How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by shados on Monday May 06, 2019 @06:12PM (#19844465)

I have gone too far once or twice (out of hundreds....) where I felt bad about it. I've felt the same way about a major renovation once too though. It happens.

The key is in your last sentence: "wouldn't in retrospect have preferred to use that money for something else."

Unless I went and blew 50k on the game (which I fortunately never did and likely never will!), that's not even a question. Whatever money I'll spend on these, I -still- have to spend on something else. I only spend a tiny fraction of my disposable income. I (and many "whales") just have a LOT of disposable income. Very few people who go and blow 1500 bucks in a night on these actually empty their bank account (at least from my experience being part of a lot of gacha game communities. I obviously don't talk to all the whales).

I have a kind of "limit" I set myself, with zero expectations. When you blow enough money, statistically the odds of getting what you want are really high. I've gotten really unlucky at times, but usually I'll get what I was whaling for. And sometimes the game shuts down, and it's like, whatever, it happens.

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Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by Faark on Monday May 06, 2019 @08:24PM (#19845281)

If you don't mind... I'm eager to hear how this is... fun.

I've personally encountered whales in two situations:

One was someone in an MMORPG trading equipment. Okay, I kind of get the skipping work part, especially if the money doesn't matter.

But then there were the logs I've encountered while doing support for a browser based MMO RTS. Players clicking the same few buttons to get a small fixed amount of resources. Over and over and over again. Only interrupted to recharge the currency. How can that be satisfying? Just the "work" alone seemed demoralizing to me, but then even paying for that?

Have you ever experienced something like this? Is the process of spending enjoyable? Or does the end justify the means, especially for non-random outcomes?

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Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by shados on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @09:30AM (#19849112)

Have you ever dropped a quarter in one of those machines that drop a random toy as a kid? It's exactly the same. You push the button and hope to see rainbows appear, and when they do, it's fun. No, doing it for hours would not be fun (and would be horribly expensive. These transactions can easily run 20 bucks per "pull"). You do a few in a row every now and then.

The fun part (and what distinguish the good gacha games from the bad ones) is how much fun you can have with what you get. Some feel like the transactions and the gambling is the end goal. You play to get currency to get random stuff. Boring.

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Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by mattnewport on Monday May 06, 2019 @07:36PM (#19845015)

> Whatever money I'll spend on these, I -still- have to spend on something else. I only spend a tiny fraction of my disposable income.

This seems like a strange measure to me. No judgment on how you choose to spend your money - I've certainly spent money on things I later regret, and I've also spent large sums on relatively frivolous things which I don't particularly regret. There's always an opportunity cost though - I could have spent the money on something else, I could have saved more, I could have given more to charity. Over time I try not to repeat the expenditures I regret and focus more on the ones that I don't.

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Re:How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year by shados on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @09:34AM (#19849136)

Think of it as going to a fancy restaurant. When you eat a fancy steak, it lasts a few minutes, maybe a few hours if you consider the whole experience, but at the end it goes in the toilet. But you had some enjoyment (well, unless you're vegan). You'd also get enjoyment from a much cheaper burger, too, but sometimes it's fun to do something different, even if the money is lost and you're left with nothing.

It works like that, except you usually still have something for a long time, even though it's digital.

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