Whale
"I spared no expenses."
- – John Hammond, Jurassic Park
"Don't ask questions, just consume product. And then get excited for next product."
- – Jay Bauman, The Nerd Crew
Whales (infraorder: Cetacea) are one of the most majestic mammals on planet Earth. Despite their watery habitat, they require to breathe at the surface and does not possess brills. They count as one of the largest animals to ever exist, and many types have become very endangered species. They have occasionally appeared as real world creature encounters in /tg/ related games like D&D or Pathfinder. But we could only wish this here article was only about them.
Whales, also known as Money-hoes, Consoomers, Addicts, Extra-spenders, "Superfans", EA's moneypit, the FOMO crowd, "Our dear and very faithful fanbase", are a fringe of consummers and, unfortunately, tabletop players who possess too much money for their own good. Although they vary in many ways, Whales are easily identifiable by their habit of buying shit that they shouldn't buy, but still do because, as they usually try to justify themselves;
In reality, they lose tons of money and are the victims of dangerous business practices and offers that more often than not border on what could considered scams. Companies like EA, Activision-Blizzard or Games Workshop profit off of those Whales when it comes to their shaddiest practices. You name them; microtransactions, cosmetics, shit-deals, scams, lootboxes... This has an effect of making what practically everyone agrees sucks ass and complains about to work (read; bad games and bad offers), because Whales don't care about they spend their money. This has a tendency of making a lot of peeps really mad, since they can't really stop them from spending like maniacs.
Why are whales like this?
Most Whales are descendants from people who suffer from shopping sprees. And they themselves have a certain mentality that pushes them to act this way. For one thing; most whales live in economically comfortable social spaces, or have always lived in conditions where they were permitted to obtain anything that they wished to have. That, or they had recieve a form of trauma from a life from which they were refused a lot of things. This turned into an obsession with possessing things for the sake of possessing them, or be the talk of the town for a while.
We now live in a world in which there are sales constantly. In the haydays of shopping, such things happened once in a blue moon, so to temporarily boost sales to promote "luxury" items at a "fair" price. Now, what do we have? Black Friday, Summer Sales, Winter Sales, Fall Sales, Valentine's day Sales, Halloween Sales, Nth Anniversary Sales, coupons, reductions, packs, etc. Many people have been living in an environment that tells them to watch out for those reductions. But at the same time, they become easy victims to the scummiest of shit; like corpos augmenting prices just a little bit and then put everything on sale to make you think that you're in front of a good deal.
Another common factor for this is the infamous Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO. This made a lot of companies' money, because people with this kind of syndrome hate a timer being set on an item they wish to have. So to bait them into buying quick and fast, they say put a time-limit on a set of items (which in most cases, they could sell at any time), and say; "Oh, there's a timer on that product! Better buy it now or else it's gone! Well, it could possibly come back, but who knows? Maybe it won't!".
This makes the Whale goes absolutely insane. But since they have the money and it works, companies get away with shitty practices that ruining all kinds of gaming. Something /tg/ and /v/ can both agree on. If you need any proof of this, just look at all the bullshit that GW pulled and worked, or the entirety of EA's career.
How does that affect hobbyism and pop-culture, you may ask?
Everything is now made and produced to be consummable. Or at least, to fit a certain idea of narration and story-writing that goes directly into satisfying a specific niche of people. No Whales are alike, but they some groups share similarities in their taste for certain things. So to ensure that things are bought on the spot, franchises are tailor-suited into including certain tropes, designs or references that had an appeal in the past (or in the present), and try to sell many products around it until it turns into a fad. What do you think Funko Pops are? Do you think the people buying them actually enjoy the licenses represented? Bloody Hell no, it's just that feeling like you're a part of a greater community through the art of possessing merch makes Whales feel better about themselves.
Famous whale-bait
Bundles: The most obvious form of merch. Just bring a bunch of individual items together and then sell it for some manner of discount.
- Pretty much the common state of vidya since 2010 involves adding preorder incentives that not only get you the game the instant it comes out (on top of any potential playable demos you might be allowed to access), but also includes all sorts of special pre-packaged DLC and even physical merch like statues and vinyl records.
- Another trend that's followed are Season Passes, which charge a certain higher amount but automatically give you access to all the upcoming DLC for a certain time period. Not only is this likely to trigger recurring payments, but it's also given rise to a particularly scummy mindset of releasing half-assed games where half the content is locked behind the Season Pass DLC.
- Sites like Humble Bundle and Bundle of Holding let you purchase all sorts of stuff at steep discounts, from vidya to comics to - most notably for us fa/tg/uys - RPG books. If you aren't opposed to only having PDFs, you can occasionally find a bundle that includes dozens of books to a certain RPG that only costs around 30 bucks. Of course, what starts with one important bundle then gives way to another, and then another, discounting any packaged-in vouchers for other purchases...
- GW's been leading pretty hard into this with stuff like the Games Workshop Start Collecting! boxes and Vanguard Boxes giving a means to begin building an army, only to realize that you'll only be able to play small games without buying more. 10th Edition 40k is leaning harder into this with the Combat Patrol Boxes providing you a whole prepackaged army for you to play against other prepackaged armies. Did the prebuilt army you buy suck more dicks than you did to afford it? You either go to regular 40k to build your army or just buy another prebuilt army.
- Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation: The "I-Win" formation of 6E that seamlessly merges both Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus back when they were separate armies. Was purchasable as a single box in 6E and provided rules so utterly bullshit and OP that it was near impossible to lose.
Battlepasses: See this (presumably) free game? How do you make people pay for a game more than just once and in a regular interval? Battlepasses are essentially in-game programs that reward playing the game with certain in-game rewards that reset each month. However, paying for this battlepass not only speeds up your progression on that pass, spending enough on it also gets you to certain rewards that are otherwise inaccessible just by playing the game. Not only is this a recurring drain on the bank account, it also gives rise to the utterly paradoxical idea of treating this video game that you play to enjoy as a second job that pays in nothing physical.
Lootboxes (Random Packaging IRL): Buying for an item that comes with a random chance of getting valuable in-game items, from minor stuff like emotes to important stuff like playable characters and good equipment. The fact that people will sink millions of dollars just to get this one rare item makes this the most harmful of perils to confront a whale as it preys upon the addiction to gambling.
- The Japanese managed to hone this down to such a point that they've given it a whole term: Gacha, which is derived from Gachapon, little coin-operated kiosks that give you random tiny toys. Any mobile games coming from somewhere in eastern Asia (mainly Japan, but also includes China and South Korea) pretty much wallow in this mechanic to uproarious success by having whales dump loads of cash for random drops in hopes of getting their waifu/husbando.
- Another industry that thrives upon this is Card Games. After all, you have no idea what cards you'll get so you'll be spending hundreds of bucks just so you can get that super-rare, nice-looking card that can finish your build.
Simping: While not (usually) rooted in anything /tg/ would care about, it is nonetheless one it can be subject to thanks to the rise of real-play livestreams like Critical Role on sites such as YouTube and Twitch. Essentially anyone who streams on any of those sites will get weird people who will dump dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands just to see the cute girl on stream say their name. Why do they do this? Because these are people who've lost touch with reality and view their relationship with the streamer as something closer than just someone watching the stream, the causes of this belief being a lengthy discourse on psychology us neckbeards playing make-believe with plastic toys aren't the most qualified for. That said, the person on the other side of the stream isn't necessarily always winning, as that $100 they just received is split up between the streaming service, paying any staff, and ultimately leaves the streamer with only a fraction of $100. Sometimes, that money will be spent on improving their streaming setup with new equipment or to pay for something behind-the-scenes, while other times they'll just blow it on petty shit like any of the abovementioned.
- Simping has taken on another meaning as well, in that someone will pay a girl for NSFW material, usually only reserved to special paying individuals. While not as relevant to /tg/ as simps on TTRPG streams, the rise of sites like OnlyFans shows what lows these kinds of whales will go to.