thousands of SEK ocer a year or so, not much in compared to normal whales, but I did feel the addiction drawing me in harder.
Then one day I had just had enough, and uninstalled the game, else I knew I would continue.
I am glad though, the money I spent was not wasted, it taught me a valuable lesson about what to look out for, and how to recognize sinkholes like this.
It's good that you managed to wake up and take care of yourself. Players with that pattern are called dolphins.
Thank you, I do my best, I had no idea obout the dolphin name, fun!
There's worse things to be called I suppose
Theyβve just learnt it all from Vegas.
They hire behavior specialists.
They have ARPU targets (Average Revenue Per User) and UAC targets (User Acquisition Costs). Whales contribute significantly to the game's bottom line. Non-paying customers are vital, because player population is a game quality, and Whales need a population to notice how awesome they are.
But game companies don't tend to separate Whales from other players (at least not the ones I've worked for), they tend to care about ARPU, which is more stable, and a much easier target to shoot for. And they want to keep UAC down, which lowers the required ARPU for a successful game.
Here's an industry talk about how to prey on whales
https://youtu.be/xNjI03CGkb4?si=1sjNUt8VX4Z5wky2
That's a great link. There's just so many people exactly like him.