Lessons on Mobile Gaming from a Whale

My name is Mike Lu and I am the VP of Product at GREE. I’ve worked on many of our successful top-charting titles - Modern War, Kingdom Age, Crime City - and I am a huge gamer myself. One of the best things about working in the video game industry is the “research” part of the job. This is probably not a shock to people, but research for us usually means playing a lot of video games.

This tradition is not just limited to our industry, but learning from others is a great way to improve one’s craft. Take for example, my favorite Sushi restaurant in San Francisco: Akiko’s.

On their days off, the chefs at Akiko’s make it a point to try various restaurants to observe and learn in order to get a better idea of what their potential patrons like and don’t like. Which is exactly why we like to play all kinds of games!

This is no different for mobile and a lot of my work involves playing other games which include mobile, console, and PC - all to understand the needs and wants of the players or potential players out there - and specifically to understand the type of player known as “whales.”

One of the elements that make free-to-play unique is that we give the games away for free and then are dependent on players enjoying the game and any new content enough to spend within that game. The majority of the revenue comes from an even smaller group (the “whales”). So what is a whale and why do they spend thousands of dollars in the games they love?

As a mobile game maker, I definitely had some ideas about the “why,” but it wasn’t until I became a whale myself that I started to understand the mentality. I had spent thousands of dollars on another company’s mobile game and in doing so I learned a lot about what players are doing in my game. In today’s blog post I hope to share my top three findings of being a whale in mobile games and how someone can incorporate this into their own design.

1) Whales never spend frivolously

Before I became a whale I was under the impression that whales simply just spend to alleviate their inconveniences. “Spend $9.99 to replenish your health instead of waiting ten minutes.” Sure, I spent in these areas but I often felt it wasn’t a good investment. I could put that $9.99 into getting something that will have a long-term impact to my game. Even after spending thousands of dollars I was still very careful about what it is I spent that money on. Don’t assume that if you put a $200 item in the game that whales will just grab it up for no reason; or that if you added a speedup in X, all whales will just gobble it up. Each purchase I made was calculated, and it had to make sense to the game. Give them something that’ll impact the game in the long term, like allowing them to research more than X slots, or changing the output of a resource by n%. Make the value of what they’re buying truly worthwhile and you’ll see them purchase again and again.

That brings us to my second point.

2) The true value ratio.

Part of being a whale allowed me to understand that players often associate a true value to what they’re spending in the game. The concept is fairly simple, if a new item came out that cost $100 but was “worth” $200, I’ll gladly buy it because I think I’m getting a good deal. Spenders have all created this association in game and the reward or ROI from what’s being purchased is very clear. A great example of this occurrence happened by accident in one of our games. One of our limited-edition packages was set to only allow players to purchase one at a time. However, there was an engineering bug that allowed players to buy multiple packages and when players found out purchases went up by 1000%. Some even bought a hundred packs in fear that we would soon discover the bug and turn it off. There was no set back to the game for players purchasing that many packs, but the whales were driven to believe that they were getting such a great true value ratio that they were willing to keep purchasing.

3) Leave it to chance

When I was in the height of my addiction to one particular game, I was really drawn to the chance system. I would find myself continuing to take advantage of that gameplay feature with the mantra ”I know I’ll get the legendary in the next pack” constantly running through my head. The idea that what I was getting wasn’t guaranteed seemed to be counter intuitive to traditional game design, but this aspect of free-to-play design really works for players like me (whales). I was essentially “gambling” on what my reward was each time; and trust me, the one time I did get a legendary item I was so happy that I literally jumped up and high fived the guy next to me.

4) Whales are just like you and me

When we think of these “whales” we often imagine them as rich people with a ton of disposable income. Research has showed that “whales” are way more average than that. Basically - they can be anyone. There is not one defining characteristic or profile that allows us to specifically pre-determine who could be a whale or a specific demographic to target. We have had whales that are male, female, in the military, doctors, lawyers, mothers, students - basically all walks of life. What does that mean? Well it means we need to stay focused on building great games with great content for any and all players.

So - what do all these findings mean for game developers? Well, the first take-away I hope you get here is how important it is to get to know and understand what makes your players tick. That rule applies whether you are free-to-play or not, console, mobile, PC, RPG, racing - basically anything. Know your players. Play the games and understand how and why they do things, so you know that you are giving them and spending the resources on content that people will actually want.

The second key piece is to remember that players spend strategically. There is no success in throwing up expensive items and hoping people buy them - there has to be meaning in the content (which is why it is so important to know your players and know the game). Players aren’t looking to line your pockets, but to make their gaming experience better and they are thinking long-term about each move they make. That’s a good thing. Players are committing to your game. It’s your job to make sure you are equally committed to theirs.

Third and last, remember that there is no playbook on how to reach “whales.” No perfect demographic to target or type of player to look for. And, despite looking for those player patterns, it turns out that it really is all about fun. The quality of the game and gameplay experience is what will draw in players - and specifically “whales” - so my advice is to stay focused on making those great.