For this week’s Massively Overthinking, we’re going full Inception because we’re talking about last week’s Massively Overthinking and some of the spillover our team had while discussing lockboxes. See, I had asked our team to talk about desirable things in lockboxes (the veteran MMORPG term for gambleboxes/lootboxes). And to the person, all of us basically said… nothing. We seldom if ever buy them. We’re not into them. We’re actually over them. We don’t want them. We don’t care what’s in them. And we don’t really want them to exist. And we’re all people who live and breathe MMORPGs!
It prompted a secondary discussion I did not publish about why people do fall for the ol’ lockbox scam – and what demographic is doing it. There are competing whale stereotypes, after all; there’s the stereotype of the addiction-addled youth swiping mom’s credit card, and there’s the stereotype of the washed-up middle-aged gamer trying to claw his way back from casual to hardcore with his wallet. MOP’s Chris and Tyler proposed a third option: the doomspender, the young adult who embraces spending at the edge of despair, retail therapy but with an element of chance.
“Perhaps it’s an extension of Gen X’s ennui; I’m not going to be able to afford a house, can’t take money with you when you die, might as well roll for this waifu,” Chris joked.
So let’s Overthink it a bit. If it’s not midcore MMORPG gamers and genre veterans buying lockboxes, who is – and why? Is this is pure whales who splash money around? Addicts who can’t math their way out of a paper bag? People who chase one thing and then wise up? Or is it someone else entirely?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I know that studios get a large chunk of their money from bona fide whales: wealthy people for whom dropping cash on gambling to chase the specific thing they really want really is not a big deal. Some of this is relative; I don’t think much about a $15 sub, just as they don’t think much about a $500 gambling run, and somebody out there thinks $15 for a sub is extravagant. I get that.
But if you go into any casino, you’ll see that the majority of people are not rich whales. Sure, there are high rollers tucked away in fancy private pockets of varying degree, and surely because of the money they’re splashing around, they provide an outsized amount of revenue for the house. They can afford it. It’s the low- and middle-class people on the floor that always give me pause because their $500 is a disproportionately larger percentage of their wealth compared to whales. These folks are aspirational whales, chasing a high or chasing a win that they don’t understand is probably never coming (even if they can math; people are just bad at this).
So I would not be surprised if the bulk of MMO lockbox revenue comes from the Sunday drivers of whaling – people who like to fancy themselves whales and overspend a bit for a shiny. Every once in a while, that Sunday driver is cognitively wired for addiction susceptibility, too, and the game will exploit the hell out of him until he’s dry. And that’s what makes me the angriest at studios. If gamers want to whale, that’s one thing; it’s greedy and tawdry, but as long as it doesn’t target kids, fine, ruin your own life. The far greater crime is random gambleboxes because the studios have run the numbers on this and they know they are ruining some lives, somebody else’s lives, and lots of them. And the humans at those studios have decided that’s not only fine to do but fine to profit from. That’s what bothers me.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): If I had to make a more educated guess, I would figure that most of the big spenders are a little bit of all of these given example in a somewhat even spread. That said, I still kind of skew toward the idea that most whales are younger. And it’s purely for entirely unjustified personal reasons.
See, I know a lot of folks who grew alongside technology and its expansion into every facet of life, and gaming trying to find fresh ways to get money has always been a thing that folks like me have watched and often gotten repulsed by. The younger generations, meanwhile, didn’t really know what was around before, so there’s less reason for them to find things like gacha banners and lockboxes scummy and gambling-adjacent.
That said, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t folks who just light money on fire for that big shiny or that pay-to-win gubbin without feeling it’s pay-to-win. And I also still contend that doomspending is probably a big impetus – a feeling that I daresay transcends age in these times.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): You’re asking me to evaluate the psychology of an entire diverse genre of gamers? The only thing that comes to mind is that lockboxes offer that same attraction that regular gambling does: The first time you get a surprisingly big payout, you’re hooked. You can’t stop thinking about doing that again. That’s why MMOs like to hand out free lockboxes now and then – because they can rope in a percentage of recipients with those kind of paydays… and now they want more. More! MORE!
Mia DeSanzo (@neschria): One of my kids dropped a fair amount of (her own) money on Genshin Impact, as a young adult with a decent job living at home. She figured that she had the money and she enjoyed it, so she went all-in on the gacha. Now that she’s moved out, buying game stuff has tumbled to the bottom of her priority list. That’s just one anecdote, but it definitely seems tied to having disposable income.
Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): I’ve got my money on two main camps: One is the players who are after one specific piece of loot and roll until they finally get it and then move on, and the other is a whale variant.
As for the player who is after a single shiny, I suspect they end up paying a fair amount and likely don’t do it often – if ever again. However, I suspect that a lot of players go through that sequence.
The whale variant isn’t someone who is blindly spending hundreds a month but spends maybe $20 or $50 a month. It’s not nothing – I certainly don’t have $50 to gamble on my gaming loot – but it isn’t going to send someone to the brink of despair. These players probably consider that they aren’t buying any other games this month, so they may as well enjoy the chance of something sweet while also still finding other things of some of value in the boxes. Doing it once likely doesn’t net anything great. But I bet if you lockbox $20 every month for nearly a year, you’d have hit some nice pulls here and there.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I don’t think any of us can know for sure without access to the demographic data developers and publishers probably have squirreled away somewhere. I can say very anecdotally that most of the time when I hear about someone whaling in games, it’s older (as in 30+) people who are well off financially and can simply afford to.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a decent amount of lockbox revenue also comes from people like me who bought one or two, decided it was dumb, and moved on. One sale might not seem like a lot, but times a few thousand people…
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
