I felt miserable reading this. It feels like the concept of separating a fool from their money has been distilled down to a science. I remember the original 'whale' articles from many years ago where the concept was just in its infancy, and it's sad to see that it's only become more focused and gained precision. Who knows, maybe with rapid advancements in generative AI, even that becomes fully automated...
There are reasons why this type of game is heavily regulated in parts of the world, and even and illegal to operate in some countries. It's just such a deeply problematic business model IMO.
I don't know if the state of California would be interested in antagonizing a business like Zynga and their likes, because presumably they contribute to the tax base, but I find it repulsive that such businesses are seemingly unregulated simply because they don't pay out cash.
The article makes it sound like they just discovered whales in 2014 -- I was at Zynga in the early days, and we were definitely aware of them even on early games, but there wasn't a formal VIP program.
The push to give them special treatment didn't take off until the Facebook tax appeared; at that point it became important to move big spenders to a separate payment channel without the 30% skim.
No, most revenue was just people buffing their FarmVille plots. The company aimed away from online gambling or even hardcore gaming.
It was hard to understand what whales were doing because the games were so far from gambling; there was no legal way to cash out, and even goods sales were policed. Money spent was clearly for amusement purposes only.
These were people who spent thousands of dollars leveling up in Mafia Wars. The interpretation at the time was that these were affluent individuals who simply enjoyed competing with money.
