[b_tterc_p]

I think that your depiction of whales is generally incorrect. There are certainly apps that try to trick kids by requiring currency that is not-obviously real money. These exist for adults too, but aren’t what people refer to when they talk about whales.

Whales make such payments intentionally. They understand that they’re paying hundreds or thousands of dollars- and are doing so in bulk transactions because it’s the most cost effective rate. They play a game regularly and spend so they can maximize their standing whenever new content is released (very frequently).

That is to say, whales exist in games with transparent pricing. I don’t recall specifics but I think Pokémon go was a good example of this. IIRC you could buy coins that were useful for buying poke balls and egg incubators. Not 1:1 but hardly abusive. Whales still spent (spend?) thousands on it.

Edit: every so often I click on an ad for the most awful looking porn based online game I come across just to see what it is. It’s quite surprising to see how deeply implemented some of their gameplay is given their garbage marketing strategy and value prop. What is truly fascinating however is how incredibly complicated some of their micro payment systems are. Dozens of resources introduced around every corner with unclear ways of acquiring any of them in game but each one noting that it will be required to unlock some stupid scandalous picture and can be refilled for $5. Whatever your mental model is for the insidiousness of app based micro payments is, you might find it bizarrely entertaining to explore how much worse it can get in such a context.

[benologist]

I think whales are just a bunch of companies selling a lie that combining all the dark patterns = great customers.

You say they're happy to do it but just to "find" a whale you must disassociate real spending and transactional cost, obfuscate real currency, create inconvenience etc. Nobody went in wanting to spend thousands and 99.99% opt-out of paying. That's 0.01% of customers being happy and a generous use of the word since they were never offered a version that wasn't a sales funnel of dark patterns.