Whale
"I spared no expenses."
- – John Hammond, Jurassic Park
Whales 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 have gone to become a very endangered species. But we could only wish this here article was 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.
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.
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.
- 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...
- Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation: The "I-Win" formation of 7E. 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 let you get 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 to get 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 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.