Contemporary games employ sophisticated designs rooted in behavioral psychology to incentivize (or, some would say, to manipulate) their players to spend real money on in-game microtransactions. In a 2016 talk given by Torulf Jernström (see also his own summary
of it), the CEO has outlined the most common tricks of trade, which are reframed here not as a guide for enterprising designers, but as a sort of Defence Against the Dark Arts class for the gamers that they prey upon.
Monetization Models
Minnows, Dolphins, Whales
The perhaps most famous and best-researched monetization model categorizes players by the amount they spend. Note that the numeric data here comes from Jussi Laakkonen's 2014 study
- Non-payers are players who never spend any money on in-game purchases. According to Laakkonen, they comprise about 55% of all players, averaged over all games with microtransactions.
- Minnows are moderate payers who comprise ca. 24% of a player base and spend $19 per month on a single game. According to Jernström, they take on average 8 days to "convert", i.e. to convince to make their first purchase in a given game.
- Dolphins are heavy payers ($1019 per month), comprising ca. 14% of players and needing around 12 days to convert.
- Whales are ca. 6% of players who spend $2049 per month on a single game and need 18 or more days to convert.
- Super-whales are a subset of whales who spend $50 or more on a game every month and comprise only about 1% of its player base.
Jernström also observes that games targeted at different demographics tend to have different payer structures: more casual games tend to receive relatively small sums from a large number of players, while more hardcore ones tend to make most of their revenue from a few very devoted whales.
Opponents of microtransactions in games tend to become very riled up by the industry's use of animal names to categorize paying customers, viewing it is a form of deliberate dehumanization and turning individuals into commodity. They also often point out (see for example, this Jimquisition video) that while the industry likes to frame whales as well-off players with a lot of disposable income, a lot of whales are actually compulsive spenders and/or gamblers whose psychological disorders make them vulnerable to the manipulative design discussed below.
The Four Cs
In chapter three of his 2013 book Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games You Give Away

- Convenience is everything that makes progressing through the game's content more comfortable and expedient for the player. This includes hiding ads, enabling Gameplay Automation, bypassing or greatly accelerating Forced Level-Grinding, and even just letting players skip mandatory wait times ("pay-to-skip"). According to Luton, Convenience is primarily targeted at the player type that Bartle called "the Achievers"note , while Jernström claims that they also account that the vast majority of IAP revenue. The darker side of this success, however, is that some modern games intentionally throttle progression to incentivize buying progress boosters — most infamously, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, a AAA single-player game, had to be completely rebalanced after patching out IAPs
.
- Customization are cosmetics that individualize the in-game appearance of player avatars and/or their abodes. Luton assigns them to the Socializersnote , and Jernström places them second in terms of profitability. While the industry often frames Customization as a more ethical alternative to pay-to-win mechanics (see below) because it's "just cosmetic" and doesn't affect core gameplay loops, it is undeniable that as status symbols, cosmetic items in multiplayer games have as much value to some players as a competitive advantage has to others.
- Competitive advantage is anything that gives paying players a gameplay advantage over non-payers in PVP mode, in other words, "pay-to-win". Luton targets them at the Killersnote . P2W microtransactions are far and away the most controversial kind, because they destroy the sense of fair competition that people seek in games, and even Jernström advises against implementing them because they are incredibly difficult (or outright impossible) to balance.
- Content is any piece of new game content available for download at an extra cost after the release. Luton associates it with the Explorersnote , and while it tends to be the least controversial kind of microtransactions, Jernström also places it as the least profitable one, given the high production costs of original content. DLC controversy usually revolves around "day-one DLC"note , which is often accused of being content that was supposed to be in the base game but was carved out just before release to make extra profit, and generally overpriced contentnote .
Hook, Habit, Hobby
Dimitar Draganov
- At the Hook stage, the developer's goal is to entice the player into spending a small amount of money on an obviously-lucrative IAP offer, even at a significant cost to the devs. This is intended to tear down the player's reservations about in-game spending and to secure their commitment to spend more. A salesperson would recognize this as a combination of the foot-in-the-door
and low-ball
techniques, both of which play on our subconscious desire to be consistent in our behavior (in other words, once you've spent some money, that's just what you do now), while a drug dealer would just call it the "gateway drug"
.
- The Habit stage sees the player paying for progression boosters (a subcategory of Convenience above) to grind through the main body of the game's content, with the key words here being "pay" and "grind". Towards the end of his presentation, Jernström notes that of the four main progression types (skill, luck, grind, and pay — this classification seems to be his own finding), skill is the least monetizable option, so he strongly advocates for the normalization of grinding and paying in monetized games.
- The Hobby stage begins when the player finishes the main content and reaches the "endgame" after maxing out all available stats. At this point, progression boosters are replaced with consumables (Convenience) and cosmetics (Customization), as the game becomes another ritual of the player's everyday life, with no upper limit on their in-game spending.
Tricks of the Trade
Gachas
The term "gacha" is derived from the Japanese gashapon


Hot state
In his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Jernström in his presentation refers to using System 1 for decision-making as being in the "hot state", and advocates for circumventing the players' System 2 entirely by offering IAPs of immediate usefulness or gratification while they are in the System 1-dominated flow of play, before System 2 can properly boot up. As an example, he points towards the tried-and-true mechanic (going back at least to the early days of Arcades) of offering to sell the player an extra life immediately after dying in-game.
Loss aversion
Loss aversion
Artificial scarcity and Limited-time offers
Limited-time offers of (artificially) scarce IAPs are, as Jernström points out, a logical combination of hot state and loss aversion. Scarcity has been identified as one of the six key principles of persuasion by the psychologist Robert Cialdini

IKEA effect
In his 2014 book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
The most obvious application of the IKEA effect in contemporary games are the Rewards Pass systems, particularly in the Battle Royale Game genre. These work by charging money up-front, then making players grind or complete certain challenges before giving them the rewards that they have already paid for, increasing the likelihood of them buying the next battle pass. Additionally, because battle pass rewards can only be obtained within a specific time frame, they trigger loss aversion (specifically, the "fear of missing out" or FOMO) with their limited-time offers.
Anchoring
Anchoring

Social proof
Social proof

Availability heuristic
Availability heuristic
Because... reasons
In 1984, Cialdini pointed out that System 1note puts irrational trust in rational-sounding arguments, specifically that people are much more inclined to agree to a request if it is followed by "because..." and a stated reason — even when that reason makes no sense.note Jernström claims that just adding "because it helps the developer" after asking the players to make IAPs increases their spending. On a macro level, the same technique has been used to normalize microtransactions "because games are too expensive to make otherwise", despite many arguments to the contrary
A case can be made that the same effect is actually behind (or at least related to) Simon Sinek's famous maxim "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."
Artificial Intelligence
As Dr. Tommy Thompson points out
Churn prediction
In the game monetization context, "churn"
Real-time analytics and manipulation
The next stage of using AI for monetization, which is speculative at the moment, will presumably involve analyzing and classifying individual player behavior in real time, then dynamically tweaking their moment-to-moment gameplay experience to encourage in-game spending. While there is no evidence at the moment that such systems have already been implemented in popular games, Yodo1

