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> Most big spenders are incredibly wealthy, like buy $30,000 wristwatches for fun wealthy. Games have figured out how to 'go infinite' on their spend possibilit

> Most big spenders are incredibly wealthy, like buy $30,000 wristwatches for fun wealthy. Games have figured out how to 'go infinite' on their spend possibilities and capture wristwatch money from these folks. Do you have any data to back up this claim? I don't have data to prove the opposite either, but I don't believe this is true. I know multiple big spenders in real life. They have a very average income, but instead of putting the ~$500-1000 that's left each month into a saving accounts, they spend it on mobile games, i.e. make bad financial decisions. FOMO is probably the main driver. I'm sure the people you refer to exist. There are whales that are so rich that they don't care about wasting $10-100k on a game, but I don't believe these are the majority of players that spend large amounts. I think the big spenders on average have below average income, they are just bad at self-restraint, and/or relatively young and inexperienced with money.

a13o 4y ago
I worked in the F2P industry a decade ago and have many anecdotes. Oil sheiks with a direct line to the development team. Wire transfer support for big spenders to get around throughout restrictions on normal payment processing. Spend anomalies in graphs with 7 figure y-axes because some lawyer discovered the game while stuck home with the flu. A lot of customer support energy was put into white glove service for these players because of how important they were to the revenue graph. Kongregate used to share data pretty liberally and had a wide view of the industry in their day. They were playing with less zeroes than the big names but the trends were the same. https://blog.kongregate.com/dont-call-them-whales-f2p-spenders-and-virtual-value/ https://blog.kongregate.com/dont-call-them-whales-f2p-spende... I'm out of the game for a while now but keep in touch with former colleagues and they've gotten much better rounding out the spender curve. But the folks at the tail still got that wristwatch money. If you don't have a spend stream for them you're leaving a huge piece of your revenue on the table.

a13o 4y ago

I worked in the F2P industry a decade ago and have many anecdotes. Oil sheiks with a direct line to the development team. Wire transfer support for big spenders to get around throughout restrictions on normal payment processing. Spend anomalies in graphs with 7 figure y-axes because some lawyer discovered the game while stuck home with the flu. A lot of customer support energy was put into white glove service for these players because of how important they were to the revenue graph. Kongregate used to share data pretty liberally and had a wide view of the industry in their day. They were playing with less zeroes than the big names but the trends were the same. https://blog.kongregate.com/dont-call-them-whales-f2p-spenders-and-virtual-value/ https://blog.kongregate.com/dont-call-them-whales-f2p-spende... I'm out of the game for a while now but keep in touch with former colleagues and they've gotten much better rounding out the spender curve. But the folks at the tail still got that wristwatch money. If you don't have a spend stream for them you're leaving a huge piece of your revenue on the table.