Why do some players get to spend hundreds or thousands of euros in a game?

News By scorpionwithns

Chris is a regular guy. He is working for 13 years in a technology company and grew up with movies and series like Star Wars, Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. Like many of us developed during as teens a taste for all stories related to the ability to travel between planets and galaxies, to discover new races, to establish bases beyond Earth.

The main difference between Chris and us is that he has spent about $ 30,000 on the new ‘Star Citizen’.

In current business models, the game industry has generated big chunks of money by allowing a person to come to invest huge amounts of money on a single game, either through a collector or for projects Collective financing with mad rewards for exaggerated amounts, but especially and particularly through the free to play.

$ 30,000 for ‘Star Citizen’

‘Star Citizen’ currently has grossed more than $ 94.2 million through its campaign of collective financing. More than one million players have decided to support the project and Chris is one of them. As consideration in this interview published in PC Gamer, one of the three people who most influenced his life with John Carmack and Steve Jobs is Chris Roberts, principal responsible of the game:

Chris Roberts disappeared in the late 90s and early 2000s, and later returned with this project. He did it in a moment of my life when I had the additional possibility of supporting something like this. I have not spent a penny of my main account. I made secondary works to get those funds. Some people buy boats. I buy boats made with pixels. I have not supported anything or I put nothing on credit cards. All the money is available. I have not been stupid in that regard. Put things on credit cards had been fooling around.

So he has decided to support ‘Star Citizen’ to have the money. Before getting to the complete package, which is priced at $ 18,150, he had already acquired more modest: ” when I think I’ve helped to create a project that I believe will change the game in the next decade, I’m like this. I know I’m going to spend more “.

Hearthstone: free game which hurts not pay

Attachment to a person who has had a major impact in your life is the main reason that Chris has decided to support a project like ‘Star Citizen’ with almost $ 30,000, but there are many more cases of people who decide to invest large amounts of money on specific games and each of the protagonists of these stories has its own reasons.

Like a financial advisor to the oil industry that spent $ 3400 in letters to his collection of ‘Hearthstone’ in one night. As he claimed, “In my bank account there are a number that just became a slightly smaller number. I have enough money not to worry about my own except every few months to make sure it goes up“.

In total, in the words of Nick, he had spent only $ 5,000 on ‘Hearthstone’. A figure that most of us may seem an exaggeration, but putting in context can have the same sense as any other.

A user named Everborne launched the following question in a forum: how much money you have spent on ‘Hearthstone’? He himself confirmed to have invested the modest sum of $ 30, but the first response returns to put a considerable amount on the table: $ 500. The username is whoismilked who explained the reason:

In a way I cringe when I think about it, but I’ve spent around $ 500. I really do not regret it, because the game offers me countless hours of entertainment and has almost a year now. I see it like this: when I’m bored and go out at night with friends, I easily spend a few hundred dollars and which not give me more than a hangover the next day. But when spending money on a hobby and / or in something I enjoy and offers entertainment repeatedly me feel better. Also I like to support the games free to play if I spend much time on them, as in the case of Hearthstone.

Paul Tassi had no trouble recognizing that he had spent $ 637 in ‘Hearthstone’ without any remorse, despite hating microtransactions. The motives? The main thing is that Blizzard has done very well, but the relationship between Tassi open decks and pay for it comes back when bought envelopes ‘Pokemon’. Somehow, that it was a kind of microtransaction for him:

The act of opening a pack hoping to find valuable cards in one of the most addictive mechanisms buying planet, both in real life and the digital world. It is a slot machine that does not make you feel bad to play, and the rewards you get used to assemble a collection instead of giving more money to keep playing. You never get the feeling of being lost because you can point your tangible collection of letters and say “Look, I have all that”. Technically they may be worthless, but that feeling does not (yet I have hope that my collection of Pokémon cards ever financed the education of my children).

In the free to play is where the largest amounts move

‘Hearthstone’ is one of the best free to play they have seen the light and are many players who do not hesitate to pay whatever it takes for their content, but not the only one getting this far: the popular ‘Clash of Clans’ developed by Supercell generates 1.5 million dollars a day. Some players are able to spend thousands of dollars to join the league of legends (which can also be achieved by other means: playing about ten hours a day for about two years). Take a look at this base which cost $ 12,000:

Seth Stevenson explains why he decided to spend real money on ‘Clash of Clans’ when other games like ‘Candy Crush Saga’ not only failed to convince him to do, but they did feel superior to not have fallen under its siren song:

There is something about the act of attending to my village -place walls and canyons and the gold mines and so on that hits the longing of my brain by the methodical order. It is oddly gratifying to see my carefully arranged defenses doing their job. As my village grows, I have an adrenaline ego to feel that I’m building my own powerful empire. It’s hard to stop playing and give up all that.

Yes, must be very hard when a whole baseball team, the Kansas City Royals entire season was almost ruined because the addiction of ‘Clash of Clans’ of many players . The thing ended with the coach being forced to convene a meeting to ask his players did not devote much time to the damn game.

One final note about the free to play: