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I would peg it down to innumeracy and inability to handle relativism and anchored valuations. I would wager the same people who become whales are merely the sa

I would peg it down to innumeracy and inability to handle relativism and anchored valuations. I would wager the same people who become whales are merely the same who would overspend on traditional sales periods for physical stores.

benologist 7y ago
If I say you need 2 gems to buy a hat and there's 7 quoofs to the gem and a quoof costs 3 for $4.99 it's not your fault if you can't process how much a hat costs, child or adult. Let me put a 60 second timer while you think about this special offer to add some pressure. Don't ask why the hat price isn't in dollars so you'd readily understand. Facebook actually asked developers to make more confusing abstractions to exploit children they identified using parents funds. They wanted misunderstanding because the children would spend more and they would refuse the refunds and leave kids explaining perhaps a multi-thousand dollar series of transactions to their parents. I would wager whales are simply being exploited more than anything. Defrauded. There simply are no people who accidentally spend $6000 in Target because it's not possible to accidentally spend that much money unless someone is duping you. If nobody is trying to defraud you, and you walk into any retail store, you're not going to spend $6000 by accident. https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-game-playing-kids-and-their-parents-out-of-money/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-...
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  Exploitation of children is an important but separate issue that I would argue falls on the parents. I would argue that while the scenario you describe is a gotcha moment, after two or three times it’s really on you to understand what’s going on. Either way, it’s driven by innumeracy. It may still be exploitation so I’m not really disagreeing. I do think you’re wildly off base thinking that people don’t drastically overspend at physical stores for physical goods though.
  - benologist 7y ago
    If obsfuscated pricing causes children to disassociate spending money, and obfuscated pricing makes "whales" out of 1% of adults that are spending outliers by 4 orders of magnitude how can it be a separate issue? I think it is the same tactic applied to two demographics that are both incapable of unpacking maliciously-complex pricing. The children make the fraud apparent. FB defrauded their parents and they ______ the children to do it. They ______ adults in the exact same way and 1% are as susceptible as children and end up spending thousands and being called "whales". They have to suck it up and the kids can get their parents to demand the fraud be reverted, that's the only difference I can see. BTW I'm not saying people don't overspend in retail stores. What they don't do is discover days or weeks later that some of the products actually cost thousands.
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      I think that your depiction of whales is generally incorrect. There are certainly apps that try to trick kids by requiring currency that is not-obviously real money. These exist for adults too, but aren’t what people refer to when they talk about whales. Whales make such payments intentionally. They understand that they’re paying hundreds or thousands of dollars- and are doing so in bulk transactions because it’s the most cost effective rate. They play a game regularly and spend so they can maximize their standing whenever new content is released (very frequently). That is to say, whales exist in games with transparent pricing. I don’t recall specifics but I think Pokémon go was a good example of this. IIRC you could buy coins that were useful for buying poke balls and egg incubators. Not 1:1 but hardly abusive. Whales still spent (spend?) thousands on it. Edit: every so often I click on an ad for the most awful looking porn based online game I come across just to see what it is. It’s quite surprising to see how deeply implemented some of their gameplay is given their garbage marketing strategy and value prop. What is truly fascinating however is how incredibly complicated some of their micro payment systems are. Dozens of resources introduced around every corner with unclear ways of acquiring any of them in game but each one noting that it will be required to unlock some stupid scandalous picture and can be refilled for $5. Whatever your mental model is for the insidiousness of app based micro payments is, you might find it bizarrely entertaining to explore how much worse it can get in such a context.
lostmyoldone 7y ago
I actually played a game where whales spent huge amount of money, after a while it continued mostly because I wanted to understand who these people were. Several are exactly like you describe, others need the anchor of money to loose as to feel invested, others simply have a lot of money and for whatever reason want to win in a game, and others simply thrive on causing misfortune to others through their financial advantage. Those very whale friendly games are, as a sort of ecosystem echo, as fascinating as they are disturbing.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  I play gacha games that are friendly towards F2P people. I’m curious what game allows rich players to cause misfortune to F2P players. Honestly that sounds like a better reason to whale than I had ever encountered

benologist 7y ago

If I say you need 2 gems to buy a hat and there's 7 quoofs to the gem and a quoof costs 3 for $4.99 it's not your fault if you can't process how much a hat costs, child or adult. Let me put a 60 second timer while you think about this special offer to add some pressure. Don't ask why the hat price isn't in dollars so you'd readily understand. Facebook actually asked developers to make more confusing abstractions to exploit children they identified using parents funds. They wanted misunderstanding because the children would spend more and they would refuse the refunds and leave kids explaining perhaps a multi-thousand dollar series of transactions to their parents. I would wager whales are simply being exploited more than anything. Defrauded. There simply are no people who accidentally spend $6000 in Target because it's not possible to accidentally spend that much money unless someone is duping you. If nobody is trying to defraud you, and you walk into any retail store, you're not going to spend $6000 by accident. https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-game-playing-kids-and-their-parents-out-of-money/ https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-...

b_tterc_p 7y ago
Exploitation of children is an important but separate issue that I would argue falls on the parents. I would argue that while the scenario you describe is a gotcha moment, after two or three times it’s really on you to understand what’s going on. Either way, it’s driven by innumeracy. It may still be exploitation so I’m not really disagreeing. I do think you’re wildly off base thinking that people don’t drastically overspend at physical stores for physical goods though.
- benologist 7y ago
  If obsfuscated pricing causes children to disassociate spending money, and obfuscated pricing makes "whales" out of 1% of adults that are spending outliers by 4 orders of magnitude how can it be a separate issue? I think it is the same tactic applied to two demographics that are both incapable of unpacking maliciously-complex pricing. The children make the fraud apparent. FB defrauded their parents and they ______ the children to do it. They ______ adults in the exact same way and 1% are as susceptible as children and end up spending thousands and being called "whales". They have to suck it up and the kids can get their parents to demand the fraud be reverted, that's the only difference I can see. BTW I'm not saying people don't overspend in retail stores. What they don't do is discover days or weeks later that some of the products actually cost thousands.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    I think that your depiction of whales is generally incorrect. There are certainly apps that try to trick kids by requiring currency that is not-obviously real money. These exist for adults too, but aren’t what people refer to when they talk about whales. Whales make such payments intentionally. They understand that they’re paying hundreds or thousands of dollars- and are doing so in bulk transactions because it’s the most cost effective rate. They play a game regularly and spend so they can maximize their standing whenever new content is released (very frequently). That is to say, whales exist in games with transparent pricing. I don’t recall specifics but I think Pokémon go was a good example of this. IIRC you could buy coins that were useful for buying poke balls and egg incubators. Not 1:1 but hardly abusive. Whales still spent (spend?) thousands on it. Edit: every so often I click on an ad for the most awful looking porn based online game I come across just to see what it is. It’s quite surprising to see how deeply implemented some of their gameplay is given their garbage marketing strategy and value prop. What is truly fascinating however is how incredibly complicated some of their micro payment systems are. Dozens of resources introduced around every corner with unclear ways of acquiring any of them in game but each one noting that it will be required to unlock some stupid scandalous picture and can be refilled for $5. Whatever your mental model is for the insidiousness of app based micro payments is, you might find it bizarrely entertaining to explore how much worse it can get in such a context.

lostmyoldone 7y ago

I actually played a game where whales spent huge amount of money, after a while it continued mostly because I wanted to understand who these people were. Several are exactly like you describe, others need the anchor of money to loose as to feel invested, others simply have a lot of money and for whatever reason want to win in a game, and others simply thrive on causing misfortune to others through their financial advantage. Those very whale friendly games are, as a sort of ecosystem echo, as fascinating as they are disturbing.

b_tterc_p 7y ago
I play gacha games that are friendly towards F2P people. I’m curious what game allows rich players to cause misfortune to F2P players. Honestly that sounds like a better reason to whale than I had ever encountered