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" I remember we had a whale in one game that loved American Football despite living in Saudi Arabia. We built several custom virtual items in both his favorite
by rubidium 11y ago
" I remember we had a whale in one game that loved American Football despite living in Saudi Arabia. We built several custom virtual items in both his favorite team colors and their opponents, just to sell to this one guy. You better believe he bought them. "
That answers one question I had. How to target the whales. I remember one free-to-play pay-to-win game I played where they had a promotion to get a random chance of getting a new OP character. On the first day, one player had 9 maxed out. The forums calculated the player likely spent somewhere between $30-50K to get them. I then realized how big a deal "whales" are in games. A big enough whale can employ a dev for a year.
- eric_h 11y ago"Whales" are critical to the revenue of many industries. gambling, alcohol, gaming, fashion, etc. all make a large chunk of their revenue from a small(ish) number of whales. Obviously the percentages vary by industry, but there's a reason when you go to Vegas and drop 10k at the craps table that you can get a "free" luxury suite from the hotel.
- shabble 11y agoSee "Don't call them Whales"[1] presentation by the CEO of Kongregate, a large online/flash games site. ~75% of revenue from ~2% of users, broken down in all sorts of interesting ways. [1] http://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales-freetoplay-spenders-virtual-value-gdc-2015 http://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales-...