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Let’s go whaling: Tricks for monetising mobile game players with free-to-play

PocketGamerbiz · 757.8K views · 2016-10-03 · 19:49

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Overview

A 2016 conference talk by a mobile game CEO on the tricks of free-to-play monetization, including player profiles and how to target high-spending whales.

On Hacker News

HN mostly cites it critically, as an insider's blunt playbook for psychologically exploiting players in F2P and loot box games.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2019–2026

Topics

Game designIndie game development
Search by tags
whalesdark patternsloot boxesmobile games

What people said

grotorea · 2023-09 · Strong recommendation

Must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: [VIDEO]

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grotorea · 2023-09 · Strong recommendation

Reminds me of this must see video for anyone interested in the topic, from someone explaining how to do these monetizations tactics: [VIDEO] Sometimes I wonder what is is about specifically mobile gaming that makes this sort of thing so much more prevalent. Like it is very far from absent from PC or consoles, but it's still a bit different.

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layman51 · 2025-02 · Recommendation

Gamification as a field of study also reminds me a lot of this video[1] of a talk about tips for game developers. It is very interesting because it is from 2016 which is close to the time period you mentioned. I’m pretty sure this video has been shared on Hacker News a bunch. [1]: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by PocketGamerbiz, played through YouTube.

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