To me this "ultra-wealthy" thing has always sounded like a convenient lie whale-game devs tell themselves to sleep soundly at night. These dark pattern black holes are made purely to form an addiction and turn it into profit, they don't care about who's on the receiving end.

There's an increasing number of players who expect that either a) a game will take unlimited money and feed them dopamines in return, or b) they never have to pay a dime for anything because they're fully subsidized by the addicts. I have conflicted feelings about administrative regulation of this stuff, I just hate that things are this way, especially as an independent game dev.

(I'll do the hustle - my first game Pawnbarian is a chess-flavored puzzle roguelike. On mobile it's an ad-free demo with a single $7 IAP for the whole thing. Out on Steam and Android, iOS will follow soon. j4nw.com/pawnbarian)

It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long. Most long lived whales are likely to be from wealthy families, or the fun side addiction for a very wealthy individual. That doesn't change the fact that there are addicted people who spend a large percentage of their income on a game. Whales are one thing and addicted players are another.

> It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long.

They don't have to. Repeatedly unearthing cow-clickers whom you can milk for $10'000 before sending them into financial ruin sounds like a much more viable business strategy to me than trying to build a portfolio of people both rich and dumb enough to sustainably cow-click.

> build a portfolio of people both rich and dumb enough to sustainably cow-click

I think you're putting wealthy folks on way too high of a pedestal. The wealthy aren't some hyper-rational, utility-maximizing robots. They're people with likes and dislikes like any other. Being a whale for a very rich person or a very rich family is a drop in the bucket in terms of their net worth. Plenty of people can keep their degeneracy to a budget.

I don't necessarily disagree, but for the purpose of my argument this is splitting hairs. Both audiences are functionally the same from the game design standpoint.

Why do you think the mechanics of nonchemical addiction are different to chemical addiction? I certainly see plenty of nonrich people being addicted to drugs and essentially spend everything they have on drugs (the proximity to crime is obviously an additional factor)

Totally agree. I’d love to see any hard data for that claim.

Does the same pattern hold true for casinos? Or are the bulk of the profits coming from the poor SOBs who blow every paycheck there?

A lot of the whales and leviathans have some kind of online presence so it's really not hard for a game dev to know them by name, or even invite them to the studio.

> I've seen similar comments by several game devs, but at least some of them said that they make most of their money from the kids of the ultra-wealthy.

This seems like naïve speculation to me. Think about the number/scaling of this. It would give them a few months worth of income at best?

The sadder truth is that they're exploiting escapism and maladaptive coping (addiction, gambling) in people who also use escapism to cope/relax. Often times, those same people in desperate need of escapism are there because they struggle in real life, often financially too.

So, the little reprieve they get from gaming negative impacts their physical lives.

Diablo Immortal is a caricature of the depravity most games have become. A few games like Overwatch are not P2W, but even they have lootbox mechanics for cosmetic skins (you get boxes for leveling up and challenges, as you play, though). Blizzard literally can't help themselves.

The interesting thing is that you would think Blizzard would have known this. Literally the last game in the same Diablo series launched with a much-hated Real Money Auction House, which was eventually removed.

Reminds me of EA Sports FIFA. The whole Build a team process is predatory and based on gambling + micro transactions

> but at least some of them said that they make most of their money from the kids of the ultra-wealthy.

sorry, but that's just sickening.