I swear these guys are stalking our forums with the level of accuracy in their vids and the timeliness of them. But anyways thought everyone could enjoy this.
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“class-specific perk; disposable income” LOL
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So good! 
Great video. Just to clarify how his argument fails…
Try telling your co-workers in your real life job you just got promoted and are getting paid more than them because you defeated an end-game boss in an MMO 
Epic-tier magic item: credit card. Earned by playing “Real Life” long and hard enough (although some people apparently get theirs from a close relative who has, in turn, played “Real Life” long and hard enough).
It’s a good video, really. It shows both sides of the argument.
And as long as it’s cosmetic-only items, I’m willing to utilize my “class-specific perk” to get some, even though I much prefer to earn stuff by playing. If something is possible to earn by playing, I always get it by playing rather than paying. Heck, I used to play an idle-clicker game where some whales had spent thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, to get the best stuff ever - and I regularly got to the Top-20 on the PvP Arena monthly scoreboard without ever paying a penny.
The one thing I don’t understand is people who first buy a game, and then pay extra so they don’t have to play the game.
It’s not that they don’t want to play the game. They don’t want or can’t do what it takes to get the rewards in game, so they buy them and use them. They pay not to play some parts of the game.
Conan isn’t like that.
I sell currency in various games (what people call RMT) and can answer that.
Low spending customers: usually in f2p games, their budget is what the game would usually cost if it was p2p instead. They usually want a headstart to buy some early gear or perhaps a cool skin. Sometimes they also start late or just want that one last item to complete their build but have no income to buy it soon.
In Path of Exile, people want to skip their first character in a new league cause its just boring. You are not playing the build you want (usually expensive, a new character cannot afford high end items and has to farm currency first), and thats pretty much the point of the game. So they just spend $15 or so to make their desired build right away.
Whales: too busy to grind. Take Lost Ark and New World, the games i work with. These have some very tedious aspects needed to get gold/get stronger and some people simply don’t have the time for it. They want to spend their limited time playing the enjoyable content (raiding), which requires gear. They don’t want to spend that time to get gear, especially when its a boring process. So they just buy it.
Basically “not play the game” seems to imply that they are skipping some enjoyable part of the game, but that isn’t always the case, some games require boring grinds to afford gearing in order to reach the fun stuff.
On a sidenote, some also have extra accounts or alt characters. Their income might be enough for one character, but since they enjoy more characters, they have to afford gearing those somehow.
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That is just crappy game design.
It may be a good business strategy, but it’s crappy game design. Ergo, paying so they don’t have to play the game, with the implication that (parts of) the game isn’t worth playing. In my books, it’s a game not worth buying in the first place.
Yeah, i agree. The problem is that most people have really poor judgment when evaluating fun vs effort needed, so we have plenty of games that work as you described. But one of the reasons could be that if you really enjoy the fun part and can confortably skip the bad aspect, i guess that works for them. The only downside is that this motivates devs/publishers to keep making more “bad design”, but its not like if your average player really cares about that.
But there are different folks out there. I know there are some that just loving grinding…day in adn day out. Grind grind grind. Whether it’s hitting rocks or playing the slots at 3skull casino in unnamed city. It’s what they enjoy doing…they don’t want to fight or dungeon crawl…just grind.
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