GamesBeat 2015 puts the spotlight on finding whales in free-to-play games

“Whale” is rarely a complimentary term.

Makers of microtransaction systems in games brought the term over from the casino industry, and they use it to describe the users that spend the most money. And like in the world of slots and jackpots, with that classification comes a tendency to exploit, rather than build relationships, with that particular customer population. That kind of transaction came to dominate a recent conversation we had with Dmitri Williams, CEO and Ninja Metrics and noted leader in online metrics.