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I don't often talk about mobile games (except to say how asinine I think most mobile games are), because I don't play them at all. Here are four good examples of why that is, and of just how soul-crushingly lame mobile games can be. And yet, thousands of people play these fucking things and waste shitloads of money on them. They wouldn't continue to be getting made, otherwise.
(EDIT)
I am going to copy/paste an excerpt from an article that the above Cracked article links to, which talks about the people who waste shitloads of money on these games, otherwise known as "whales."
Game developers have a word for players like Lee: whales.
“A whale is a player that is willing to invest a significant amount of money in your game,” said Jared Psigoda, CEO of the browser game publisher Reality Squared Games, at Game Developers Conference Europe in August. “For most publishers out there … a handful of players make up a significant percentage of revenue, specifically once you get into the mid-hard-core, free-to-play type model.”
“The top 10 percent of players can account for as much as 50 percent of all in-app purchase revenue,” says Andy Yang, CEO of the mobile monetization research firm PlayHaven.
So who are these people?
Lee — who asked that we not share his full name, or any specific details about his line of work — is a single, 42-year-old businessman from California. He says that his annual income is “in the six figures.”
Lee says that spending money on games like Clash of Clans is actually saving him money in the long-run: Before he started gaming, he says he and a small group of friends would go out drinking, sometimes spending as much as $6,000 in a single night between them.
Lee stopped spending money on drinking roughly around the same time that he began playing Happy Kingdom, a Facebook game, with some friends. It was the first videogame he’d ever liked, and he became enraptured. He wound up spending nearly $5,000 in that game before trading it for Clash of Clans, but says that’s far less than what he would have otherwise spent on alcohol.
“I actually save money playing these games instead of going out and drinking,” he said.
I just... I don't even... what.
What.
What.
What.
(/EDIT)
(EDIT)
I am going to copy/paste an excerpt from an article that the above Cracked article links to, which talks about the people who waste shitloads of money on these games, otherwise known as "whales."
Game developers have a word for players like Lee: whales.
“A whale is a player that is willing to invest a significant amount of money in your game,” said Jared Psigoda, CEO of the browser game publisher Reality Squared Games, at Game Developers Conference Europe in August. “For most publishers out there … a handful of players make up a significant percentage of revenue, specifically once you get into the mid-hard-core, free-to-play type model.”
“The top 10 percent of players can account for as much as 50 percent of all in-app purchase revenue,” says Andy Yang, CEO of the mobile monetization research firm PlayHaven.
So who are these people?
Lee — who asked that we not share his full name, or any specific details about his line of work — is a single, 42-year-old businessman from California. He says that his annual income is “in the six figures.”
Lee says that spending money on games like Clash of Clans is actually saving him money in the long-run: Before he started gaming, he says he and a small group of friends would go out drinking, sometimes spending as much as $6,000 in a single night between them.
Lee stopped spending money on drinking roughly around the same time that he began playing Happy Kingdom, a Facebook game, with some friends. It was the first videogame he’d ever liked, and he became enraptured. He wound up spending nearly $5,000 in that game before trading it for Clash of Clans, but says that’s far less than what he would have otherwise spent on alcohol.
“I actually save money playing these games instead of going out and drinking,” he said.
I just... I don't even... what.
What.
What.
What.
(/EDIT)
