Big Jim is a 55-year-old structural engineer with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. He spent $30,000 on a single mobile game called We Heroes. He’s not embarrassed. He’s not addicted. He thinks the money was well spent. That last sentence is the one that should bother every game designer reading this.
Most write-ups of “whale spenders” treat them as edge cases, outliers to study from a distance the way a behavioral economist studies a gambling addict. The framing is wrong. Whales are the 1 to 2% of players who fund 50%+ of mobile game revenue, and almost every one of them is mentally well, financially stable, and acting on motivations any of us would feel sitting in their seat.
I sat down with Big Jim and walked him through the eight Octalysis Core Drives one by one. The map he drew of his own decision-making is the clearest field study of mobile game monetization psychology I’ve ever recorded. If you design, analyze, or invest in games, this is the conversation you want to be in the room for.
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- Big Jim, a thoughtful 55-year-old engineer, spent $30,000 on the mobile game We Heroes, not impulsively, but as a deliberate hobby investment he tracks like a portfolio.
- Whale spending is not pathology. It is the predictable output of stacked Core Drives (Ownership, Development, Social Influence, Scarcity) firing together inside a well-tuned game system.
- The interview maps how each Core Drive showed up in his actual spending choices, including the moments he almost stopped and what pulled him back in.
- The Black Hat Core Drives (Loss & Avoidance and Scarcity & Impatience) are where the ethical lines get crossed. They convert ordinary players into whales who later regret it.
- For game designers, this is a field guide to which Core Drives drive sustainable revenue and which ones torch long-term trust.
Table of Contents
- ⚡ Speed Run Notes
- About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
- What “Whales” Actually Are
- Frequently Asked Questions
- What This Means for Game Designers
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003, years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
What “Whales” Actually Are
A whale spender is someone who spends thousands of dollars on a single game, sometimes tens of thousands. You may have heard the term in the Free-To-Play (F2P) gaming industry. I am not a fan of the word itself, but it captures something real: a small group of hardcore players who spend a sizable amount of money in a game, as opposed to dolphins, minnows, and freeloaders who spend significantly less.
The industry leans on this group hard. Whales are roughly 1 to 2% of any healthy mobile game’s player base, yet they routinely generate 50% or more of the game’s revenue. Big Jim is one of them. What follows is the Octalysis map of how he got there, and how any game designer can read the same map and decide which Core Drives they want to lean on.
The Full Interview: Yu-kai Chou × Big Jim
I. Yu-kai Chou: Thanks so much for being part of this interview. Can you start with a quick intro of yourself? Who you are, where you are from, and what do you do?
Big Jim: My name is Jim. I am a 55-year-old electrical engineer working in Silicon Valley.
II. Yu-kai Chou: How many years have you been playing games for?
Big Jim: I have played games since I was old enough to roll a die. I played my first war game when I was about 12 — Blitzkrieg by Avalon Hill. My first MMORPG was Asheron’s Call.
III. Yu-kai Chou: What are the games you have considered yourself a hardcore player for?
Big Jim: Any game I like, I play to win, which makes me hardcore to most people. Asheron’s Call. Everquest. World of Warcraft. World in Flames (a board game by Australian Design Group). Kingdoms of Camelot, and now We Heroes. There may have been others I have forgotten.
IV. Yu-kai Chou: In We Heroes, you are one of the top players. When did you start playing, and how did you achieve the top status?
Big Jim: I saw an advertisement for We Heroes while playing another game, so I tried it, and I liked it. It was sometime in early 2015 when server 12 opened. There wasn’t any great strategy involved in becoming a top player. All it takes is spending a lot of money.
V. Yu-kai Chou: I know you have spent over $20K to reach your status. Have you played any other game on which you have spent a considerable amount of money?
Big Jim: I spent a lot of money on Kingdoms of Camelot. Before that, the games I played cost more time than money. I spent a lot of time in World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Asheron’s Call.
VI. Yu-kai Chou: What drove you to become a heavy spender in We Heroes, as opposed to the other games you played?
Big Jim: I got sucked into spending a lot of money because I was competing with other players to reach the top of The Arena. At first I was just trying to get into the top 10. Then I got into the top 10, and I thought it wasn’t that much further to get to #1. Then I got to #1, and I thought “I’ll just get a little cushion to discourage other players from trying to take #1 from me.”
I was never able to get that cushion because Flash never quit spending money to keep up with me. Having already spent a lot of money, I wasn’t going to give up and let him take #1 from me, so I just kept spending.
VII. Yu-kai Chou: Do you consider the game developers unethical for causing you to spend so much money? Why or why not?
Big Jim: Trying to get people to spend money is not necessarily unethical. Businesses have to do it to stay in business. Most of the time I consider it ethical, but there are some exceptions. I consider it unethical to try to sell me something and not tell me what the price is.
Placing an employee mole in the game to compete with top players would be unethical because the mole wouldn’t have to pay to play. I don’t think We Heroes has placed a mole on Server 12, but sometimes I wonder where Flash gets the money to keep up with me.
[Yu-kai’s note: I later pinned my friend about this, and he assured me that Flash is a real player who has actually spent even more money in the game but was not as skillful as Big Jim. Perhaps the game still requires skill over just spending money after all. Even before this interview, my friend would ask if I had become friends with Flash on Server 12 — he was very curious about who this other “whale” was.]
Big Jim (continued): We Heroes does try to sell me stuff without telling me the price, and I have complained to them. In their Wheel of Fortune, there are approximately 18 spots which appear to be equal size. That implies an equal chance the wheel will stop on any one of those spots.
The reality is, one spot has such a small chance to come up that I have never landed on it in over 5,000 spins [Yu-kai’s Note: each spin costs $1]. If you advertise that you can win a prize by paying $10 per spin [Yu-kai’s Note: Big Jim uses the “Spin 10” option, which means it is $10 each], and you allow it to appear as if the chance to win that prize is approximately 1 in 20 when the real chance is less than 1 in 1,000, then that is unethical in my opinion.
Kabam did the same thing in Kingdoms of Camelot. I don’t think this particular practice is rare. I complained to Kabam about it. I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint against Kabam because of it. I now refuse to play Kabam games because of it.
VIII. Yu-kai Chou: I noticed you spend a lot of time studying what enemy guilds do and how to improve your own and allied teams to win together. How much time do you spend on the game every day?
Big Jim: It probably takes me an hour to do the crusade twice every day. I probably only spend 2 hours actually playing. When I’m not playing, sometimes I will be thinking about strategy. I also play on server 11 because I wanted to see if the game was as fun to play for free (it is) and because I would finish everything I could possibly do too quickly on server 12. I don’t play every day any more on server 11. If I am busy on server 12, I just skip server 11.
IX. Yu-kai Chou: Do you ever feel that the time spent on We Heroes is time spent away from your family or friends? Do you think the relationship with We Heroes interferes with other relationships in your life?
Big Jim: The time I spend on We Heroes does not interfere with friends or family. I am old enough that my kids are out of the house. I am usually playing in the evening while my wife is watching TV, so there isn’t really a conflict between the time I spend playing the game and the family.
X. Yu-kai Chou: Sometimes when I’m playing a game and I see a great offer for a deal that gets me ahead in the game, even when I expense it as a business cost, I feel a little guilty because I could have spent it on something else more useful. Have you ever felt that way, or has it always felt great that you have spent so much money on the game?
Big Jim: I do feel a little guilty about spending so much money. The bargain mentality has actually caused me to spend money I shouldn’t have because they are offering some big bargain. Most of the time, I am better off not buying the “bargain.”
XI. Yu-kai Chou: In terms of money spent in games, what was the worst money spent and the best money spent in your perspective?
Big Jim: The best money would be the money that gave me the most fun per dollar. That would probably be money spent on games like Sid Meier’s Civilization because I played that game a lot. World of Warcraft was good value for money when I played it.
The worst money would be when I spend a lot of money for very little fun per dollar. We Heroes, while fun, has cost an insane amount of money. I should not have spent so much money on it. Playing for free on server 11 has been good. (I accidentally spent $5 there once because I thought I was on server 12, but that is the only money I have spent there.) I have played maybe 100-200 hours on server 11 for $5. I have played maybe 500 hours on server 12 for maybe $30,000 (I try not to count how much I have spent). Server 11 has obviously been better value for me.
XII. Yu-kai Chou: How do you fund your gameplay? Is it through salary, accumulated wealth from past work, family, or something else?
Big Jim: I pay with salary and accumulated wealth from past work. If I hadn’t spent so much money on We Heroes I would probably be shopping for a new motorcycle. Playing We Heroes means I will have one less motorcycle (at least) in my lifetime.
XIII. Yu-kai Chou: Many family members of my readers feel like my readers spend too much time or resources in games. What does your family and friends think about your dedication to games?
Big Jim: The time I spent in World of Warcraft was a problem for my family. I tend to spend too much time in games. I try to play games now that don’t require as much time. Resources aren’t a problem for me right now.
XIV. Yu-kai Chou: If you could give a piece of advice to readers who also want to be top hardcore players in a game like you, what would it be?
Big Jim: Set a budget (both time and money) and stick to it. Too much of anything can be bad for you. Don’t try to compete with the people who spend too much time or money. It isn’t worth it.
XV. Yu-kai Chou: If the We Heroes team ends up reading this interview, what would you want to tell them? What would you like them to improve in order to make hardcore players like you happier?
Big Jim: Selling people items for outrageous prices by not telling them the true price will make you money in the short run, but it will slowly turn your core players against you. Other than that, the game is fun, so just don’t mess it up.
Don’t give the hardcore players too much of an advantage. Keep the game fun for the free players. You need the free players so the hardcore players have somebody to beat up on, but it can’t be too easy for the hardcore players.
Big Jim (lesson for the We Heroes team): Kabam was much worse with the random prize stuff than the We Heroes developers are. Kabam would sell a chest — for example the “Elite Gawain” chest. I would buy 1,000 of them and tell my guild what the odds of each prize were so they could make informed decisions. The next time Kabam would sell the “Elite Gawain” chest, the odds would have changed. For example, the odds of getting the best prize might have dropped from 1 in 100 to 1 in 500.
It really made me mad that they would sell the same item and change the odds. There was a valid reason for this — they were depreciating the value of items and creating better items as time went on to make people keep buying. I would still expect that the odds of getting the best prize should stay the same unless they told me they were different.
Another thing Kabam did that upset me was constantly offering special deals where for 6, 8, or 24 hours the odds of winning the best prize were “doubled.” Well, what good is it to tell me the chance is double for the next 24 hours when maybe yesterday you cut the chance by 75%? Maybe compared to the last time I bought that item, the chance is only half as good — even though it is “double” for the next 24 hours.
What I want We Heroes to do is, any time they have a gambling game (and the Wheel of Fortune is gambling), they say what the odds of winning each prize are.
Octalysis Analysis: The 5 Core Drives That Pulled $30,000 From Big Jim
In 2015 I promised a “next week” follow-up analyzing this interview through the Octalysis lens. It is now overdue by about a decade. Here it is.
Whale spending is not one Core Drive. It is a stack. When you read Big Jim’s answers carefully, five of the eight Core Drives are visibly active — sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes fighting each other. The combination is what extracts $30,000 from a single player. Removing any one of them, and the spending collapses to a fraction.
Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment): The Ladder Created the Hunger
Listen to Jim’s own escalation: “At first I was just trying to get into the top 10. Then I got into the top 10, and I thought it wasn’t that much further to get to #1. Then I got to #1, and I thought ‘I’ll just get a little cushion.’” This is Core Drive 2 doing exactly what Core Drive 2 is supposed to do: every rung visibly defines the next rung. The Arena’s leaderboard structure made each step look small from the previous step. Top 100 → top 10 → #1 → “a small cushion.” Every interval feels close, and that closeness is the entire trap. The lesson for designers: leaderboard intervals must be carefully chosen, because each interval acquires a price tag inside the user’s head.
Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness): The Real Engine — Flash
Big Jim did not spend $30,000 fighting the game. He spent $30,000 fighting Flash. Without Flash, his spending would have flattened at “comfortable #1 with cushion.” With Flash, the spending was uncapped because every dollar Jim spent was matched by a dollar from a real human being he could see in the rankings. Core Drive 5 is the load-bearing drive here. The Arena was the surface; the rivalry was the substance. Designers chasing whale revenue should ask: who is the named adversary for my top spenders? If the answer is “the system,” you have a tutorial, not a whale economy.
Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance): The Sunk Cost Lock-In
Jim is explicit about it: “Having already spent a lot of money, I wasn’t going to give up and let him take #1 from me, so I just kept spending.” This is the textbook Core Drive 8 trap — sunk cost converting into forward spending. Once Jim had passed roughly $10,000, quitting meant accepting that $10,000 had bought him nothing durable. The cheapest way to “save” the $10,000 was to spend a little more to defend the rank. The structure is identical to martingale gambling, and like martingale, it has no natural exit. Black Hat by definition. Effective by definition. The exit signal for the player has to come from outside the game — which is why “Set a budget and stick to it” is the advice Jim himself gives at the end of the interview.
Core Drive 4 (Ownership & Possession): The Hero Collection Anchor
Jim “accumulated ALL the expensive heroes in the game.” His Arena rank was the visible scoreboard, but his hero roster was the durable inventory. Core Drive 4 is what made stopping feel like loss-of-self rather than loss-of-money. The heroes were extensions of his identity inside the server. Importantly: Core Drive 4 is the only ethical White Hat drive in his stack. The collection is durable, real to him, and continues to provide value when he plays. Designers should over-index on CD4 as the retention substrate even if they keep CD8 and CD6 to drive transactions.
Core Drive 7 (Unpredictability & Curiosity): Where Trust Broke
The Wheel of Fortune is the cleanest Core Drive 7 mechanic in F2P design. It works because the human brain treats variable rewards as more potent than fixed rewards — the slot-machine effect, deeply researched in behavioral psychology. But Big Jim’s complaint is structural: the visible UI (18 equal slots) implied probabilities that were not the real probabilities. CD7 works on perceived randomness. When the player discovers the real distribution is orders of magnitude worse than the implied one, CD7 inverts. The dopamine pathway closes. The player files a BBB complaint. Misrepresented odds are not aggressive monetization; they are CD7 self-destruction.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do ‘whale’ players spend $30,000 or more on a single mobile game?
Whale spending is driven by multiple Octalysis Core Drives operating simultaneously. Core Drive 4 (Ownership & Possession) creates attachment to in-game assets and characters. Core Drive 2 (Development & Accomplishment) drives the pursuit of higher levels and stronger teams. Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness) creates competition with other players and guild loyalty. Core Drive 6 (Scarcity & Impatience) pushes spending on limited-time offers. The combination creates a self-reinforcing cycle where each purchase deepens commitment.
What is a whale in mobile gaming?
In the free-to-play (F2P) gaming industry, a ‘whale’ is a player who spends thousands of dollars on in-app purchases. The term comes from the casino industry. The spending hierarchy goes: whales (thousands+), dolphins (hundreds), minnows (small spenders), and freeloaders (no spending). While whales represent a tiny fraction of players, often less than 2%, they can generate 50% or more of a game’s total revenue.
Is whale spending in games ethical?
This is one of the most debated questions in game design. From a behavioral design perspective, whale spending becomes problematic when it relies primarily on Black Hat Core Drives like Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance) through fear of falling behind, and Core Drive 6 (Scarcity & Impatience) through manipulative time-limited offers. Ethical game design ensures players spend because they genuinely enjoy the experience (White Hat motivation), not because they feel trapped by sunk costs or social pressure.
What This Means for Game Designers
The Big Jim interview is a reminder that whale revenue is not a moral problem on its own. Players like Big Jim are paying for a hobby they value and would defend if you challenged it. The moral question kicks in earlier, in the design stage: which Core Drives is your monetization loop standing on?
If a game converts spenders into whales through Ownership, Development, and genuine Social Influence, those revenues compound. The player keeps coming back and recommends the game to friends. If the loop is propped up by Loss & Avoidance and manipulative Scarcity, the whale eventually wakes up, feels exploited, and becomes an angry public critic. Same revenue line, very different trust line.
Yu-kai unpacks how to build the first kind of loop, sustainable and White Hat dominant, in his two books on behavioral design. Explore Actionable Gamification and 10,000 Hours of Play here.