I didn't read the article (it's a video of a 31-year-old spending $70K), but $70K, even in a year, is not the craziest extreme compared to what whales have reportedly spent over the decade, right?
> At a conference I attended last year, a representative of a gaming company — who declined to be named or interviewed for a story — claimed that his firm had worked with a Japanese game company with one player who spent about $10,000 per month on in-app purchases. The company, he said, had assigned an employee to cater just to that whale, to ensure that she was always satisfied with the game and therefore likely to keep coming back.
Of course, there's also the money spent on PC games, such as Star Citizen. Looks like the biggest spender is $30,000 (though the game hasn't been released yet):
I think the reason people are so willing to invest in SC is much different than the reason people are spending tons on in app purchases in mobile games.
SC is a game in a genre that has been mostly dead for years (free economy space sim) so when someone buys in they are buying in in hopes of an old genre getting revitalized.
SC is also pushing the boundaries in terms of technology. No loading screens, vast universe that takes days (real time) to cross. 1/4 scale planets. Animations for everything, you turn your head in your ship it turns. You touch a control in your ship your character touches it. Multiplayer throughout the universe, sometimes with thousand of objects all on the physics grid synced up with all players. Basically all items have physical space, rather than just a DB entry somewhere (all on the grid). You literally stack inventory in your ship and secure it.
So with SC you are paying a lot to buy into a super premium space sim. Your purchases go to funding the game. The emphasis is not on the game's quality or on the mechanics itself but instead on taking advantage of your brains wiring and using the game as an outlet to get you to spend money in an addictive fashion.
With mobile games you are buying into a feedback loop which is solely designed to make money off of you. Usually with loot boxes and gambling mechanics.
tl;dr SC is expensive but it's more like an expensive premium good as apposed to a gambling simulator. So they are quite different in what you are getting for the high price.
For example, from this 2014 Recode article:
https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-wha...
> At a conference I attended last year, a representative of a gaming company — who declined to be named or interviewed for a story — claimed that his firm had worked with a Japanese game company with one player who spent about $10,000 per month on in-app purchases. The company, he said, had assigned an employee to cater just to that whale, to ensure that she was always satisfied with the game and therefore likely to keep coming back.
Of course, there's also the money spent on PC games, such as Star Citizen. Looks like the biggest spender is $30,000 (though the game hasn't been released yet):
https://www.polygon.com/2015/11/7/9687934/someone-has-spent-...