Frisky Mongoose

There’s been a lot of talk about “whales” lately in the social gaming sphere, but for those unfamiliar with the term, a “whale” is a player who spends massive amounts of money on virtual goods in social games. The acknowledged threshold for becoming a “whale” is $1,000. That’s a lot of money to be the starting point and Inside Social Games investigated what “super whales” are spending in the social game sphere.

TriplePoint client Social Gold provided a graph of their five highest spenders, including dollar amounts and locations. Yes, each bar corresponds to a single person.

Keep in mind that under 10 percent of users spend any money at all on games, and the average spent from that small percent is $60. If the sheer amount of money spent doesn’t shock you, maybe this will: the numbers cover only 6 months of spending since, November 2009.

Before the social game genre took off, there were “whales” in other industries: casual games had their share as well as online multiplayer games. It is likely that with the ever expanding and evolving social game economies, we’ll see some of these big spenders purchasing items that retain or increase their value, thus earning their buyers more money in the long run.

Related posts:

1. Social Game “Whales” Important For Game Developers
2. Treasure Isle Whales, YoVille Romantic Home – Zynga Gaming Updates!
3. Hardcore Gamers Spend 48 Hours A Week Playing Games
4. Survey Says: 56 Million Americans Playing Social Games
5. Are Social Games for the Weird? Newsweek Thinks So