Moby Dick, Flipper & (Insert Famous Minnow Here)
A recent Jimquisition video talked about a company that uses customer data gathered from mobile games being played in real-time to offer different microtransaction prices to different gamers at the optimal time where their resistance to buying said microtransactions is at their weakest. Here's the link (and if you enjoy his video, consider kicking him a dollar or two to his Patreon, if you can).
But the pinned comment to this video is far more interesting to me, since Jim Sterling inevitably gets these kinds of comments whenever he brings up the subject of lootboxes and microtransactions. The relevant portion of the comment I want to talk about is provided here, courtesy of THePunisher Xxx:
I'm so sick of your bitching and assumptions with no facts. "Only whales buy crates". You are basing that off of conversations and conjecture, you have no hard facts showing game sales and who buys crates.
Oh, hard facts. That's for me. My brain always conjures red flags whenever somebody mentions "no facts to present your case" or some other such nonsense. And since I've been accused of being pedantic, well...time for me to lean into that characterization. So let's get pedantic...
First, what is a whale in this context? It was first used by casinos to describe people who bet thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The earliest use on the internet I could find was from February 2001.
The term was later used and expanded upon by Hany Nada to form what he called the WMD Model (Whales, Dolphins, Minnows). In his article on the subject (written in February 2013), he described how whales make up almost 3% of the freemium game user base, but drop thousands of dollars on microtransactions, making up the majority of a fremium game's revenue, so they are the best customers to "reel in", as it were. Dolphins make up a larger percentage of the user base, but spend tens to hundreds of dollars. Minnows make up the largest percentage of the user base, but either make one purchase or none at all. The information on player base and spending habits comes from a Swrve Monetization Report, which you can download here.
Since then, marketing has taken the WMD model to heart, and there are plenty of articles on this subject, which the latest one I could find was this one.
So, Thee Punisher One Large Ex and Two Small Exes, is all this "conversation and conjecture"? Is this enough "hard facts" for you?
Maybe you should take 5 seconds to google the subject before you pop off about stuff you clearly don't understand.
As usual, if you want to comment on this, share your thoughts. And please, pardon my terrible, terrible photo. I promise the quality of this blog will improve, someday.
But the pinned comment to this video is far more interesting to me, since Jim Sterling inevitably gets these kinds of comments whenever he brings up the subject of lootboxes and microtransactions. The relevant portion of the comment I want to talk about is provided here, courtesy of THePunisher Xxx:
I'm so sick of your bitching and assumptions with no facts. "Only whales buy crates". You are basing that off of conversations and conjecture, you have no hard facts showing game sales and who buys crates.
Oh, hard facts. That's for me. My brain always conjures red flags whenever somebody mentions "no facts to present your case" or some other such nonsense. And since I've been accused of being pedantic, well...time for me to lean into that characterization. So let's get pedantic...
 |
| SHALL WE??? |
First, what is a whale in this context? It was first used by casinos to describe people who bet thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The earliest use on the internet I could find was from February 2001.
The term was later used and expanded upon by Hany Nada to form what he called the WMD Model (Whales, Dolphins, Minnows). In his article on the subject (written in February 2013), he described how whales make up almost 3% of the freemium game user base, but drop thousands of dollars on microtransactions, making up the majority of a fremium game's revenue, so they are the best customers to "reel in", as it were. Dolphins make up a larger percentage of the user base, but spend tens to hundreds of dollars. Minnows make up the largest percentage of the user base, but either make one purchase or none at all. The information on player base and spending habits comes from a Swrve Monetization Report, which you can download here.
Since then, marketing has taken the WMD model to heart, and there are plenty of articles on this subject, which the latest one I could find was this one.
So, Thee Punisher One Large Ex and Two Small Exes, is all this "conversation and conjecture"? Is this enough "hard facts" for you?
Maybe you should take 5 seconds to google the subject before you pop off about stuff you clearly don't understand.
As usual, if you want to comment on this, share your thoughts. And please, pardon my terrible, terrible photo. I promise the quality of this blog will improve, someday.
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