| > Only bit I disagree with is that the big spenders are doing it purely because of addiction or gambling. People spend big in games because: * The spending is very stimulating visually and audibly (think lootbox openings) * The gains from their spending translates directly to game-social prestige, game power, or both (i.e. an Advantage) * This Advantage allows them to lord over the players who have spent less (or 0 in the case for F2P players) Whether that manifests into addiction depends entirely on the rest of the game's design (but you know, games that introduce the Advantage tend to want to make a lot of money by getting you hooked on spending...) > Second, games provide a sense of community. A lot of game revenue is monetizing people's desire to not be alone. Calling these players addicted is I think reductive. Yes, these games do provide a sense of community because they are purposefully designed to do so. Without an incentive to play while getting lorded over by whales, the fish will leave. Without a bunch of fish to lord over, the whales will leave. Again, this depends on the game's design, but the vast majority of them encourage addiction to the Advantage and its use against others. Maybe you can extend this analysis to IRL stuff. I don't know because I don't participate in any of it. Source: [Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4&t=0s) |
One, it's fresh - games had a fixed cost for about 25 years. Notice I didn't say it's new, because games had similar monetization tactics if you go back far enough to arcade tokens.
Two, the most vocal players are not yet in the income-earning years of their life which makes them incredibly price sensitive. Once they get older and have a better grasp of time and money, they may decide spending $200/month on a game you enjoy daily from the toilet is on par with other hobbies they could have, and more convenient.
From another angle, consider grocery stores which purposely arrange their stock inefficiently to make you walk deeper into the store. And force you into data collection price clubs by withholding competitive prices. This stuff is just as 'exploitative' as dark patterns, but with only a fraction the digital ink spilled over it. (I'm doing my part!)