The featured image above is a screen cap from WWE Champions, the phone game I used as an example about how Whales with IAPs work. If you remember the story that I shared, it was of a user who spent $7000 to get Ric Flair in game.
That Ric Flair was acquired by paying for card pulls. Each pull has a .05% chance of netting the current 3 star superstar. Right now, it’s Bam Bam Bigelow, who you see above.
In the game, one can earn game “cash” at a slow crawl. For me, it comes in $10 increments from occasional drops and from every now-and-then either buying the $40 a day for 30 days pack (which is $8 a month–what I consider a fair amount to spend on a F2P game because as a person who teaches games I don’t believe in not rewarding the game developers for what I play). So if I’m lucky, once a week or so I can take one pull. One .05% chance.
This seems impossible, but the screen cap you see proves the reason why RNG works for even the most jaded players. I expected, given the horrible odds, I would never manage to get a 3 star character, but I enjoy the game as part of my daily “eh, I need to do some gaming” routine (I like match 3s, I like WWE, so it makes sense). The fact that I managed to pull Bam Bam today proves the marketing genius of this design, though.
*I* got him without doing what most people do to get a premium star. And that will keep me happy, and keep me playing. but it will also remind the people in my in-game social network (I’m in a guild there– I know, weird, right?) that while the odds are forever not in your favor, it is still possible to get the premium items without being a whale. This means that you CAN reach an elite level without paying to win, though it’s going to take me for-freaking-ever to level him up.
And that model, while sort of insidious, is rock solid for marketing a game. I might now spend a little more money than I would have because I have an elite character and should make good use of him. I also get to feel special because I’m one of the lucky people who beats the terrible odds without brute-force (which is how a whale would obtain the same character).
It might be smarter still as a designer to tilt the percentages so that a person who plays for a while, like me, gets a higher percentage chance of a quality reward. I would even hypothesize that exactly that happened here, except I know people who have disassembled the code for this game, and they know the odds and monitor when those could change.
So… cool pull for me, but also a perfect example of how IAP and pay-to-win/low, low odds draws can work well for a game.
Now to go level this dude out.