
Chasing the Whale: Examining the ethics of free-to-play games - svenfaw
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/195806/chasing_the_whale_examining_the_.php?print=1
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gitgud
From my experience, free to play games are basically always guaranteed to be
deceptive in order to recoup the cost of development.

There are a few examples that don't fit, like; TF2 and Fortnite I suppose. But
I'd always rather pay a fixed fee for a game and be confident there's no
incentive to sell me something...

~~~
anon4242
It's ironic that you mention TF2 as a good example as it is the _very first
example_ of the opposite in the linked article.

Fortnite, besides having their own issues, also have the issue of "secondary
whale-chasers" which is all those youtube videos proclaiming that they found a
hack to enable a bunch of skins or similar for _free_. This means installing
(what I assume to be) bitcoin-miners on each twelve year old's machine. You'd
think that wouldn't be possible on a machine used by a twelve year old but
Epic is extra _helpful_ in that it basically _requires_ its game launcher to
be run as admin (because of its frequent updates to Fortnite that requires
admin rights). So I assume most parents make their kid's account admin out of
convenience.

~~~
djaychela
That has become a major source of problems in my household. I don't live with
my girlfriend and her 4 kids (my stepkids, I'm not disowning them, just
explaining quickly the situation). Youngest son has a PC, and due to
experience gained with the older son (now 18), his account is locked down and
I'm the admin on the system.

I often have to use TeamViewer to access the PC to allow Fortnite to upgrade,
and they don't understand why I still insist on this - my warning about just
about all the possible negatives have been completely ignored, but I'm
sticking to my guns. I know I'm fighting a losing battle and eventually will
have to give up on this, but at the moment, it's working. I'm sure most people
have given up, made the kid and admin and the computer is awash with issues as
a result.

Obviously if I'm not available (which is often the case as I'm self employed
in a number of roles, most of which mean I can't be available instantly), then
it has to wait, and you'd think the world was ending!

~~~
ido
Would a possible solution be to buy them a more locked down system like a
nintendo switch or an ipad and tell them if they want to play a game they
either use that or the non-admit user on the PC?

~~~
tkifnn
You can't compare iPad and switch games to the ones on pc. They are totally
different.

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ido
Literally the game they talked about (Fortnite) is available on both iOS and
Switch. Anyway when I was a kid I only cared about having good games to play
(and even the "good" part is debatable), not which specific games - there's
plenty of great stuff to play on the switch.

~~~
keerthiko
> Anyway when I was a kid I only cared about having good games to play

This was generally true for me too, but in 2019 games are primarily a social
hangout spot. They're like a park or a concrete basketball court next to the
parking lot, where the kids come hang out and shoot the shit in the lobby even
if they aren't actively in a match.

Not being on the same game your mates are playing is akin to telling your kid
"you can't go to your friends' park 30 minutes away, why don't you hang out in
our perfectly nice backyard with a basketball hoop"

Edit: upvote for the rest of your comment though

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melling
I’m interested in learning some of the techniques that make gaming more
enticing. I’ve got some educational apps for iOS that I would like to make
more engaging. I’ve noticed that after 5-7 days retention really trails off.
Do people buy into badges, leveling up, daily streaks, etc?

Two of my apps:

Hundred Words: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hundred-
words/id1469449237](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hundred-words/id1469449237)

Language Pairs: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-
pairs/id1438817614?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/language-
pairs/id1438817614?mt=8)

~~~
malkia
My son explained it to me (11 year old) - Basically if you are "default" you
suck. I have 20+ gamedev experience, and I didn't know what it means.
Basically if you have the "default" skins you suck. You need to get shiny new
outfit, that would cost some v-bucks.

~~~
dvh
Wouldn't being constantly killed by the same default guy hurt more? If I would
be a pro gamer I would do just that, just to troll them.

~~~
kd5bjo
People are social creatures, and have a strong innate desire to stand out and
express themselves. If a game successfully creates a social atmosphere,
selling cosmetic items can be a lucrative business.

It's essentially the digital version of the fashion industry, which most
people seem to viscerally understand-- aesthetics are the primary motivator
for most people's clothing choices, and they are willing to pay a significant
premium for some items on this basis.

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orionblastar
Facebook is full of free to play games and so are Android and iPhones.

I'd rather pay a flat fee for a game and not be forced to buy in game currancy
to buy gems and other things to buy extra items in the game.

Some people pay hundreds of dollars on ingame items to become a wallet warrior
and beat the grinders playing for free.

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specialist
I briefly worked on recommenders for a fair sized fashion retailer. I was
flabbergasted to learn just how much certain shoppers spend. (Though we
purposefully called them "platinums", vs "whales", internally. Better optics.)

For me, becoming more aware of "whales" highlighted other power law
distributions, Pareto's Law, or whatever we call it, throughout society.

A few "bad apple" cops get most of the complaints.

A few alcoholics drink _a lot_ more than others.

A handful of people do most of the property damage crimes.

Etc.

So whatever else comes from this "freemium" awareness, there are some useful,
important policy implications.

~~~
KibbutzDalia
At Disney we called them “Good Customers”

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b_tterc_p
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
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-...](https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-game-
playing-kids-and-their-parents-out-of-money/)

~~~
b_tterc_p
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
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
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.

~~~
benologist
I think whales are just a bunch of companies selling a lie that combining all
the dark patterns = great customers.

You say they're happy to do it but just to "find" a whale you must
disassociate real spending and transactional cost, obfuscate real currency,
create inconvenience etc. Nobody went in wanting to spend thousands and 99.99%
opt-out of paying. That's 0.01% of customers being happy and a generous use of
the word since they were never offered a version that wasn't a sales funnel of
dark patterns.

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runn1ng
Isn’t this (2013)?

