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A ‘whale’ is a player who spends a vast amount of money in an online game.
whales make up roughly 0.2% of the player base, and yet they spend almost 51% of the money.
Game Devs WANT whales, but they don’t want to harm the rest of the community, so how do they balance this?
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon and Twitch for keeping the channel going!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4 – lets go whaling
pareto principle : https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/80-20-rule.asp
what it means to be a whale: https://venturebeat.com/2013/03/14/whales-and-why-social-gamers-are-just-gamers/
interview with a whale: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-20-interview-with-the-whale
wired: https://www.wired.com/2012/11/meet-the-whales/
how to find a whale: https://www.gameofwhales.com/blog/how-train-slow-whale-your-mobile-game
is bdo pay to win? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ejkRT3EFdM
inside the mind of a whale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFRwYUvTUTU
eve plex: https://secure.eveonline.com/plex
runes of magic items: https://runesofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Item_Shop
zen market: https://neverwinter.fandom.com/wiki/Zen_Market
GI crystals: https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis_Crystal
what are whales: https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/mobile-games-whales#:~:text=A%20mobile%20gaming%20whale%20is,Tons%20of%20them.
Source
3:30 HUZZAH I CAUGHT YOU! You do watch me
I played a game that started out good, but gradually raised costs for new content, and lowered rewards. The lowered rewards meant that if someone started fresh, it would take them about twice as long just to reach the point I got to (at the time I quit — it's probably even worse now). They removed the ability to legitimately grind for stuff, or to strategize how to lower costs. This was to make SURE there was no possible way to reach endgame without spending thousands of dollars. I made it to what was endgame when I started (free to play), but the new content was impossible to keep up even if you were to theoretically grind 24/7. A lot of these games do a sort of soft bait and switch like that, where they build up a free playerbase early on, then slowly boil the frog by cutting off ways to earn things legit in game, except to pay the company large amounts of money.
what is the game that you play in the beginning?
laughs in at least 1k on warframe
Whale focused economies are cancer. Too many people harmed by their addiction. It's also ruining game design.
And here I thought me spending at most $200 or so dollars a month on cosmetics from various games was bad…
whaling focusing and predatory game mechanics should be made illegal . i hate how man games just get ruined by it .
Sorry, what's the point of this video. The first few minutes has a very strong…demonizing whales vibe. Is that what we're going for here?
I'll admit I'm a "small" whale. most games I end up playing I'll drop around 300/mo for months on end. While by no means is it 1000/mo+ it is still significant.
Back when I played GW2 daily, I spent 500-800/mo just to craft legendries. Thankfully I settled on getting the title Fractal God as my goal, cause I cannot just spend real money to progress. In my defense though I can afford to spend what I do while still paying my bills, and saving money for the future.
I sat through all these talks and I still feel dirty. It was mandatory. I can tell you that casinos where a big example in a majority of these
This is awesome. Not a lot of people understand this stuff. I would certainly rather buy a full priced game and get access to everything, but the average consumer can't ignore the word "free" even if they spend wayyy more after they start playing
Try RagnarokM EL
Used to be a whale (still whaling when it come to card collection) then i turn to cheater/hacker since i was going back to school. Lost most of my accounts but its fine, now i stand firmly against whaling games (even if I love the lore like FGO).
Insane. And here I am playing WoW without paying real money since summer 2015. :L
Patreon members are just YouTube whales
The direction it goes is kinda sad tho.
First people Whale. After that Games complain about P2W and the MMO industrie is mostly removing it. However now they try it with illegal gamble via Lootboxes which isnt seen as gamble by the law for some reason even tho it is in fact gamble. Its not P2W however Lootboxes come with the same issues as gamble because it is the fucking same.
Why cant people just create nice games anymore which people are willingly paying for because it is just that…..a good game. Simple as that really.
I think its complex and not at the same time. For example, I think the balance of f2p is incredibly difficult to balance but when you remove power-up items that whales can buy it becomes that much easier to balance. What I love is when games don't have any sort of boosters or loot boxes to buy but instead focus on cosmetics. I think whales can still spend a ton of money to get good-looking and rare cosmetic items as a way to show off how cool they are rather than just how powerful they are.
Sadly, the same idea of exploitation and manipulation is why life itself is becoming such a chore to endure. Giant companies work in concert with power agents such as politicians and police in order to extract as much resources as possible upon the masses of people under their combined volume of influence. Human beings, much like players, are kept in a perpetual state of misery so that they'll be motivated by natural factors to alter their miserable conditions and that provides opportunities for resource extraction. If people were happy and peaceful, no one would work Amazon's warehouses, or the grease dungeons of fast food, or the deadly decks of an oil extraction rig, or maybe even jumping out of perfectly good airplanes while bullets fly in your face.
What game is he playing at start
mmo whales shuff money up devs assholes which might keep games going for longer but it also destroy´s games because that makes devs only care about how to gain more money from whales like cash shops,sharkcards and all that shit so instead of the devs fixing a game they just add more content in the game that makes whales and content creators spend more and more money to instantly get shit just look at grand theft auto LMFAO or at all the pay2win mmo´s
Knew a whale. He simply did it because he could afford it. And it allowed him to remain competitive with us in the game, who played a lot more than he did. Because he preferred to watch anime while we grinded stuff. Honestly, we didn't mind all that much, because having him allowed us to see the cool stuff that was paywalled.
Kind of odd that you keep insisting that whales only are whales because they want to crush nonwhales. I have whalish tendencies and it’s always because the game offers limited edition collectible pixels, some of which have a story attached. It’s not even because I want the other players to see my collection; I just want it for the same reason anyone wants collectible figurines.
The addictive part is that I can’t admire my collection without logging into the game and being reminded of all the things I still have to collect and how I need to hurry and pay twenty to fifty dollars RIGHT NOW or I may miss my chance forever because secondhand acquisitions aren’t a thing in the virtual world. The only option is not to play the game… but that means I never get to enjoy the things I already have collected.
Maybe my experience means nothing because my spending was more on the level of hundreds per week instead of thousands per day but I still wasn’t really in a place to afford that and I have very little to show for it. It’s a toxic trap and I know it’s on me as much as on the game design but I still hate it and don’t wish it on anyone.
I get why it's a terrible business decision to not do this. It's why I think businesses are shit. This doesn't make whaling pracitices look better, it just makes capitalism look worse.
One whale is worth an ∞ amount of freebie-players.
DarksydeDave notorious wrestling pixle whaler
While whales are extremely obnoxious in game… I do admit it’s their poor spending habits that enable me to play the game for free.
for me its simple.
if a game has a shop where you can buy player power for real money…
i skip it.
It would have been hilarious if this video was sponsored by Raid: Whaling Legends.
When it comes to pc MMO games, it's been my experience that Whales are also mediocre to middling at best at said game they're a Whale for. They're complete shit without being able to pay for what they have.
Problem only comes when devs especialy from asian markets judge other markets based on their own. Especially as you said when they apply the 20% principle again and again until to be a whale you have to spend 30k on a game or more and be able to oneshot all. If you dont and you spend just a measly 10k dollar you are dolphin and not even a whale anymore. Guess what happens then? free players leave, people who spend 10k gets oneshoted and recall their 10k and game is empty with 2 whales left standing. conclusion epic fail.
I wonder if MWO's Golden Khan mechs were an interesting compromise, or just useless. Sure you get a nice shiny stompy robot to demonstrate your wealth, on the other hand you kinda paint a target on your head and Clan Tech only does so much in a game with build rules for balance.
spending 160k in BDO LUL
And this is why the best MMO ever, is FFXIV. A monthly subscription and glam cash shop. You can buy power, but it brings you just before the important power creep. Its a game that respect its player base. Anything else is just a cash grabs and should never be played. And this is also why i am not playing nor respecting free to play games. They are not respecting you. Its the epitome of capitalism. No respect for anything else then money. No soul. No fun. FFXIV is full of soul akd fun! And the best community around. And i am pretty sure its making more mo ey then these stupid cash grabs.
Is it not possible to draw in whales with cosmetics instead of just selling power?
Some games needs ability and even a whale can be kicked in the ass by a f2p player, I love those kinda games 🙂
The 80/20 percent rule also applies to the employees at my company. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
Yeah I once played a mobile game about raising dinosaur armies I dropped between 200-300 a week for about 3 months on gems before I got bored. RuneScape I've spent even more in over the years. As I see it some people spend thousands of dollars on hobbies like fishing might as well buy what I want in games. Most of that money has moved from gaming to investing but I'll still drop a couple hundred dollars sometimes. When you play one game for most of your enjoyment outside work throwing money at it is not the hard of a thing to do. When your not wasting money on eating out or going anywhere nothing really else to do with it
As a games designer i've come across the whale subject whilst publishing games and I personally can't bring myself to include such systems into my games. Yes, I lose out on money and I may not come across a large player base, but at the same time I can rest easy knowing I'm not trying to scam my players to give me their money. The only time I'd really ask for money is on a kickstarter, or do some creative advertising I don't know, but I can never set bait for whales.
I'm making an MMO currently and your series has been a real eye opener to a lot of stuff I may be missing out on, so thank you!
If the world is still alive in the near future I'll send a copy your way.
When it comes down to it, games are meant to make you happy and fulfill an internal need that every person has within them. This need could be gaining gear to look cool, it could be them becoming the strongest just to kill everyone in one hit, or it could be them wanting to compete with their friends and family. Maybe it could also be the need to feel comfort and escapism from reality and if it costs you $1,000+ to get it, that's way cheaper to a lot of people and less time-consuming than trying to find a replacement in reality. Throughout my teens and up to my early adulthood life, I spent around $11,000 on games trying to find the best experience possible and it wasn't until Genshin Impact came out did I realize what I was looking for. What I always wanted was a comforting and stress-free experience but also having the choice to get exactly what i want by just spending wisely. The game is mainly focused on getting unique characters, exploring the world around you, and PvE content since there are no PvP leaderboards/players fighting each other for domination. The game is absolutely stunning and it doesn't require you to play 8-16 hours a day to progress like other RPG games that I've played. So far I've only spent $350 on the game and I've played it daily since launch, so when a person finds their perfect game, they will decide if it's worth it or not to invest their time + money into the game. In the end, everyone has their own wants and needs and games are starting to fill in that void more and more with every passing year.
Meanwhile in the real world Archeage is closing servers and TRION went bankrupt, Runes of Magic and Perfect World are jokes we tell in Discord, and all the MMORPGs that had focus in "whales" either failed or are failing.
In fact, the most successful MMORPGs to date, WoW and FFXIV, did not applied the 80-20 rule.
So what the real world is teaching us here? Don't trust everything you hear online.
I'm not a whale but I spend more on average than all my friends do in games. I think it's just that I don't have a ton going on, I tend to play more alone and while I dislike buying straight upgrades or the ability to buy power being in games, I'm a sucker for limited time cosmetics. Neat visual things I have a fear of missing out on get me a lot even though I know it's a mind game companies do. I would even go as far as to say it's morally bankrupt to take advantage of things like this since there are plenty like me who would NOT be wasting the money elsewhere but in little flash moments can overspend for the month on fake items with no tangible value.
He mentioned Runes of Magic several times, are people actually playing that?
Let whales pay for prestigious fancy cosmetics, selling power is and always will be pure poison for a game.
im considered a whale in WoW. ive spent literally 50k THIS YEAR ALONE… I have no kids, house and car is paid off. I work from home as a programmer. I make very good money, we exist!
Bigger than whales are called Leviathans.
I think the relation between whales and other players aren't as simply as someone to whale over. It depends on the game basis.
Capitalism is scary