>The market only cares about people that do pay. Those 99% might as well not exist and nothing would change.
Except that's not really how it works. You have to make your game good enough to attract the amount of players for which that 1% of paying users can support your development.
Go ahead and try to design a game that focuses on "whales", see how the works out.
Also why buy the "SUPER FLAMING SHOTGUN 9000" for $9.99 if there aren't mobs of non paying players to blow up? It's sort of like google, the non paying players are the product here.
Only because they don't know about it. If you had a way to market to them you really wouldn't need the other 99%. There's probably enough data out there to do just that, too.
Well, except that a lot of the worst F2P mobile games are competitive multiplayer. If you cut out all the freeplay minnows, the whales don't have enough people to play against.
Doesn't that make the original statement a tautology? If the market doesn't care about the 99% that play but don't pay, of course video games are nothing but a costly addiction.
No, because in markets where most people pay, they aren't optimized to be costly addictions. Mainstream video games charge every player $50 one time, instead of charging 1 player $5,000 and 99 players $0.
Except that's not really how it works. You have to make your game good enough to attract the amount of players for which that 1% of paying users can support your development.
Go ahead and try to design a game that focuses on "whales", see how the works out.