im happy to see gamers waking up to the aftermath of this industry / culture . spiritual competence is a must, seeing the word in a game designer eyes, good and bad becomes obvious. praise god for the decadence peak has passed
Gacha games are mostly financed by so called whales, people who don't have to care about money. The others can enjoy a free/cheap game (at least in the case of Genshin).
The term "Whale" is borrowed from the casino industry, where it is used to describe a rich gambler who bets extraordinarily large amounts of money. Just like in the game industry, casinos want to "catch" the most high-betting whales, because they provide a lot of income for comparably little expense.
The term "Whale" is borrowed from the casino industry, where it is used to describe a rich gambler who bets extraordinarily large amounts of money. Just like in the game industry, casinos want to "catch" the most high-betting whales, because they provide a lot of income for comparably little expense.
So how big is that group of whales and the one enjoying a free/cheap game?Gacha games are mostly financed by so called whales [. . .] The others can enjoy a free/cheap game (at least in the case of Genshin).
But these numbers are from 2011:"whales" which typically are the smallest segment, up to around 10% of players, but are willing to spend the most on a game; "dolphins" which represent a larger portion of around 40% of players who spend some money but not as much as whales; and "minnows", representing about half the population, who spend the barest amount to maintain activity.[35]
Modelling the freemium power-law
For the purposes of this spreadsheet, I split your gamers into three groups:
. Minnows spend the smallest amount possible in a month, typically $1
. Dolphins spend a "middling" amount. Typically I forecast they spend an average of $5 per month
. Whales spend a lot. Typically I forecast they spend an average of $20 per month.
. Freeloaders (see Whales, power-laws and the future of media) are, of course, the fourth group. They are covered by the conversion rate and not considered here)
For more details on ARPPU, see the separate post on this topic - ARPPU in freemium games.
My starting point for what percentage of your users fit in which bucket is:
Minnows: 50% of payers
Dolphins: 40% of payers
Whales: 10% of payers
Note that this is an approximation of the shape of the power law. You can change the percentages and change the ARPPUs as you like.
Most MMO games allow in-game spending, meaning players can swap their real world money for virtual currency, special abilities, clothing, or even virtual vehicles and property for their characters. But how much money do they usually spend, what games are they spending in and what payment methods do they use? We surveyed 1,000 gamers across America to find out.
Over 60% of poll participants identified themselves as men and 37.9% as women. The average respondent was 32 years of age and reported spending three to six hours playing MMO games per day. Almost 90% said they have spent money on in-game purchases for MMO games, spending an average of $229 each in total.
Some game types encourage more spending than others. Online battle arena, role-playing and combat games all draw heavy spending through in-game purchases.
Game creators obviously know a thing or two about marketing and designing their games to encourage spending; the majority of our respondents believe they have to spend to remain competitive.
I am old and slow, and the games industry moves very quickly. Thus a new trend can easily take over the entire industry for years without my even noticing. Then I find out about it and get shocked and startled and everyone justifiably mocks me.
While I was recently chatting on Discord with some young gamer friends (I'm not entirely out of it), they got really excited about something. Turns out, a new set of guns were about to be released for the shooty-game Valorant. These new guns will have fish on them.
(Young/er?) people meet on social media, they share screen shots. Peer pressure is not limited to player vs player or coop.Maybe this data is relevant for Diablo Immortal, but Genshin Impact is a single player game without player vs. player competition.
You can play a little bit of coop, but it's not very well supported.
I don't think that being too young or having an addictive tendency are the only things why these kind of games should be debated and warned against.
In every supermarket psychologists and marketing people have been busy to tempt ordinary folk into impulse buying. The tricks are clever. Lots of people come home with more than they had planned on buying.
Impulse buying is an important part of F2P.