If you spend too much money on video game live services, you might be a whale, but what does that mean? The game industry, media and gamers commonly blame whales for keeping poor monetization methods alive, but is that really true?
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If you spend too much money on video game live services, you might be a whale, but what does that mean? The game industry, media and gamers commonly blame whales for keeping poor monetization methods alive, but is that really true?
Source
I already said this, but it's great to have you back
'post launch monetization' is a very open term. classic expansion packs can be slotted in there. I don't have a problem with devs putting out additional content after launch. if games want to have some in-game store and sell stuff piecemeal I don't mind that either. I wouldn't spend my money skins or horse armor, but someone else could for all I care.
in the recent year or so the 'is lootboxes gambling?' discussion has hit the political level in some countries around the world. some have concluded that it is, some have concluded that it's not, because it does not give a tangible/tradable payout. to me that misses the core point. to me, the problem is not whether they payout is tradable/has some real world value or not, or is/is not technically gambling, but that the scheme uses, like gambling, a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule. we know this short circuits brains, from mice to people, and create a dopamine fueled feedback loop to create addiction. that is the real problem, and the real irresponsibility, and the real target for regulation, not whether you can win 'real money/real value' or not.
I really wouldn't say that 9$ a month is a whale, is the term dophin not used as often when discussing this topic?
Without having alot of knowledge on the topic I might even say that anyone who spents less than 30 dollars a month is still definitely a dolphin, but I guess that still depends on the game, the games dlc/microtransaction options and is just my oppinion ^^"
Categorizing a "whale" as a person that spends a fixed amount per whatever unit of time is a mistake. It only works for a single game/environment.
A much more flexible qualification would be to say: A "whale" is a person that spends significantly more than the remaining vast majority (like 99% for example) of people in a given group (like players of a specific game). Everything is about context. If most people spend, say, between 0 and 5 dollars a month, and a select few spend 25 to 100 dollars a month on a given game – those spending much more than the rest would be considered whales. And it works for any amount, be it 25 dollars or 2500 dollars – what matters is not the specific amount, but the stark contrast between those who pay the most vs. those who pay the least or not at all. That's how in Las Vegas casinos someone who pays $1M in a weekend can be considered a whale, while at the same time in videogaming world a person spending $25 in a month can still be considered a whale, just as long as that amount clearly separates them from the rest of the people in their group.
0:46
vol.gen.in
1:52 Macau actually generates a lot more revenue than Vegas from its casinos, not that it's extremely important.
This is sort of a moot point. Of course a whale is someone that spends $25 or more for video games. It makes sense proportionally. The bar to entry for the term "whale" for a consumer with a digital purchase with no actual storefront versus a casino that has to pay for land, upkeep, employees, etc. is completely logical. Most people that play freemium games spend nothing. And a costume for a character costs a developer almost nothing to create and can be reproduced and sold an infinite number of times. Yes, anyone that has purchased more than a few microtransactions (that $25 threshhold) is a whale, and if you claim to be against them but have spent that much or more, you are certainly part of the problem. I have purchased one 99 cent microtransaction from an indie dev and even frown on that. Microtransactions will always exist unless totally starved out because of the nature of the business model and how there are plenty of whales, as well as a few, I propose a new term, mega whales. (People who do spend thousands)
I have spent probably somewhere around $250 in Mechwarrior: Online, so I guess im a whale. But I have also spent well over 2000+ hours playing the game, so for me that is just me paying the devs for their work since the game is free to play. I do believe thats the only "micro transactions" I have ever bought.. no I have bought some CS:Go keys for those pesky boxes.
there is nothing "micro" about transactions in video games.
if the game has additional purchesable content that exceeds original product price, it should be rated as adult only. this way we still could have 1 or 2 reasonably priced dlc's but there would be legal restrictions on the marketing of money sink products.
I'm probably the worst kind of player, the one to poor and cheap to pay for anything.
I got carried away by Star Citizen.
But that feeling weard of fast, as I noticed how much they promise and underdeliver.
And when I tried out Elite Dangerous (which has a lot of the promised Star Citizen stuff already implemented) My line was drawn.
I still invested way to much into SC. But with the current development, every dime is too much
I think it mainly depends on why you pay. If you enjoy a game as it is and you pay a little extra (like for a skin), that is perfectly ok. If you don't enjoy a game as it is (e.g because it's too grindy) and you have to pay money to make it fun, then I have a problem with it.
If adding atrocious microtransactions doesn't push away the people who don't interact with them… then there is little reason game companies will ever stop including them as they usually aren't expensive to add and will thus easily be profitable as long as even just a small amount players buy microtransactions… so then they keep pushing it further and further until eventually it push away the people who don't interact with and don't enjoy the microtransactions (and then they might pull it back a bit… for now)
For game companies there is almost no risk and high reward in adding microtransactions… so unfortunately I don't think it is ever going away unless governments start cracking down on them because of lootboxes… I suppose players boycotting games with ANY microtransactions in them could also do it but I don't see that happening (as that obviously would make it much more of a risk to actually add microtransactions to a game)
So, this is an interesting discussion, and I'd like to ask you a question on the matter to elaborate on this;
How do you think people who play games with subscriptions factor into the conversation? You literally are not allowed to play Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft or other certain games without paying for the subscriptions.
In FF14's case, there is also a cash shop on top of their subscription service. I keep my subscription running when I'm actively playing the game, and I have begrudgingly bought items from the cash shop a total of 2 times in my entire 4 year career with the game. There are also expansions that they sell every two years, that are indeed fully featured in such a way that each one has often had more content than the base game. Do you feel that a consistent subscription revenue along with this intermittent purchases would constitute a whale? I feel like i spend on the low end fo rhte game, and even then, I also feel like I've spent a LOT on the game.
I haven't spent a cent on loot boxes or what have you
hHow to combat it. Vote with your wallet that is the only things publisher listen to. tl;dr don't buy post-launch content or even better don't even bloody play the games that offer it.
TIL I might be a whale about Heartsthone. My total spent is about 110 euros. I haven't spent anything on Blizzard since the hongkong incident though.
Happy you’re making more vids!
4:30 Shit, i'm definitely an Azure Lane whale… *sad whale noises*
I am not sure I agree with that. I think the descriptions of whale has changed over the years.
The game industry has evolved, and the most insidious live service games have refined their monetization model over the year.
I have seen the GDC talks, and seen the statistics from the early years of mobile games, where they described 25 USD a month as a whale, and 5 USD a month as a minnow, and so on.
I don't think this holds true anymore. The industry has refined its predatory practices, and I do believe when companies are talking about whales, they are describing people who spend so much on the game, them leaving the game has a significant impact on the game's economy.
We know from surveys and studies (5+ years old at this point though) that only a small percentage of players in F2P games actually spend money. 2-4% of the players. Most F2P gamers are freeloaders. That is an extremely low amount of players who actually end up being customers (This is a problem by itself, since it means companies aren't making games for its audience of 100 000, they just care about the 2000 paying customers, but this is a topic for another time).
I think when you have that few paying customers, you can't use the term whale for, and rely on the people who spend just 25-50 USD a month. You need to catch the real "whales". Those who spend 2k to 5k USD a month.
And these people ridiculously exist.
I considered myself a whale before. In Black Desert online, some may consider me a whale having spent maybe 1200 USD throughout the game's history.
I barely matter compared to those who has spent 160 000 USD on the game. People who sadly exist (One of them gave an interview in a video called "Is BDO P2W? | Interview with one of the biggest Whales of Black Desert). People who can spend 2k a day on a game. These are the people who matter, who needs the title of whale.
Sure, I contribute, but catch 1 of those whales, and you can lose 130 of me.
Black Desert Online is a good example of this immoral practice IMO. The prices in the game are so incredibly high. 20+ USD for a single outfit, who would do that?
The main argument against the game being Pay to Win is that it is so expensive to be pay to win, that you would have to spend 2k a day to actually gain any advantage.
But there are people who will do that. Those people are the ones the company is targeting. Not people like me, who buy an outfit or two every few months.
Microtransactions completely turn me off from a game. That's why im playing only single player games for about 10 years now.
It's an interesting discussion for sure. It's hard to draw correlation between "whaling power" and in-game benefits (as with the case with traditional kr/cn f2ps where you had direct stat gains associated), as you mentioned around 4:30 due to different definitions of whale ($25-500-1000s), and because many ppl whale in games that don't even have material benefit due to FOMO or just liking a certain character. That is, the standards and the motivation for "whaling" can largely differ.
With starCit in particular, because it's targeting the niche but older 30-40s demographic of ppl who grew up games like Wing Commander, there's definitely more income at play. But even taking myself as example, I'm now mid 30s, have less time to play, and more games to play than I can possibly play. My Steam backlog is quite huge (~65% unplayed of 1.4k games) and even after pseudo retiring from MMOs, it's too much to catch up on. I'd bought into SC in the initial wave, but ended up selling my package ~3 yrs down the line as ppl were offering ludicrous amounts for lifetime insurance ships. Additionally, with gacha / mobage style games, ppl have somewhat desensitized to spending hundreds/thousands. There's many arguments over FGO vs Genshin vs GBF rates in terms of pity and free currency generation, even though they're all pretty awful in terms of pay-to-acquire a certain asset, in the traditional sense of paying $60 for a game. On top of which, there's monthly "battle-pass" style content which effectively amounts to a p2p subscription.
That said, compared to other real-world hobbies, it's still relatively affordable. I've probably dropped ~$3k on Genshin so far, but it's exactly the sort of game I love playing and it's suited to playing in small, measurable bursts. There is certainly a predatory aspect to it (should lootbox/gacha be restricted to 18+ per traditional gambling?) which I think will eventually need to be addressed, but it's money "better spent" in the sense that I enjoy it daily vs games I'll possibly never install. At the same time, I don't think I'm a whale, because I have no desire to max out a 5* (avg 2.5k? for c6), but acknowledge that I've probably spent more than 90% of the playerbase given that it's f2p-modeled where the avg is close to 0 — others have just spent way more. I've been playing a lot of PoE over the years too, which has a similar pick-up-and-go playstyle, with similar amounts spent on mtx that do nothing but look shiny. Some of my friends have MtG collections in the 30k+ range; others are buying vacation cabins, luxury cars; others have egregious wine habits; others, kids. As long as it's within moderation per your lifestyle / commitments, I don't think it's much to worry about — but youth are gonna be in for a shock if they think $50 is going to get you anything in these sorts of games, and that's where I think the discussion needs to be taking place. Maybe that's borderline "think of the children", but even if it's not gambling in the legal sense (no direct cash payout), it still very much is in the practice of it, unless, perhaps you approach with the mindset that you're paying max pity for the 100% character, which certainly doesn't sell as well to the public. "Hey Timmy, that femboy in the green tights you like is gonna set you back $400 a pop on average."
Tarmack! you're not dead 😀
I would not be suprised that spending ANY money makes you a whale in the eyes of companies.
If spending $5 a month on a mobile game now qualifies as "whaling", and I've had that said to me on Reddit, the term has lost any meaning it once had.
isn't it expected the threshold of "whale" would be much lower for free-to-play games? casinos don't have a free-to-play model as far as I know, so customers are spending some amount of $ to be players at all
What is the background gameplay early in the video?
Are season passes included in this description of gamer whales? That makes a large portion of the gaming community whales.
My personal rule is to never spend more than €60 on any one game. I put away €15 each month for gaming which I don't always spend that month(and in fact can't if I want to save). Subscription services don't count here but I've never done that either… But I might soon if mortal online 2 turns out good.
The only way to combat the after sales purchase model is to not engage with it but given the popularity of some of the games that push it, I think that ship has sailed. Console first party titles, the mid market and the Indie space are relatively free of microtransactions. Even companies like Paradox and Falcom like to churn out the DLC in spades but at least they're one time purchases that you keep forever not finite in game resources.
Games like Fortnite also have the cultural leverage to kind of create a haves and have nots social dynamic that helps to make it's younger audience feel left out when they aren't able to or choose not to purchase the latest Battle pass. That psychological pressure to buy something or miss out is very strong, I'm very much an escapist gamer, I play mostly Rpg, action adventure and 4X games just to escape being me for a bit so I'm in the lowest risk demographic for these tactics and yet I still ended up spending about £50 in Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. The game is complete shit but I downloaded it due to name recognition to play during lunch break and it got me.