There's also the need to maintain a balance so that the whales don't become so overwhelmingly powerful that they drive everybody else out of the game.which in turn can lead to the whales themselves also moving on to another game after the "massively multiplayer" portion of your MMO is gone. Game design jargon calls these players Whales (a term originating from casinos to describe someone who spends extravagant amounts of money) - they are usually the major source of a game's income and how badly you should milk them is a permanent ethical question for any game company. Some games will use the Sunk Cost Fallacy to keep players spending money again and again.įor a small fraction of the player base, these games are very susceptible to becoming Serious Business, with some players spending astronomical sums just to get the best equipment and Character Class.
See also Revenue-Enhancing Devices, which is when there are lots of extra goodies and bonuses to buy along with the game. Contrast Real Money Trade, which is when people buy and sell in-game resources against the developers' wishes. Not to be confused with actual Freeware Games, nor with Shareware, which is straightforward about its commercial nature and final about its sale. Naturally, the existence of this type of game creates a seriously Broken Base among gamers by its very nature.Īllegedly Free Game is a Sister Trope to Bribing Your Way to Victory. Some combination of Freemium and Microtransactions will likely be involved in this. Any way that you cut this, you aren't going to get very far without reaching for your wallet. Some games make progress dependent on Level Grinding and/or Money Grinding that becomes obscenely tedious without shelling out real money for Experience Boosters or other things that reduce the time for grinding or eliminate the need for it - for example, when a mid-level raid on an RPG will net you about 15,000 gold, but the Sword of Plot Advancement you need to advance to the next level costs 100 quadrillion googolplex gold or 5 diamonds worth one US dollar each. Sometimes you're restricted to a "free" zone and have to repeatedly buy access to the rest of the game piece by piece sometimes you're incapable of gaining certain abilities or items without buying them with real-world money sometimes gameplay is time-restricted unless you either pay to reset the timer or wait for several hours or even days before you can perform more activities sometimes you can buy a copy or pay a subscription fee (and even then, additional purchases may be needed.) Some games just have so much that is exclusively bought that those who pay have such a gigantic advantage over those who don't.
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