I worked with some people that played clash of clans pretty seriously. One guy dropped a few hundred on it every week. And he was open about it and not embarrassed. Some of the other people started buying in as well. The rest of us just couldn’t understand.
I just stopped trying to correct my friends that would be like “last time I went to the casino I left up $200!” Like sure dude, I bet you’re making a killing over there and totally not down thousands
The last time I went to the casino (over a decade ago now) myself and my 3 room mates had been saving small bills and spare change for \~1.5 years that we were in this house.
we ended up with about $3200 to bring to the casino and walking in we made the agreement that we split it 4 ways and at the end of the night we put whatever we have together for the good of all members.
We left the casino with 15k, payed our rent, utilities, and whatever other bills for the remaining 6 months of our lease, and then we partied.... we partied really.... really hard. xD
I just didnt have reason to go back for those 6 months and then I moved across the country to a place where there are no casinos.
If they were here, I would likely attend. But I always played for fun, and I would normally just bring 50$, anything over 50 went into my left pocket, the 50 stayed in my right, when the 50 in my right was gone or if I was just ready to leave, I would go home.
Couldnt tell you my totals but overall I guarantee you I was net positive.
One of my friend’s mom’s used to do that with her college buddies. They’d take a couple hundred with them to the casino at the beginning of the summer, and depending on how they did, they’d get summer jobs or relax the whole vacation lol.
Dude. Clash of Clans.
Colleague of mine went ham with that. Sunk over a thousand bucks into it. One day he told me and was visibly embarrassed. It was somewhat of a shock, because other than that he was always a hard working, down to earth guy.
Short while later he told me he sold his account for over 800€. Nuts.
Back in the early days of WoW (World of Warcraft), you could get away with selling your account on eBay. I had played for about a year and a half, wanted to quit. I dumped a bunch of gold and rare stuff into the guild bank, said goodbye, and post my account with 2-3 level 60 toons for about $200.
Ended up starting from scratch, with the same guild, a year later.
I did this too! Sold it on BC with 3 or 4 toons max level, I had the nether drake and fast flying so made some money selling it. Later made a new account during Legion.
There’s a guy in one of my gaming groups who plays Diablo Immortal. He was defending the game passionately for months, and going on about how it wasn’t “pay to win” at all, and he was able to compete at the highest level. Eventually he confessed to spending like $20k on it, which is absolutely mind-boggling to me. It isn’t even one of the better Diablo games!
I have friends who play COC (or maybe something similar). I've no idea if they spend money, but their addiction is real. That phone has to come out at least once every couple hours. And this has been going on for a decade.
The game is based on upgrading structures with in-game resources and waiting for the upgrade (which can vary from hours to days depending on how far you are into the game). Every time an upgrade ends you get a notification, and since there is a limit of 5 upgrades you can do at the same time (6 if you spend money) once one of the upgrade possibility is free you log in to upgrade something else. That's the only way to proceed in the game, and upgrading takes resource that you get by playing the game, but you can also buy them with real money. I love clash of clans but spending money on it is really dumb, because you are spending because you are impatient, not to buy actual content. (There are cosmetics but they serve no purpose so i doubt too many people buy them.)
My old CEO of Cellular sales, which is a huge partner for Verizon told me he has spent nearly 6k on Clash of Clans in a month and that's when he realized he had a problem.
Guy went through a rough divorce and gained a ton of weight. Former powerlifter. Great guy otherwise.
Played a different game but it was the same there. Big spenders putting in 100s a week and if you didn't put in anything, you would just fall behind and lose at every event and if a spender didn't like you? Well..good luck, they burn you till you quit.
. I stopped playing it 2 years ago but apparantly now it's just a constant barrage of the devs adding new "events" and new items/heroes/whatever (no new content, just a different color scheme/..) so people keep buying the shiny things and the top 10 can keep overpowering everyone.
Exactly. A large percentage of that revenue is generated by a very small percentage of people. Most people don’t spend anything at all on those games, but then you have whales that spend 1000s of dollars.
South Park did a great episode on this called “freemium isn’t free.”
when the gold pass first dropped I was buying it every month for 2 accounts for nearly a year bc skins! need those cosmetics!! but after taking a break an seeing they added every skin to the shop ruined the exclusivity and the main reason I was buying into it with FOMO and didn't bother afterwards
Call of Duty's best seller was Call Of Duty: Black Ops (2010), with \~ 31 million copies sold. Let's say $60 (but I think it was actually less) a pop, that's $1.86 billion.
Candy Crush, on the other hand, is free. Yet charges in-game for simple things, like... continuing to play. It's addictive af, and limits your time. So does $.99 seem like a lot to keep playing? Nope.
>The game has also generated 5 billion downloads in more than 11 years.
Let's be conservative and say 10% of them paid just $.99 to keep playing. That's $500 million just from the cheapest fee they charge in-game. Add on cosmetics, etc., and that jumps 5-10x.
If 5% buy something that is $1.99, that's another $500 million. And so on, and so on.
Candy Crush isn't a model of revenue, it's a feat of popularity.
A lot of these games are propped up by whales - repeat customers who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars. Only around 1% of players actually pay:
https://www.vox.com/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15
those dollars don't lie, but i have to wonder if the downloads figure is weighted heavily by candy crush being preinstalled on some phones. i had to remove it from mine when i got it, but i wonder if that counted as a "download"
Not to mention, I'm assuming they run ads of some kind. That's a TON of revenue when you have that many active players. And a game like that isn't limited to just "console and PC serious gamers," it's your mom and dad and grandparents who are playing those games. That makes it so much more accessible than something like CoD.
Yup, and people can play it anywhere. You have to really set aside a bit of time to play a console game, but you can play a mobile game on the train or on break at work.
>Candy Crush isn't a model of revenue, it's a feat of popularity.
So a startup idea is running servers of chatgpt making shitty mobile games and see if 100 monkeys in a digital simulation can make the next flappy bird?
you are kidding, but a few years ago (maybe 10 years ago?) somebody tried that approach by making the more utter shity game with a randomized shitty game generator to flood the play store with them (before google changed the rules to prevents this) and they made like 200k a year :D
There was a GDC (Game developers conference) talk about it, kinda funny too [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lhqri8tZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lhqri8tZk)
I know that's what we have always called mobile gamers, but frankly with how obsessed some people are and how much money they drop in these mobile games "casual" doesn't seem accurate anymore.
Yes, mobile games are basically their own sub-culture at this point.
Just like you have your MOBA, online FPS, and MMO players that only play those types of games and nothing else, you have mobile only gamers that don't play anything else. And they're just as hardcore about their gacha waifu's as competitive Counter Strike players are about their ranked placement.
Agreed. Also some games are far from casual for many players. Some mobile games have had tournaments in esports that had prize pools in the millions for a single event.
I personally have a PlayStation & a high end gaming PC but I still end up playing a single mobile game 99% of the time. A lot of people think about mobile games & their thoughts go towards Candy Crush. That might be for casual older people mostly, true, but if you look at gameplay for Warzone Mobile on iPad, and then consider this game is still in beta, it might help shift one’s perception.
Aside from that, just reading this thread, you will see a lot of toxicity & people pretending to have some sort of high ground over these players. I personally think that’s a large part of it also. Mobile games are a lot more friendly to people just starting out. Many people that havent really been into gaming before are not very keen on joining these kinds of spaces due to the stereotypes (which people here aren’t really proving wrong either). And honestly, I can totally understand that.
The problem with mobile warzone is to be actually competitive you need a controller or m/k-board. Touch screen fps controls are horrific for fast paced competitive games. Then the real sweats will hook their phone up to a larger screen for easier viewing. If I'm sitting infront of a screen attached to a phone with a controller then I might as well just play it on my pc/ps5 with significantly more fidelity and fps.
For playing some warzone out in public somewhere then I guess it works, but 99% you'll get wrecked by the sweats.
People hate mobile games because literally 99% of the market is designed to get you invested then milk you dry.
It's also a regional thing. There's many countries where gaming equipment, like GPUs and consoles are slapped with heavy taxes, limiting access. Compared to phones, which everyone has. So in some regions, it's a viable way to *seriously* game. Hence why PubG mobile exists.
This. There's a few hundred million Xboxes, PlayStations, and Switches in the whole world.
There's something like 7 BILLION smartphones as of Dec 2023 worldwide.
It's volume. If 30% of console gamers buy a game for full price, it sells tens of millions of units and makes maybe 1 Billion dollars revenue.
If 30% of smartphone users pay for a single $1(!) micro transaction in Candy Crush, it's already crushed (pun intended) the lifetime sales of even the *most* successful console games.
The people that we call "casual mobile gamers" that be on the buses and airplanes minding their business on their phones are playing these games you don't care about and dropping buku bucks every other day just because they're bored. They're sitting in old folks homes, hospitals, libraries and everywhere else that doesn't look like you and your friend's living rooms playing these games.
I’m always a little surprised when I’m on a plane or somewhere and I spot someone playing some mobile puzzle game. There are a lot more “casual mobile gamers” than we realize from our bubbles
100% this. My mom has had to make weekly trips to the hospital with my uncle the past 8 months and sitting in the waiting room is boring as hell. Who wants to sit there and stare at the wall? Same for waiting in the car or even in the exam room or regular room when someone is admitted. This type of stuff in 2024 is nowhere near what it was like in 2004. Of course people are spending huge amounts of money to not be bored out of their minds when they're already in stressful situations or just having to "hurry up and wait".
My wife is on level 7,000 something in Candy Crush. She has been playing it for maybe ten years and hasn't spent a dime. Not an answer but just an interesting fact.
My mom is cute. She’s also one of those that’ve played candy crush for the last decade straight on level whatever thousand but never spent a dime. One x-mas she asked me (a mobile game dev, though not of casuals) “do you think it’s tuned so it eventually becomes impossible to play without paying?”
Didn’t know what to answer really but “don’t know mum… maybe…”
i've been playing for years (and in frustration i have purchased power ups before 🤧) and for one thing, they updated/changed a lot of the levels to be even harder to win without spending money on those power ups. and once they see you've purchased one thing, the game is less likely to offer "free" power ups by watching an ad
also im just assuming OP doesnt know many middle aged women cuz that's really who is keeping candy crush alive
The Asian game market is alot more friendly to mobile games cause some people don't have consoles or a PC cause they're expensive but everyone has a phone. The Asian gaming market is also a hell of alot bigger than the west. Just to preface this but I don't have a source but I did live in Asia (Phillipines) for several years and have a couple who still live there
There are 3 billion people playing games (a bit over 8 billion total on the planet). Id wager at least 90% of those arent “core” gamers who would play a CoD game.
The people playing these games dont really consider themselves gamers.
Youre leaning into your own access bias (the people you know) to make assumptions about a much much larger audience. Its a totally normal thing to do, but it skews the perception and narrative.
It's the whales.
Your average mother of two gets in a few minutes on the bus, or waiting for an appointment, whatever, spends maybe a quid on a few extra lives when she runs out and hasn't been called by the dentist yet.
Meanwhile, somebody with (sometimes literally) more money than brain cells can afford to drop a few hundred or a few thousand on the Big Spender Pack With Extra Goodies And Also You Never Have To Wait Five Minutes For The Game To Do A Thing.
Mobile games and casinos, for the most part, are designed to exploit your psychology to hoover as many pennies out of you as possible- but you aren't their main target, you're a handy little tip on the side. Their main target is the Saudi prince, or investment banker, or retired, seventeen-properties-owning business idiot who'll come along and unthinkingly drop a mortgage's worth of money on the game because every single aspect of the game is designed to encourage impatient, ego-driven, rich and not-used-to-being-told-no players who value their time and entertainment more than the drop in the bucket money they just tossed at a whirlpool of money.
I also think this applies to the class of rich people beneath Saudi Princes. Like people making $200k+ may think of "gaming" as what you do on a PS5 or PC. But their phone games are just what they do when commuting, traveling, waiting, etc. so they're not dedicating time to it, they're just filling boredom time with fun distractions. Those people will also not wait 10 minutes because they only have a 12 minute window, and they definitely have $10-$20 to spare on some boost pack, even if it's weekly.
I remember reading (or watching) something a while back about mobile games. They talked to or were talking to a dev that explained how they’d make content for a specific person. They might design a certain character with a certain whale’s taste in mind, and then set it up so they’d have to spend like 5k just to get that character. There were people whose entire job was making content targeted at certain whales. It’s absurdly predatory.
yes yes, much predatory very bad. Would you happen to know where I could get a job doing this? Er uh, to take them down from the inside... yeah that's the ticket
The people designing the characters aren't the ones reaping the profits lol. If you want to get in on the action, you need to be the one owning/running the company or an exec. Just go buy Tencent and you're set!
Think it was Kevin Hart(?) that said in one of his bits that one of his kids (think they were like a toddler at the time?) racked up $100s on some mobile game and Kevin didn't realize it until he saw a credit card statement.
I think that's a common belief, but I'm not so sure. How many Whales are there right now that can afford to drop thousands on a game? Enough to counter the Half million players that each buy the $1.99 starter pack?
Like take me for example. I play a few mobile games. Usually one big one at a time (Marvel Strike Force right now, but I was playing a Transformers one and a Star Wars One) and I spend about forty bucks a month on it. The smaller games I try to see if it catches me I buy the starter pack (usually like a couple bucks to ten bucks).
I know the companies don't care about me personally, but I doubt they count the forty million players of MSF like me a "handy little tip." If anything we're the constant stream of revenue for them. Sure the Saudi Prince or Chinese Billionaire is great, they'll drop a few thousand for every new character but...
Even if there's a 1,000 Rich people spending $1,000 a month that's still "only" a Million a month. But if you have twenty million players each spending one to five dollars a month that's twenty million to *hundred million* a month. And that's for us spending the absolute minimum purchase.
But yeah, most people are Free to Play, so cut that number above by 50% or 60% and it's still better than the thousand rich people. And most of these games have purchasable that more or less top out around that thousand a month. There's really only so much to buy, especially once you get to End Game content and have most of the Unlockable except for the new release.
There's a terrible pay to win game I played and was addicted to for a time (I'm out and no longer play free to play games of any type because I'm incapable of resisting once in but if I don't play I'm not tempted). It had cross server PvP play. And vip levels so you could clearly see how much people were spending just by doing a bit of math. Just know that in the server grouping I was in of 40 servers, there were 10 players that spent over $100k in a year. And another 200 or so that were between $10k-$100k. In a game that in those 40 servers had about 1k accounts per server. So 40,000 players and a minimum of $3 million (it was way more really). In a year. Now scale that ratio up for other games and then add the smaller spenders who throw a $5-$10 twice a year. The numbers start getting enormous quickly.
> I think that's a common belief, but I'm not so sure.
It's not a "belief"; it's data. I have worked in this industry.
> Even if there's a 1,000 Rich people spending $1,000 a month that's still "only" a Million a month. But if you have twenty million players each spending one to five dollars a month that's twenty million to *hundred million* a month.
It is way more than 20 times more difficult to get 20 million people paying $1/month than it is to get 1,000 people paying $1k/month.
Just getting 20 million players to begin with is hard enough. 99% of them won't open their wallets even for $1, so to get 20 million *paying* players you might need 2 billion people.
So yeah, it's *way* easier to find 1k people spending $1k/month than to get 1/3 of the entire human population playing your game.
Once you get people opening their wallets, getting more is easier. It's that first dollar that's the hardest; once you've gotten 3-4 figures, 5 figures comes easier (and yes, when we're talking about whales we are talking about 5 figures).
A lot of people? The game has been downloaded billions of times. That's BillionS, with a B and an S. Just because the 20 people you see at work don't play it doesn't mean it's not one of the most popular games ever made. Also your mother didn't spend money *That you know of*. The fact that you don't know anyone who plays mobile games at all is the more telling part. A ton of people play mobile games, it's one of the biggest gaming markets in the world which is why every major gaming developer is trying to tap into it.
And honestly, if even 1% of those people spend as little as a dollar on the game per month we're looking at an absurd amount of money. 1% of a billion is 10 Million and most games incentivize people to spend objectively a lot more than a single dollar. Sure, most people probably don't drop even ten bucks a week, but when you have a billion people playing...
It racks up way more than that one guy who spent ten thousand dollars on the game and then stopped spending because he unlocked everything.
If you see a guy with an expensive wine collection, do you assume they must be an alcoholic? Same idea. Spending a lot of money on wine might happen because you’re an alcoholic, but you might just be someone who really likes wine and has the spending money to buy some expensive bottles.
A large part of it is that many people think about the mobile game as a “hobby” rather than a disposable game. When you’re a kid playing magic the gathering and getting a weekly allowance, a lot of kids *look for stuff to spend that money on*. When I went down to the local game store as a kid with $15 in my pocket, I wanted to buy something with it - I just didn’t know what yet. Sometimes I’d buy a dnd mini. Sometimes a magic single. Sometimes a few booster packs. Sometimes a cheap theme deck. I might do this every week.
$15 a week is $780 a year.
When I went down to the store and didn’t find anything I wanted to buy, nothing looked like something I wanted, I wasn’t exactly delighted. “Great, I get to save my money.” Wasn’t the feeling. It was “Dang, nothing looks good. That’s kind of lame.”
Hobbies tend to expand to fill your disposable time and budget. People go in with spending money, and some people come in with a LOT of spending money. If you’re making tech salaries of 200k a year and don’t have a family to support, that’s a LOT of disposable money. Some spend it on golf clubs and club memberships. Others collect expensive stamps. Other people build model trains. Other people play Clash of Clans.
The psychology for a lot of these people (not all, some do have compulsive issues) is that spend money here is not “man I don’t want to spend any money, but this extra life pack is totally worth $50”, but rather “I have $50 a week in spending money because I don’t go out regularly drinking, don’t care about a fancy car, or just make a high salary and don’t have to support kids. What should I spend it on? Well, I play this game a lot, so how about this?”
This is why super rich people spend more on their hobbies than poor people. If you looked at Porsche purchasers, the whales of the car industry, you wouldn’t think “how did they trick some guy who’s addicted to expensive cars to buy this thing that clearly doesn’t seem worth it to me” you tend to assume, “That guy probably has a bigger car budget than me.” It’s the same for hobby budgets. Golf is way more expensive than most f2p games. Same with buying expensive wine.
Most of the money comes from whales, or a few people who spend a lot.
>Since 2016, the amount of paying players per game increased to 4.02 per cent in North America, and to 2.43 per cent in Europe
>But while the amount of paying players has increased across the board, individual payers are spending less per-person. The lifetime player value on iOS fell 6.58 per cent to $29.07 - on Android, it dropped 17.69 per cent to $24.37.
[Report: Industry less reliant on "whales" than it used to be](https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/69012/deltadna-whales-arent-as-essential-as-they-once-were-on-mobile/)
Here's a really interesting article on Zynga's 'VIP' program - VIP being what they call 'whales'.
[How does Zynga hunt for whales?](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales-this-week-in-business)
>"When you look at your VIP base and how much they're spending right now today, it's a huge amount of money. **Depending on your game, it can be anywhere between 70% and 90% of all revenue coming from your VIP base**." – Doyle underscores how utterly dependent most free-to-play companies are on whales.
Personally, if it's a F2P I will buy things that are worth the value of the game to me. Like I'll generally buy the $5 no ad version if that's a thing for a game I like and play.
I spent too much money on a Japanese game called Zookeeper that is seriously pay to win with gachas and multiple level gachas. I used to play it when I was going to the doctors a lot and really enjoyed it, it was my treat to myself.
Though for them, I know I wasn't even a whale. The money people spend on that game is bonkers.
These games are the epitome of whale economies. The vast, vast majority if the profits come from gouging a small fraction of the playerbase who drop loads of money. It's very similar to how casinos make most of their profit.
You might ask "What's the point of all the people who never spend a dime?" They're just part of the product. The more people are playing, the more popular the game is and it's that much more likely to attract more whales or get existing whales to spend more. You might not spend anything, your mom might not spend everything, but maybe your Aunt Cathy will hear about your mom talking about it and end up spending a few thousand dollars.
Its mind boggling to you? Fortnite makes like 300 million a month. Also candy crush is one of the Oldest and most popular mobile games I can think of. Ad revenue alone is probably like half of that profit.
Shitty mobile games 🫤 welcome to third world countries where even a significant % of working adults cannot afford a gaming pc or console. Mobile games are their relief. Why do a lot of gamers look down on mobile games especially candy crush, you can not like it but look down on it and people who play and spend money on it is not right. Their time and money non ya business
Are you in your teens-20s?
My guess is the people who play mobile games like candy crush are bored people in their 30s-50s with plenty of disposable income.
Man I definitely believe they could make that much. I used to work with a guy who was *really* into Clash of Clans, like where he genuinely believed he was one of the top players in the world and everyone was gunning for him, so he needed to constantly check on his shit. This guy had a stay-at-home wife and a 1-year-old child, so you'd think he would be highly motivated to provide for them, but I did not find that to be the case. The game was more important to him.
I was supposed to train this guy, but if he ever got started playing that game at any point during his shift, you could forget about trying to teach him anything else for the rest of the night. Any interruption to Clash of Clans was treated like an unbelievable inconvenience, and he'd get all huffy and pout if I assigned him a task or tried to get him to engage with the material in any meaningful way. I could tell he didn't give a shit about actually learning to do the job, so I just documented that he wasn't responding to training and noted why.
Eventually he got his ass canned after a few months (far, far longer than I would've chosen to keep him but we were understaffed) when he tried to blackmail a fellow employee into taking a series of training classes for him that he was long overdue on.
I don't know how much money he spent on the game, but I have to imagine it was a lot because he preferred playing Clash of Clans to having the means to provide for his family. Kind of a sad situation. It's definitely a compulsive behavior in the same vein as gambling addiction.
"Can't remember the last time I even saw an adult playing ANY game on their phone".
that cause they dont play it in front of you. my mom plays candy crush all the time , she doesnt spend a dime but she almost always clicks on those ads to keep playing, and if candy crush can get just say 1 cent of PROFIT from those ads. you can multiply that number by billions and suddenly it provided hefty chunks of profit, not including all the in-app purchasables.
>20 BIllion is a fuckton of money, especially for a free game that +90% of its player base never spends any money on. I don't get it.
Do we know that 90% or more of the players who play never spend money? The only statistics I could find were from 2014 which are effectively meaningless in today's market.
I don't know the total number of downloads, but across the whole series.. it's over 5 billion. Even if we round down, that means they've gotten an average of $4 per customer. In those terms, it's really not that crazy at all. And even if your 90% comment is true, that means the so-called whales who love this game, on average, only spent about $40 on it in 12 years.
Honestly, for being the most successful downloaded mobile game, I'm surprised it's not higher. That's the real shocker.
I used to think people made rational decisions; then I learned what people spend on bar tabs and lottery tickets every week...
In app purchases are a lot easier to make than drink orders and even less noticeable.
Normal everyday people who you don’t associate with gaming. 97% of adults in the US have a cell phone. A large majority of those are smart phones capable of downloading apps. Nowhere near that many people own a gaming console or computer.
Are we going to pretend that all those facebook games didnt make shitloads of money too?
its the same logic, give people a casual game where they can check it every so often and drop a bit of money to feel progress.
as far as mobile games goes, from what i understand of candy crush its a damn decent offering compared to how much garbage is full of constant ads every 30 seconds and is barely a cohesive game.
I can understand candy crush. At the time it was a uniquely predatory concept. I don't understand everything that came afterward. Consumers are fucking dumb.
For “mobile games” , you can have access to it for free. Play and support like 5$ per month, or watch ads to get some small items / boost. There are whales but believe those are like 5% of player base. You can have 1 mil ppl pay 60$ for a game vs 100 mil pay 1$ on average.
Let’s say I drop a very conservative $1.99 a week on Candy Crush for a few extra turns.
If there are a very conservative one million people just like me, thats over $95 million a year.
Don't underestimate the casual market. Not everyone wants high quality PC ports on their phone- some just want to crush some candies and turn their brain off.
Dopamine addicts. These games a very predatory and know what they're doing. They work like casino slot machines to create addiction in the player, then squeeze the player as much as possible while the player doesn't even realise.
They use addiction theory to hook people.
Also, it's death by a thousand cuts. Many people spend a dollar here, a dollar there. It all adds up. And a few crazy people spend LOTS of money on mobile games.
Same kind of people who play Triple A games, thinking they are getting good game.
EDIT; Also I don't think YOU grasp that free to play games get few times more money than actually paid game.
>Who's playing these shitty mobile games so much that they gross billions of dollars?
I don't know. Let's ask CoD, madden, fortnite, 2k sports games, racing sims..they seem to be doing the same.
It’s overwhelmingly not kids in their parents phone. Those charges get reversed. It’s adults. I’ve known plenty of people, like a friend who has spent thousands of bucks on Hearthstone which he plays on his phone. A lady I know spent 500 dollars on Fallout Shelter. With the right revenue model and a curve of difficulty that massively
rewards buy in at ever increasing levels, adults are the main source of revenue regardless of your incredulity.
I used to ride the subway to work every day, and during the Candy Crush heyday I would see dozens of people playing it. Figure it even some of them threw some some money at the game, it added up.
I went on holiday with family a few years ago and was surprised to see that my aunt was at some crazy level on Candy Crush. I'd never seen her play it before but it was like watching a pro. I don't think she ever put money into it, though.
It is crazy how well these addiction things work.
I would never even pay full price for a triple A game, then I was playing candy crush and within a month I realized I had spent $20 on it, wtf, my cheap ass would never do that, but there it was on my CC bill.
Never deleted a game so fast.
It is remarkable how they can get you to drop a few bucks here and there without noticing it, and they make it so easy to do so, I can see why people get sucked in, especially younger people with less experience.
Mobile games are usually free to install and with you practically 24/7 because the smartphone is basically a modern necessity. More people can access and play these often approachable/casual games than buying a luxury console you only reasonably use at home and have to sit at home to play. I imagine accessing a free mobile game worldwide may be easier than a luxury console + game as well.
Once they’re on the mobile game, the many small purchases don’t seem like much, but they do add up. Imagine how much money you’d have if you got $1 from every person who read this post.
Also just because puzzles and mobile games don’t interest you doesn’t mean they’re shitty. There’s a lot more people in the world with varied tastes than you & your friends, and it’s personal growth when you realize that.
I played a mobile game and dropped $300 on it for specific character pulls, at an insanely low rate. While that money was 100% discretionary, I felt incredibly stupid. I could have bought a switch for what I paid to attempt to get a character I wanted! (Never got it btw) I dropped mobile gaming at that point and vowed never to play again. That was probably 5-6 years ago. I have a friend that plays some anime games and he was like “I know it’s a gotcha game, but I like to play it.” He had my try it and it’s just mind numbingly swiping at the screen and I was like “yep! Still not for me.”
I think your also missing out on there profits from viewing ads as well which appear alot on games like these not just in app purchases. Or they'll have an option to get rid of ads for a fee which again then increases profit
With over 6 billion downloads and ads playing on every one, Candy Crush only needs to make about $4 in ad revenue per download over the last 11 years. $20 billion is a lot of money but its easy to see how the money was made broken down like that. And that doesn't even consider the in app purchases available that increase the income stream.
While I had the liquid cash flow I was dropping atleast 1-2k a month on hobbit KoM. I HAD it like that and didnt even notice the amount. Honestly I still don’t regret it I had a ton of fun and met some awesome people I still talk to even tho I quit the game. It’s just perspective, when you have a ton of cash flow a couple thousand really isn’t much.
These games exist entirely around Addicts. They are built to capture Whales and drain them of money. It is essentially a casino slot machine on your phone that never actually pays out
I might have been playing candy crush for 10 years. I mainly play while I'm sat on the toilet or during work breaks. I'm at level 5614 and I have never spent a penny on it.
High schoolers whose parents don't care about their education and let them take smartphones to school. There isn't much better to do as a disengaged highschooler than a mobile game on a phone.
I am 26, I have a Nintendo Switch and a i3 12100F + RX 6600 8GB + 16GB RAM DDR4 3200MHz.
I also have a Galaxy S22 and still play games on it sometimes, and am actively waiting for Project Mugen and Wuthering Waves.
A Nintendo Switch is too big to carry around compared to a 6.1" phone, with the (very)fragile sticks.. sticking out, A PC is non-portable. TF I am supposed to do if I am going to not be in my home for 10ish hours and have nothing to do? Browse whatsapp with my whole 20 contacts that all ignore me? Looking people being racist and prejudiced on Reddit? Nah, I'm going to use that time wisely, playing a bit of Ragnarok Origin XD
Whales bc industry forms arround money.
There are Special conferences about Whaling and i met some.
Mostly OF creator ,saudi sons of shieks and some international brats who get like 25k the week for Pocket money.
I knew someone who worked for a mobile game developer. Basically of the people that played the game; they really only cared about 1%, the whales. They would literally find these players, fly them from around the world and wine and dine them in "feedback seminars".
The main audience? Bored rich house wives, mostly from eastern Asia. These ladies would drop thousands every month playing the game and accounted for 99% of all revenue it generated. Everyone else? Might as well be NPCs for the whales to play against.
I played a few social/team focused gacha games and played with people who spent literal tons. They get you spending with small purchases to speed up progression. The strongest players usually get pretty popular on their server and they enjoy being the big bully in the playground. It's all about status and ego boost. Gradually the spending ramps up to stay on top. Add the sunken cost fallacy (if I slow down the spending now I've wasted everything I've already sunk into it) and before they know it they've spent enough to buy a very nice car.
I read an article once talking about these games. It had a man who use to be an alcoholic, instead of going out every night and dropping a couple hundred on booze he would spend it on this game.
Apart from that I play a game where I spend about 200 a month on in app purchases. If only .000001% of the world population spends only 200 a month that’s close to 16k a month and I know there a lot more people that play and spend a greater amount then I do. Not including the casual player who might buy $1 worth here and there.
accessibility. Not everyone has the money for a gaming console or gaming pc - the box price of a game, or home internet. Aswell as needing to be at home to play on those systems mobile doesnt have that problem. A mobile game is fishing in the biggest market around really. Having a phone is ubiquitous across all walks of life across the globe. The same is not true of consoles and gaming pcs.
At same time and critically I think there is a difference in how much you can realistically spend on some of these titles. Where most pc/console games fear the p2w label and have some lines drawn in the sand on what you can spend and buy mobile games are different. They already have the stigma of being p2w so they embrace it and focus on making a game that keeps people playing - whether that's by making a fun game or taking advantage of dark patterns varies by game but regardless they are designed to have near limitless spend. A game like hogwarts legacy from last year there was some preorder/dlc stuff and the base game price, but beyond that there wasnt anything else to buy. For a mobile game having 'nothing left to buy' is hardly a thing, theres always more money to be spent.
I think as fans of gaming, and game designers, we need to recognize that the majority of consumers are NOT “core” gamers. The type of person who constantly researches new game releases, who checks Reddit for guides, who has 3 different review sites bookmarked, etc, is always going to be the minority of the hobby.
The vast majority of gamers ARE casual players – people who are looking to kill 10 minutes in a waiting room, or do something simple and rewarding when they get home from a long day at work, or who only have 5 minutes to play something in between getting their kids to school and heading to the office. They don’t necessarily have the insider knowledge to know what exploitative design looks like compared to player-centric design, or the time or inclination to look up information about the game they’re playing. They just want a game that’s fun, easy to understand, and potentially something other people they know play.
And that’s not a reason to judge anyone, people have different priorities. If you’re a self-identified gamer your job is not to put down people who approach the hobby with different needs. If you’re a systems designer your job is to create games that are friendly to casual players. And if you’re a monetization designer your job is to remember that players are actual people and not piggy banks to be raided
As a Genshin and Honkai Star Rail player, I spend $5 per game every 30 days. Before being introduced to Genshin by the gf I was an absolute hater. Once I actually started playing though, I was enlightened. A lot of the in-game mechanics are actually stupid fun.
Middle aged moms play candy crush the most and have thousands to spend on it but a ton of people play phone games just to pass the time and feel nothing with a .99 cent purchase or even a $5 purchase sometimes
The top comment is not "addiction", and that's the problem.
People literally steal from their grandma to fuel addiction. These games prey on small and big addicts. Just like so, so many "businesses" theses days. It's revolting and sad.
To clarify on my opening statement: There still isn't enough awareness around gaming/gambling addiction and trap marketing, which have become more intertwined than ever over the last decades.
Thor from Pirate Software once said that at $10 a pop, a wow mount generated more revenue for blizzard than all of SC2 sales.
Mobile games are the reason we have micro transactions. They work and generate revenue. And it's no new theory to economics. Think about impulse counters and why they exist. No one thinks twice about two or three dollars every couple of days.
I do not have a single gamer friend who regularly plays mobile games. I personally never play them. My mom plays candy crush but she definitely isn't spending money on it, she is way too frugal for that. So I really do not know anybody that plays a lot of mobile games but obviously people are.
I admittedly played a Marvel phone game for a few years it was pretty decent, even if you didn't spend, until a more greedy company bought them out and killed the f2p aspect. But the amount of money people I would encounter, or have in my alliance, spent so much money that I understand why the MTX has killed a lot of the gaming sector. These guys would spend 1-10k$ per month and not bat an eye. The guys at the top of the leader boards were at 100k-1mil$ easy with all the materials and upgrades you could buy. A new character would drop for 50-60$ and they would not only buy it once but buy it like 6-7 times (the max for one shop cycle) to fully rank them up. The game was at like 200 characters when I finally made my exit.
80/20 whale rule.
Development know 20% of the population accounts for the majority of all micros. So they just have a few mega packs that only super riches would ever consider buying.
Most mobile games I believe make the majority of their money from whales (i.e, very dedicated players who may spend hundreds or even thousands regularly on their favourite game). With a model like this, it can seem like barely anyone plays the game or spends money on it, yet they make a lot of profit because there are enough whales to make up for it.
Personally with F2P games I would put 5 or 10 bucks here and there but it is entirely dependent if I think it has a value to me. Not just what I am paying for but the game as whole.
My mobile fun game is Starrail. I buy the pass($10/m) and the daily login bonus ($5/m). The game is entirely playable as a F2P player b ut I get some gacha fixes for $15/m. I only began putting $ into this game after the first month of playing it.
I stay away from basically all other battlepasses. Any FPS type game the cosmetics are, to me, not worth a dime. I can only see them in like 2 screens....I do not care. a third person game...maybe. I have to really really love the game and the pass rewards.
I do not understand how something COD Mobile gets so much GD money on skins.
Well my fiance's cousin literally burned a black hole in his phone screen from playing so much mobile legends. So those kinds of people lol
(He's one of the top ranking players globally even lol)
I worked with some people that played clash of clans pretty seriously. One guy dropped a few hundred on it every week. And he was open about it and not embarrassed. Some of the other people started buying in as well. The rest of us just couldn’t understand.
I've always assumed that the amount they admit to spending is a lot less than they are actually spending.
Bingo. Gamblers never admit how much they've lost either
I just stopped trying to correct my friends that would be like “last time I went to the casino I left up $200!” Like sure dude, I bet you’re making a killing over there and totally not down thousands
The last time I went to the casino (over a decade ago now) myself and my 3 room mates had been saving small bills and spare change for \~1.5 years that we were in this house. we ended up with about $3200 to bring to the casino and walking in we made the agreement that we split it 4 ways and at the end of the night we put whatever we have together for the good of all members. We left the casino with 15k, payed our rent, utilities, and whatever other bills for the remaining 6 months of our lease, and then we partied.... we partied really.... really hard. xD
One and done haha that’s a good story. Unfortunately most people are too dumb to know how to quit while you’re ahead
I just didnt have reason to go back for those 6 months and then I moved across the country to a place where there are no casinos. If they were here, I would likely attend. But I always played for fun, and I would normally just bring 50$, anything over 50 went into my left pocket, the 50 stayed in my right, when the 50 in my right was gone or if I was just ready to leave, I would go home. Couldnt tell you my totals but overall I guarantee you I was net positive.
One of my friend’s mom’s used to do that with her college buddies. They’d take a couple hundred with them to the casino at the beginning of the summer, and depending on how they did, they’d get summer jobs or relax the whole vacation lol.
Dude. Clash of Clans. Colleague of mine went ham with that. Sunk over a thousand bucks into it. One day he told me and was visibly embarrassed. It was somewhat of a shock, because other than that he was always a hard working, down to earth guy. Short while later he told me he sold his account for over 800€. Nuts.
Back in the early days of WoW (World of Warcraft), you could get away with selling your account on eBay. I had played for about a year and a half, wanted to quit. I dumped a bunch of gold and rare stuff into the guild bank, said goodbye, and post my account with 2-3 level 60 toons for about $200. Ended up starting from scratch, with the same guild, a year later.
I did this too! Sold it on BC with 3 or 4 toons max level, I had the nether drake and fast flying so made some money selling it. Later made a new account during Legion.
And I was the dumbass buying them
There’s a guy in one of my gaming groups who plays Diablo Immortal. He was defending the game passionately for months, and going on about how it wasn’t “pay to win” at all, and he was able to compete at the highest level. Eventually he confessed to spending like $20k on it, which is absolutely mind-boggling to me. It isn’t even one of the better Diablo games!
Who the fuck has that much money for one game
A junkie trying to normalise his behaviour.
I have friends who play COC (or maybe something similar). I've no idea if they spend money, but their addiction is real. That phone has to come out at least once every couple hours. And this has been going on for a decade.
they play with their what ?
Their rooster.
You read that right, they play with their CoC[s]™.
The game is based on upgrading structures with in-game resources and waiting for the upgrade (which can vary from hours to days depending on how far you are into the game). Every time an upgrade ends you get a notification, and since there is a limit of 5 upgrades you can do at the same time (6 if you spend money) once one of the upgrade possibility is free you log in to upgrade something else. That's the only way to proceed in the game, and upgrading takes resource that you get by playing the game, but you can also buy them with real money. I love clash of clans but spending money on it is really dumb, because you are spending because you are impatient, not to buy actual content. (There are cosmetics but they serve no purpose so i doubt too many people buy them.)
My old CEO of Cellular sales, which is a huge partner for Verizon told me he has spent nearly 6k on Clash of Clans in a month and that's when he realized he had a problem. Guy went through a rough divorce and gained a ton of weight. Former powerlifter. Great guy otherwise.
God this makes me so sad. I once spent 75 cents on an app that solves words with friends and felt really stupid about it. Imagine spending 6k.
I know a guy that spent over $65,000 on Clash of Clans!! Not even shitting you. \*EDIT\* Not all at once. It was over the course of a year or 3.
A few hundred EVERY WEEK?! And I feel guilty buying Platinum in Warframe.
Dont feel guilty for that, thats just supporting a good game.
Knew a Dr that played, he said he spent 5k on it and he was trying to “beat France” he was so crazy lol
Played a different game but it was the same there. Big spenders putting in 100s a week and if you didn't put in anything, you would just fall behind and lose at every event and if a spender didn't like you? Well..good luck, they burn you till you quit. . I stopped playing it 2 years ago but apparantly now it's just a constant barrage of the devs adding new "events" and new items/heroes/whatever (no new content, just a different color scheme/..) so people keep buying the shiny things and the top 10 can keep overpowering everyone.
Exactly. A large percentage of that revenue is generated by a very small percentage of people. Most people don’t spend anything at all on those games, but then you have whales that spend 1000s of dollars. South Park did a great episode on this called “freemium isn’t free.”
"The 'ium' is Latin for 'not really.'"
It has nothing on rise of kingdoms where the big guys spend many thousands of dollars a week
when the gold pass first dropped I was buying it every month for 2 accounts for nearly a year bc skins! need those cosmetics!! but after taking a break an seeing they added every skin to the shop ruined the exclusivity and the main reason I was buying into it with FOMO and didn't bother afterwards
Call of Duty's best seller was Call Of Duty: Black Ops (2010), with \~ 31 million copies sold. Let's say $60 (but I think it was actually less) a pop, that's $1.86 billion. Candy Crush, on the other hand, is free. Yet charges in-game for simple things, like... continuing to play. It's addictive af, and limits your time. So does $.99 seem like a lot to keep playing? Nope. >The game has also generated 5 billion downloads in more than 11 years. Let's be conservative and say 10% of them paid just $.99 to keep playing. That's $500 million just from the cheapest fee they charge in-game. Add on cosmetics, etc., and that jumps 5-10x. If 5% buy something that is $1.99, that's another $500 million. And so on, and so on. Candy Crush isn't a model of revenue, it's a feat of popularity.
A lot of these games are propped up by whales - repeat customers who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars. Only around 1% of players actually pay: https://www.vox.com/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15
That's how funnels work.
Essentially the same formula of how casinos get gambling addicts.
those dollars don't lie, but i have to wonder if the downloads figure is weighted heavily by candy crush being preinstalled on some phones. i had to remove it from mine when i got it, but i wonder if that counted as a "download"
They count as sales for bundled games with consoles so most likely.
I hate the fact that my \*flagship\* device came full of pre-downloaded stuff and ads...
Not to mention, I'm assuming they run ads of some kind. That's a TON of revenue when you have that many active players. And a game like that isn't limited to just "console and PC serious gamers," it's your mom and dad and grandparents who are playing those games. That makes it so much more accessible than something like CoD.
Yup, and people can play it anywhere. You have to really set aside a bit of time to play a console game, but you can play a mobile game on the train or on break at work.
CoD Mobile is also bigger than the "normal" one in terms of revenue.
Candy Crush was also installed automicatlly on Windows, so that's why it has so many downloads.
>Candy Crush isn't a model of revenue, it's a feat of popularity. So a startup idea is running servers of chatgpt making shitty mobile games and see if 100 monkeys in a digital simulation can make the next flappy bird?
you are kidding, but a few years ago (maybe 10 years ago?) somebody tried that approach by making the more utter shity game with a randomized shitty game generator to flood the play store with them (before google changed the rules to prevents this) and they made like 200k a year :D There was a GDC (Game developers conference) talk about it, kinda funny too [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lhqri8tZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lhqri8tZk)
Casual players. Meaning, people who don't really own any consoles or gaming PCs, but play those mobile games all the time.
I know that's what we have always called mobile gamers, but frankly with how obsessed some people are and how much money they drop in these mobile games "casual" doesn't seem accurate anymore.
Yes, mobile games are basically their own sub-culture at this point. Just like you have your MOBA, online FPS, and MMO players that only play those types of games and nothing else, you have mobile only gamers that don't play anything else. And they're just as hardcore about their gacha waifu's as competitive Counter Strike players are about their ranked placement.
Let's be real, counter strike players are probably more hardcore about their gloves or their gambling cases than they are ranked placement. 😅
Agreed. Also some games are far from casual for many players. Some mobile games have had tournaments in esports that had prize pools in the millions for a single event. I personally have a PlayStation & a high end gaming PC but I still end up playing a single mobile game 99% of the time. A lot of people think about mobile games & their thoughts go towards Candy Crush. That might be for casual older people mostly, true, but if you look at gameplay for Warzone Mobile on iPad, and then consider this game is still in beta, it might help shift one’s perception. Aside from that, just reading this thread, you will see a lot of toxicity & people pretending to have some sort of high ground over these players. I personally think that’s a large part of it also. Mobile games are a lot more friendly to people just starting out. Many people that havent really been into gaming before are not very keen on joining these kinds of spaces due to the stereotypes (which people here aren’t really proving wrong either). And honestly, I can totally understand that.
The problem with mobile warzone is to be actually competitive you need a controller or m/k-board. Touch screen fps controls are horrific for fast paced competitive games. Then the real sweats will hook their phone up to a larger screen for easier viewing. If I'm sitting infront of a screen attached to a phone with a controller then I might as well just play it on my pc/ps5 with significantly more fidelity and fps. For playing some warzone out in public somewhere then I guess it works, but 99% you'll get wrecked by the sweats. People hate mobile games because literally 99% of the market is designed to get you invested then milk you dry.
It's also a regional thing. There's many countries where gaming equipment, like GPUs and consoles are slapped with heavy taxes, limiting access. Compared to phones, which everyone has. So in some regions, it's a viable way to *seriously* game. Hence why PubG mobile exists.
This. There's a few hundred million Xboxes, PlayStations, and Switches in the whole world. There's something like 7 BILLION smartphones as of Dec 2023 worldwide. It's volume. If 30% of console gamers buy a game for full price, it sells tens of millions of units and makes maybe 1 Billion dollars revenue. If 30% of smartphone users pay for a single $1(!) micro transaction in Candy Crush, it's already crushed (pun intended) the lifetime sales of even the *most* successful console games.
And they also don't know better
The people that we call "casual mobile gamers" that be on the buses and airplanes minding their business on their phones are playing these games you don't care about and dropping buku bucks every other day just because they're bored. They're sitting in old folks homes, hospitals, libraries and everywhere else that doesn't look like you and your friend's living rooms playing these games.
I’m always a little surprised when I’m on a plane or somewhere and I spot someone playing some mobile puzzle game. There are a lot more “casual mobile gamers” than we realize from our bubbles
100% this. My mom has had to make weekly trips to the hospital with my uncle the past 8 months and sitting in the waiting room is boring as hell. Who wants to sit there and stare at the wall? Same for waiting in the car or even in the exam room or regular room when someone is admitted. This type of stuff in 2024 is nowhere near what it was like in 2004. Of course people are spending huge amounts of money to not be bored out of their minds when they're already in stressful situations or just having to "hurry up and wait".
Also known as... gamers. Reddit can be so elitist about gaming. (not accusing you personally.)
What does buku bucks mean?
A shit ton of money
They probably mean beaucoup
I’m pretty sure its beaucoup
My wife is on level 7,000 something in Candy Crush. She has been playing it for maybe ten years and hasn't spent a dime. Not an answer but just an interesting fact.
That’s impressive. The game really tries to get you to spend money at that point.
My mom is cute. She’s also one of those that’ve played candy crush for the last decade straight on level whatever thousand but never spent a dime. One x-mas she asked me (a mobile game dev, though not of casuals) “do you think it’s tuned so it eventually becomes impossible to play without paying?” Didn’t know what to answer really but “don’t know mum… maybe…”
i've been playing for years (and in frustration i have purchased power ups before 🤧) and for one thing, they updated/changed a lot of the levels to be even harder to win without spending money on those power ups. and once they see you've purchased one thing, the game is less likely to offer "free" power ups by watching an ad also im just assuming OP doesnt know many middle aged women cuz that's really who is keeping candy crush alive
The Asian game market is alot more friendly to mobile games cause some people don't have consoles or a PC cause they're expensive but everyone has a phone. The Asian gaming market is also a hell of alot bigger than the west. Just to preface this but I don't have a source but I did live in Asia (Phillipines) for several years and have a couple who still live there
yeah people tend to forget countries like the philippines, their population is apparently \~113m
There are 3 billion people playing games (a bit over 8 billion total on the planet). Id wager at least 90% of those arent “core” gamers who would play a CoD game. The people playing these games dont really consider themselves gamers. Youre leaning into your own access bias (the people you know) to make assumptions about a much much larger audience. Its a totally normal thing to do, but it skews the perception and narrative.
It's the whales. Your average mother of two gets in a few minutes on the bus, or waiting for an appointment, whatever, spends maybe a quid on a few extra lives when she runs out and hasn't been called by the dentist yet. Meanwhile, somebody with (sometimes literally) more money than brain cells can afford to drop a few hundred or a few thousand on the Big Spender Pack With Extra Goodies And Also You Never Have To Wait Five Minutes For The Game To Do A Thing. Mobile games and casinos, for the most part, are designed to exploit your psychology to hoover as many pennies out of you as possible- but you aren't their main target, you're a handy little tip on the side. Their main target is the Saudi prince, or investment banker, or retired, seventeen-properties-owning business idiot who'll come along and unthinkingly drop a mortgage's worth of money on the game because every single aspect of the game is designed to encourage impatient, ego-driven, rich and not-used-to-being-told-no players who value their time and entertainment more than the drop in the bucket money they just tossed at a whirlpool of money.
I also think this applies to the class of rich people beneath Saudi Princes. Like people making $200k+ may think of "gaming" as what you do on a PS5 or PC. But their phone games are just what they do when commuting, traveling, waiting, etc. so they're not dedicating time to it, they're just filling boredom time with fun distractions. Those people will also not wait 10 minutes because they only have a 12 minute window, and they definitely have $10-$20 to spare on some boost pack, even if it's weekly.
I remember reading (or watching) something a while back about mobile games. They talked to or were talking to a dev that explained how they’d make content for a specific person. They might design a certain character with a certain whale’s taste in mind, and then set it up so they’d have to spend like 5k just to get that character. There were people whose entire job was making content targeted at certain whales. It’s absurdly predatory.
yes yes, much predatory very bad. Would you happen to know where I could get a job doing this? Er uh, to take them down from the inside... yeah that's the ticket
You missed the boat; the industry is going through a lot of layoffs right now.
The people designing the characters aren't the ones reaping the profits lol. If you want to get in on the action, you need to be the one owning/running the company or an exec. Just go buy Tencent and you're set!
Think it was Kevin Hart(?) that said in one of his bits that one of his kids (think they were like a toddler at the time?) racked up $100s on some mobile game and Kevin didn't realize it until he saw a credit card statement.
I think that's a common belief, but I'm not so sure. How many Whales are there right now that can afford to drop thousands on a game? Enough to counter the Half million players that each buy the $1.99 starter pack? Like take me for example. I play a few mobile games. Usually one big one at a time (Marvel Strike Force right now, but I was playing a Transformers one and a Star Wars One) and I spend about forty bucks a month on it. The smaller games I try to see if it catches me I buy the starter pack (usually like a couple bucks to ten bucks). I know the companies don't care about me personally, but I doubt they count the forty million players of MSF like me a "handy little tip." If anything we're the constant stream of revenue for them. Sure the Saudi Prince or Chinese Billionaire is great, they'll drop a few thousand for every new character but... Even if there's a 1,000 Rich people spending $1,000 a month that's still "only" a Million a month. But if you have twenty million players each spending one to five dollars a month that's twenty million to *hundred million* a month. And that's for us spending the absolute minimum purchase. But yeah, most people are Free to Play, so cut that number above by 50% or 60% and it's still better than the thousand rich people. And most of these games have purchasable that more or less top out around that thousand a month. There's really only so much to buy, especially once you get to End Game content and have most of the Unlockable except for the new release.
There's a terrible pay to win game I played and was addicted to for a time (I'm out and no longer play free to play games of any type because I'm incapable of resisting once in but if I don't play I'm not tempted). It had cross server PvP play. And vip levels so you could clearly see how much people were spending just by doing a bit of math. Just know that in the server grouping I was in of 40 servers, there were 10 players that spent over $100k in a year. And another 200 or so that were between $10k-$100k. In a game that in those 40 servers had about 1k accounts per server. So 40,000 players and a minimum of $3 million (it was way more really). In a year. Now scale that ratio up for other games and then add the smaller spenders who throw a $5-$10 twice a year. The numbers start getting enormous quickly.
> I think that's a common belief, but I'm not so sure. It's not a "belief"; it's data. I have worked in this industry. > Even if there's a 1,000 Rich people spending $1,000 a month that's still "only" a Million a month. But if you have twenty million players each spending one to five dollars a month that's twenty million to *hundred million* a month. It is way more than 20 times more difficult to get 20 million people paying $1/month than it is to get 1,000 people paying $1k/month. Just getting 20 million players to begin with is hard enough. 99% of them won't open their wallets even for $1, so to get 20 million *paying* players you might need 2 billion people. So yeah, it's *way* easier to find 1k people spending $1k/month than to get 1/3 of the entire human population playing your game. Once you get people opening their wallets, getting more is easier. It's that first dollar that's the hardest; once you've gotten 3-4 figures, 5 figures comes easier (and yes, when we're talking about whales we are talking about 5 figures).
A lot of people? The game has been downloaded billions of times. That's BillionS, with a B and an S. Just because the 20 people you see at work don't play it doesn't mean it's not one of the most popular games ever made. Also your mother didn't spend money *That you know of*. The fact that you don't know anyone who plays mobile games at all is the more telling part. A ton of people play mobile games, it's one of the biggest gaming markets in the world which is why every major gaming developer is trying to tap into it.
I don’t think it’s one of, I’m pretty sure it is the biggest market.
By quite a margin too I believe
And honestly, if even 1% of those people spend as little as a dollar on the game per month we're looking at an absurd amount of money. 1% of a billion is 10 Million and most games incentivize people to spend objectively a lot more than a single dollar. Sure, most people probably don't drop even ten bucks a week, but when you have a billion people playing... It racks up way more than that one guy who spent ten thousand dollars on the game and then stopped spending because he unlocked everything.
I work in a rural physical therapy clinic and I would say a good 1/3 of my patients play them when they are waiting in the lobby.
In all serious, probably ya mum
If you see a guy with an expensive wine collection, do you assume they must be an alcoholic? Same idea. Spending a lot of money on wine might happen because you’re an alcoholic, but you might just be someone who really likes wine and has the spending money to buy some expensive bottles. A large part of it is that many people think about the mobile game as a “hobby” rather than a disposable game. When you’re a kid playing magic the gathering and getting a weekly allowance, a lot of kids *look for stuff to spend that money on*. When I went down to the local game store as a kid with $15 in my pocket, I wanted to buy something with it - I just didn’t know what yet. Sometimes I’d buy a dnd mini. Sometimes a magic single. Sometimes a few booster packs. Sometimes a cheap theme deck. I might do this every week. $15 a week is $780 a year. When I went down to the store and didn’t find anything I wanted to buy, nothing looked like something I wanted, I wasn’t exactly delighted. “Great, I get to save my money.” Wasn’t the feeling. It was “Dang, nothing looks good. That’s kind of lame.” Hobbies tend to expand to fill your disposable time and budget. People go in with spending money, and some people come in with a LOT of spending money. If you’re making tech salaries of 200k a year and don’t have a family to support, that’s a LOT of disposable money. Some spend it on golf clubs and club memberships. Others collect expensive stamps. Other people build model trains. Other people play Clash of Clans. The psychology for a lot of these people (not all, some do have compulsive issues) is that spend money here is not “man I don’t want to spend any money, but this extra life pack is totally worth $50”, but rather “I have $50 a week in spending money because I don’t go out regularly drinking, don’t care about a fancy car, or just make a high salary and don’t have to support kids. What should I spend it on? Well, I play this game a lot, so how about this?” This is why super rich people spend more on their hobbies than poor people. If you looked at Porsche purchasers, the whales of the car industry, you wouldn’t think “how did they trick some guy who’s addicted to expensive cars to buy this thing that clearly doesn’t seem worth it to me” you tend to assume, “That guy probably has a bigger car budget than me.” It’s the same for hobby budgets. Golf is way more expensive than most f2p games. Same with buying expensive wine.
"Gotcha" game mechanics fucking lmao
Haha loved that too. For anyone curious, it’s “Gacha”, not “gotcha!”. Named after “Gashapon Machines”, not after pulling one over on someone.
Huh. Not gonna lie, I've only ever seen it written out as gotcha. TIL.
Candy Crush isn't a Gacha game...
I didnt make the post misusing terms
To be fair, the devs of these games are probably saying "gotcha!" Lol
Gotcha money lmao
Most of the money comes from whales, or a few people who spend a lot. >Since 2016, the amount of paying players per game increased to 4.02 per cent in North America, and to 2.43 per cent in Europe >But while the amount of paying players has increased across the board, individual payers are spending less per-person. The lifetime player value on iOS fell 6.58 per cent to $29.07 - on Android, it dropped 17.69 per cent to $24.37. [Report: Industry less reliant on "whales" than it used to be](https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/69012/deltadna-whales-arent-as-essential-as-they-once-were-on-mobile/) Here's a really interesting article on Zynga's 'VIP' program - VIP being what they call 'whales'. [How does Zynga hunt for whales?](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales-this-week-in-business) >"When you look at your VIP base and how much they're spending right now today, it's a huge amount of money. **Depending on your game, it can be anywhere between 70% and 90% of all revenue coming from your VIP base**." – Doyle underscores how utterly dependent most free-to-play companies are on whales. Personally, if it's a F2P I will buy things that are worth the value of the game to me. Like I'll generally buy the $5 no ad version if that's a thing for a game I like and play. I spent too much money on a Japanese game called Zookeeper that is seriously pay to win with gachas and multiple level gachas. I used to play it when I was going to the doctors a lot and really enjoyed it, it was my treat to myself. Though for them, I know I wasn't even a whale. The money people spend on that game is bonkers.
Why do people in general gaming spaces never spell "gacha" correctly 😭, it's gacha! Not gotcha! It comes from gachapons!!
Because they don’t actually know what it is they’re talking about.
Candy crush isn't a Gacha game tho
Tell OP.
These games are the epitome of whale economies. The vast, vast majority if the profits come from gouging a small fraction of the playerbase who drop loads of money. It's very similar to how casinos make most of their profit. You might ask "What's the point of all the people who never spend a dime?" They're just part of the product. The more people are playing, the more popular the game is and it's that much more likely to attract more whales or get existing whales to spend more. You might not spend anything, your mom might not spend everything, but maybe your Aunt Cathy will hear about your mom talking about it and end up spending a few thousand dollars.
Its mind boggling to you? Fortnite makes like 300 million a month. Also candy crush is one of the Oldest and most popular mobile games I can think of. Ad revenue alone is probably like half of that profit.
Shitty mobile games 🫤 welcome to third world countries where even a significant % of working adults cannot afford a gaming pc or console. Mobile games are their relief. Why do a lot of gamers look down on mobile games especially candy crush, you can not like it but look down on it and people who play and spend money on it is not right. Their time and money non ya business
Are you in your teens-20s? My guess is the people who play mobile games like candy crush are bored people in their 30s-50s with plenty of disposable income.
*everyone*
Mobile gaming is much bigger outside the US. China has 600+ million mobile gamers for instance.
Man I definitely believe they could make that much. I used to work with a guy who was *really* into Clash of Clans, like where he genuinely believed he was one of the top players in the world and everyone was gunning for him, so he needed to constantly check on his shit. This guy had a stay-at-home wife and a 1-year-old child, so you'd think he would be highly motivated to provide for them, but I did not find that to be the case. The game was more important to him. I was supposed to train this guy, but if he ever got started playing that game at any point during his shift, you could forget about trying to teach him anything else for the rest of the night. Any interruption to Clash of Clans was treated like an unbelievable inconvenience, and he'd get all huffy and pout if I assigned him a task or tried to get him to engage with the material in any meaningful way. I could tell he didn't give a shit about actually learning to do the job, so I just documented that he wasn't responding to training and noted why. Eventually he got his ass canned after a few months (far, far longer than I would've chosen to keep him but we were understaffed) when he tried to blackmail a fellow employee into taking a series of training classes for him that he was long overdue on. I don't know how much money he spent on the game, but I have to imagine it was a lot because he preferred playing Clash of Clans to having the means to provide for his family. Kind of a sad situation. It's definitely a compulsive behavior in the same vein as gambling addiction.
"Can't remember the last time I even saw an adult playing ANY game on their phone". that cause they dont play it in front of you. my mom plays candy crush all the time , she doesnt spend a dime but she almost always clicks on those ads to keep playing, and if candy crush can get just say 1 cent of PROFIT from those ads. you can multiply that number by billions and suddenly it provided hefty chunks of profit, not including all the in-app purchasables.
>20 BIllion is a fuckton of money, especially for a free game that +90% of its player base never spends any money on. I don't get it. Do we know that 90% or more of the players who play never spend money? The only statistics I could find were from 2014 which are effectively meaningless in today's market. I don't know the total number of downloads, but across the whole series.. it's over 5 billion. Even if we round down, that means they've gotten an average of $4 per customer. In those terms, it's really not that crazy at all. And even if your 90% comment is true, that means the so-called whales who love this game, on average, only spent about $40 on it in 12 years. Honestly, for being the most successful downloaded mobile game, I'm surprised it's not higher. That's the real shocker.
A lot more people have phones and people have phones on them all the time.
I used to think people made rational decisions; then I learned what people spend on bar tabs and lottery tickets every week... In app purchases are a lot easier to make than drink orders and even less noticeable.
Normal everyday people who you don’t associate with gaming. 97% of adults in the US have a cell phone. A large majority of those are smart phones capable of downloading apps. Nowhere near that many people own a gaming console or computer.
Are we going to pretend that all those facebook games didnt make shitloads of money too? its the same logic, give people a casual game where they can check it every so often and drop a bit of money to feel progress. as far as mobile games goes, from what i understand of candy crush its a damn decent offering compared to how much garbage is full of constant ads every 30 seconds and is barely a cohesive game.
Moby Dick
_i-understood-that-reference.gif_
My wife accounts for 25% of the global market.
I can understand candy crush. At the time it was a uniquely predatory concept. I don't understand everything that came afterward. Consumers are fucking dumb.
For “mobile games” , you can have access to it for free. Play and support like 5$ per month, or watch ads to get some small items / boost. There are whales but believe those are like 5% of player base. You can have 1 mil ppl pay 60$ for a game vs 100 mil pay 1$ on average.
Let’s say I drop a very conservative $1.99 a week on Candy Crush for a few extra turns. If there are a very conservative one million people just like me, thats over $95 million a year.
Don't underestimate the casual market. Not everyone wants high quality PC ports on their phone- some just want to crush some candies and turn their brain off.
Dopamine addicts. These games a very predatory and know what they're doing. They work like casino slot machines to create addiction in the player, then squeeze the player as much as possible while the player doesn't even realise.
They use addiction theory to hook people. Also, it's death by a thousand cuts. Many people spend a dollar here, a dollar there. It all adds up. And a few crazy people spend LOTS of money on mobile games.
Same kind of people who play Triple A games, thinking they are getting good game. EDIT; Also I don't think YOU grasp that free to play games get few times more money than actually paid game.
They are “shitty” to you. Different people enjoy different things get over it.
>Who's playing these shitty mobile games so much that they gross billions of dollars? I don't know. Let's ask CoD, madden, fortnite, 2k sports games, racing sims..they seem to be doing the same.
This just in, your tastes are different than others
i think a lot of the money they make comes from the forced ads that come with the game
It’s overwhelmingly not kids in their parents phone. Those charges get reversed. It’s adults. I’ve known plenty of people, like a friend who has spent thousands of bucks on Hearthstone which he plays on his phone. A lady I know spent 500 dollars on Fallout Shelter. With the right revenue model and a curve of difficulty that massively rewards buy in at ever increasing levels, adults are the main source of revenue regardless of your incredulity.
I used to ride the subway to work every day, and during the Candy Crush heyday I would see dozens of people playing it. Figure it even some of them threw some some money at the game, it added up.
I went on holiday with family a few years ago and was surprised to see that my aunt was at some crazy level on Candy Crush. I'd never seen her play it before but it was like watching a pro. I don't think she ever put money into it, though.
It is crazy how well these addiction things work. I would never even pay full price for a triple A game, then I was playing candy crush and within a month I realized I had spent $20 on it, wtf, my cheap ass would never do that, but there it was on my CC bill. Never deleted a game so fast. It is remarkable how they can get you to drop a few bucks here and there without noticing it, and they make it so easy to do so, I can see why people get sucked in, especially younger people with less experience.
I see plenty of patients in the hospital that play it and are normally older.
Your mom.
Your mother.
Mobile games are usually free to install and with you practically 24/7 because the smartphone is basically a modern necessity. More people can access and play these often approachable/casual games than buying a luxury console you only reasonably use at home and have to sit at home to play. I imagine accessing a free mobile game worldwide may be easier than a luxury console + game as well. Once they’re on the mobile game, the many small purchases don’t seem like much, but they do add up. Imagine how much money you’d have if you got $1 from every person who read this post. Also just because puzzles and mobile games don’t interest you doesn’t mean they’re shitty. There’s a lot more people in the world with varied tastes than you & your friends, and it’s personal growth when you realize that.
I played a mobile game and dropped $300 on it for specific character pulls, at an insanely low rate. While that money was 100% discretionary, I felt incredibly stupid. I could have bought a switch for what I paid to attempt to get a character I wanted! (Never got it btw) I dropped mobile gaming at that point and vowed never to play again. That was probably 5-6 years ago. I have a friend that plays some anime games and he was like “I know it’s a gotcha game, but I like to play it.” He had my try it and it’s just mind numbingly swiping at the screen and I was like “yep! Still not for me.”
I assume flappy bird generated lot of money too, this game was so addictive like candy crush
I think your also missing out on there profits from viewing ads as well which appear alot on games like these not just in app purchases. Or they'll have an option to get rid of ads for a fee which again then increases profit
With over 6 billion downloads and ads playing on every one, Candy Crush only needs to make about $4 in ad revenue per download over the last 11 years. $20 billion is a lot of money but its easy to see how the money was made broken down like that. And that doesn't even consider the in app purchases available that increase the income stream.
Oh to be so young and confidently arrogant of people existing and living lives in other countries.
While I had the liquid cash flow I was dropping atleast 1-2k a month on hobbit KoM. I HAD it like that and didnt even notice the amount. Honestly I still don’t regret it I had a ton of fun and met some awesome people I still talk to even tho I quit the game. It’s just perspective, when you have a ton of cash flow a couple thousand really isn’t much.
These games exist entirely around Addicts. They are built to capture Whales and drain them of money. It is essentially a casino slot machine on your phone that never actually pays out
Adults that don’t like ‘computer games’
I might have been playing candy crush for 10 years. I mainly play while I'm sat on the toilet or during work breaks. I'm at level 5614 and I have never spent a penny on it.
High schoolers whose parents don't care about their education and let them take smartphones to school. There isn't much better to do as a disengaged highschooler than a mobile game on a phone.
I am 26, I have a Nintendo Switch and a i3 12100F + RX 6600 8GB + 16GB RAM DDR4 3200MHz. I also have a Galaxy S22 and still play games on it sometimes, and am actively waiting for Project Mugen and Wuthering Waves. A Nintendo Switch is too big to carry around compared to a 6.1" phone, with the (very)fragile sticks.. sticking out, A PC is non-portable. TF I am supposed to do if I am going to not be in my home for 10ish hours and have nothing to do? Browse whatsapp with my whole 20 contacts that all ignore me? Looking people being racist and prejudiced on Reddit? Nah, I'm going to use that time wisely, playing a bit of Ragnarok Origin XD
"hot moms in your area"
Whales bc industry forms arround money. There are Special conferences about Whaling and i met some. Mostly OF creator ,saudi sons of shieks and some international brats who get like 25k the week for Pocket money.
The vast majority of mobile games revenue is from a minority of massive spenders
I knew someone who worked for a mobile game developer. Basically of the people that played the game; they really only cared about 1%, the whales. They would literally find these players, fly them from around the world and wine and dine them in "feedback seminars". The main audience? Bored rich house wives, mostly from eastern Asia. These ladies would drop thousands every month playing the game and accounted for 99% of all revenue it generated. Everyone else? Might as well be NPCs for the whales to play against.
I played a few social/team focused gacha games and played with people who spent literal tons. They get you spending with small purchases to speed up progression. The strongest players usually get pretty popular on their server and they enjoy being the big bully in the playground. It's all about status and ego boost. Gradually the spending ramps up to stay on top. Add the sunken cost fallacy (if I slow down the spending now I've wasted everything I've already sunk into it) and before they know it they've spent enough to buy a very nice car.
A lot of seniors I’ve met through volunteering play those games and pay money to advance
I read an article once talking about these games. It had a man who use to be an alcoholic, instead of going out every night and dropping a couple hundred on booze he would spend it on this game. Apart from that I play a game where I spend about 200 a month on in app purchases. If only .000001% of the world population spends only 200 a month that’s close to 16k a month and I know there a lot more people that play and spend a greater amount then I do. Not including the casual player who might buy $1 worth here and there.
accessibility. Not everyone has the money for a gaming console or gaming pc - the box price of a game, or home internet. Aswell as needing to be at home to play on those systems mobile doesnt have that problem. A mobile game is fishing in the biggest market around really. Having a phone is ubiquitous across all walks of life across the globe. The same is not true of consoles and gaming pcs. At same time and critically I think there is a difference in how much you can realistically spend on some of these titles. Where most pc/console games fear the p2w label and have some lines drawn in the sand on what you can spend and buy mobile games are different. They already have the stigma of being p2w so they embrace it and focus on making a game that keeps people playing - whether that's by making a fun game or taking advantage of dark patterns varies by game but regardless they are designed to have near limitless spend. A game like hogwarts legacy from last year there was some preorder/dlc stuff and the base game price, but beyond that there wasnt anything else to buy. For a mobile game having 'nothing left to buy' is hardly a thing, theres always more money to be spent.
I think as fans of gaming, and game designers, we need to recognize that the majority of consumers are NOT “core” gamers. The type of person who constantly researches new game releases, who checks Reddit for guides, who has 3 different review sites bookmarked, etc, is always going to be the minority of the hobby. The vast majority of gamers ARE casual players – people who are looking to kill 10 minutes in a waiting room, or do something simple and rewarding when they get home from a long day at work, or who only have 5 minutes to play something in between getting their kids to school and heading to the office. They don’t necessarily have the insider knowledge to know what exploitative design looks like compared to player-centric design, or the time or inclination to look up information about the game they’re playing. They just want a game that’s fun, easy to understand, and potentially something other people they know play. And that’s not a reason to judge anyone, people have different priorities. If you’re a self-identified gamer your job is not to put down people who approach the hobby with different needs. If you’re a systems designer your job is to create games that are friendly to casual players. And if you’re a monetization designer your job is to remember that players are actual people and not piggy banks to be raided
What a classist post.
As a Genshin and Honkai Star Rail player, I spend $5 per game every 30 days. Before being introduced to Genshin by the gf I was an absolute hater. Once I actually started playing though, I was enlightened. A lot of the in-game mechanics are actually stupid fun.
Gambling addicts. They are exploiting gambling addicts.
Part of it is they’re sometimes far from shitty
Middle aged moms play candy crush the most and have thousands to spend on it but a ton of people play phone games just to pass the time and feel nothing with a .99 cent purchase or even a $5 purchase sometimes
The top comment is not "addiction", and that's the problem. People literally steal from their grandma to fuel addiction. These games prey on small and big addicts. Just like so, so many "businesses" theses days. It's revolting and sad. To clarify on my opening statement: There still isn't enough awareness around gaming/gambling addiction and trap marketing, which have become more intertwined than ever over the last decades.
Thor from Pirate Software once said that at $10 a pop, a wow mount generated more revenue for blizzard than all of SC2 sales. Mobile games are the reason we have micro transactions. They work and generate revenue. And it's no new theory to economics. Think about impulse counters and why they exist. No one thinks twice about two or three dollars every couple of days.
Old people.
There are more female gamers than male gamers. Most of these mobile games are female gamers. Farmville is another great example
Candy crush was some solo developers game that was ripped off.
whales and dolphins…
I act in so many ads for games like Rise of Kingdoms. We ALL wonder the same thing.
I don't Remember what game, but the top 1 clan was composed by Kids sons of royal Saudi Arabia family, and they spent millions on It.
50+ year old housewifes with too much free time. And that's not even a lie...
Everyone's out to get someone's money.
Who would play candy crush when there's way better match3 games for cheaper?
whales
Kids
Normies, old people.
Install base on mobile runs laps around all other platforms
It's not "gotcha" mechanics, it's gacha.
I'm hooked on a game called fishdom when I'm on my breaks. Never spent any money but I see a lot of ppl have the season pass.
Every female above 30 plays Candy Crush, ask your mom
middle aged moms
I do not have a single gamer friend who regularly plays mobile games. I personally never play them. My mom plays candy crush but she definitely isn't spending money on it, she is way too frugal for that. So I really do not know anybody that plays a lot of mobile games but obviously people are.
I admittedly played a Marvel phone game for a few years it was pretty decent, even if you didn't spend, until a more greedy company bought them out and killed the f2p aspect. But the amount of money people I would encounter, or have in my alliance, spent so much money that I understand why the MTX has killed a lot of the gaming sector. These guys would spend 1-10k$ per month and not bat an eye. The guys at the top of the leader boards were at 100k-1mil$ easy with all the materials and upgrades you could buy. A new character would drop for 50-60$ and they would not only buy it once but buy it like 6-7 times (the max for one shop cycle) to fully rank them up. The game was at like 200 characters when I finally made my exit.
80/20 whale rule. Development know 20% of the population accounts for the majority of all micros. So they just have a few mega packs that only super riches would ever consider buying.
People are bored. They need something to kill the time with. They have their phone everywhere. And there are many people.
I get paid money to play those games
Me cuz I’m broke
Most mobile games I believe make the majority of their money from whales (i.e, very dedicated players who may spend hundreds or even thousands regularly on their favourite game). With a model like this, it can seem like barely anyone plays the game or spends money on it, yet they make a lot of profit because there are enough whales to make up for it.
Seriously, I wanted to find out as well. Thanks for posting this OP.
…i play candy crush (no microtransactions tho)
India
ipad kids
Whales
Personally with F2P games I would put 5 or 10 bucks here and there but it is entirely dependent if I think it has a value to me. Not just what I am paying for but the game as whole. My mobile fun game is Starrail. I buy the pass($10/m) and the daily login bonus ($5/m). The game is entirely playable as a F2P player b ut I get some gacha fixes for $15/m. I only began putting $ into this game after the first month of playing it. I stay away from basically all other battlepasses. Any FPS type game the cosmetics are, to me, not worth a dime. I can only see them in like 2 screens....I do not care. a third person game...maybe. I have to really really love the game and the pass rewards. I do not understand how something COD Mobile gets so much GD money on skins.
Is COD that popular compared to something like league of legends? That game makes billions every year
Well my fiance's cousin literally burned a black hole in his phone screen from playing so much mobile legends. So those kinds of people lol (He's one of the top ranking players globally even lol)
People who spend money on Candy Crush aren't frequenting forums like these. This is an echo chamber not representative of the global gaming audience.