food for thought... what do you think is the ratio of whales buying gems for custom umas, g1 doubles, etc vs normal people buying a gems for a wildclaw scroll every now and then?
We actually have data on whales, in other games. It may not be perfectly applicable because FR is the opposite of pushy when it comes to getting people to spend money (ex: compare FR to a mobile game that pushes the “daily deal” or whatever on you as soon as you open the app), but it can provide us more insight.
According to a company that specializes in this very sort of research,
Overall, 5% of spenders (i.e. <0.1% of all players) are whales. The typical whale, even those that spend between $100-$200, will have a large number of transactions, with ‘mega spenders’ paying $1000+ and completing 55 transactions on average... Interestingly, even at these high spend amounts, many players will never complete a large transaction, with 20% of mega-whales never spending more than $50 in a single transaction.
I would like to first note that according to this company’s definition, a “normal” person buying a few Wildclaw scrolls or G1s over the course of their time on FR could conceivably count as a whale, since they count people spending as little as $100 as whales. Also note that only 5% of spenders are whales—that means 95% of spenders are spending less than $100. This could be skewed with regard to FR because FR doesn’t offer any transactions under $5 like a lot of other games.
Now if you follow that link, you’ll find their table of percentages of who is a whale and who is a mega-whale. Only 0.1% of spenders—not players overall, but spenders—are mega-whales who spent $1000+.
Like I said, this might not be directly applicable to FR. I do think, though, especially given how not-pushy FR is, that FR probably doesn’t make as much money as we all think on gem sales. It’s possible that more people spend money as an act of goodwill to support the game, since FR has more of a long-term community and isn’t just a throwaway mobile app, but it’s hard to say how that impacts things.
PS: Keynes anon, I’m waiting until this eye discourse blows over so your post gets the attention it rightfully deserves!
