Why do some players spend hundreds or thousands on a single game?

Chris is a regular guy. He worked at a technology company for thirteen years and grew up on Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica — like many of us, he developed a taste for stories about crossing planets and galaxies, discovering new races, and building bases beyond Earth.

The main difference between Chris and us: he has spent roughly $30,000 on Star Citizen.

Modern game publishing discovered that some players will invest staggering amounts in a single game — through collector’s editions, through crowdfunding campaigns with outsized rewards, and above all through free-to-play. The stories below are the human face of those business models.

$30,000 for Star Citizen

Star Citizen had already raised more than $94.2 million through crowdfunding when we met Chris — one of over a million backers. Speaking to PC Gamer, he named his influences as John Carmack, Steve Jobs, and the game’s creator, Chris Roberts:

Chris Roberts disappeared in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and came back with this project — at a moment in my life when I actually had the means to support something like this. I haven’t spent a penny from my main account. I did side work for these funds. Some people buy boats. I buy boats made of pixels. Nothing on credit cards — that would have been fooling around.

The complete package cost $18,150; by the time he bought it, he’d already collected the more modest ships: “When I think I’ve helped create a project I believe will change gaming over the next decade — I’m like this. I know I’m going to spend more.”

Hearthstone: the free game that hurts no one to pay for

Attachment to something that shaped your life explains Chris. But the big-spenders club has many members, each with their own reasons.

Consider the financial advisor to the oil industry who dropped $3,400 on Hearthstone cards in a single night. As he put it: “In my bank account there is a number that just became a slightly smaller number. I have enough money that I only check it every few months, to make sure it’s still going up.”

In total, by his own account, Nick had spent about $5,000 on Hearthstone. An exaggeration to most of us — but framed his way, no stranger than any other expense.

A user named Everborne once asked a forum how much people had spent on the game, confessing a modest $30 himself. The first reply blew the doors off: $500, from whoismilked, with the reasoning attached:

I cringe a little thinking about it, but the game has given me countless hours for almost a year now. When I’m bored and go out at night with friends, I easily spend a few hundred dollars and get nothing but a hangover. Spending on a hobby I enjoy, that gives me repeated entertainment, feels better. And I like supporting free-to-play games I sink time into.

Forbes’ Paul Tassi admitted to $637 with no regrets — despite hating microtransactions on principle. His explanation: Blizzard nailed the pack-opening ritual, and the psychology maps straight onto buying Pokémon booster packs as a kid:

Opening a pack hoping for something valuable is one of the most addictive purchase mechanisms on the planet, real or digital. It’s a slot machine that doesn’t make you feel bad to play — and the rewards build a collection instead of renting you progress. You never feel like you lost, because you can point at the collection and say “look, I have all that.” Technically it may be worthless. The feeling isn’t.

Free-to-play is where the biggest money moves

Hearthstone is one of the great free-to-play designs, and plenty of players pay into it freely — but it isn’t alone. Supercell’s Clash of Clans was generating $1.5 million per day. Some players spent thousands of dollars skipping to the top of the leaderboard (achievable the honest way too: about ten hours a day for two years). One base on display cost $12,000:

Seth Stevenson explained why Clash of Clans got real money out of him when Candy Crush Saga never did — beyond failing to hook him, it made him feel superior for resisting:

There’s something about tending my village — placing the walls and the cannons and the gold mines — that scratches my brain’s longing for methodical order. It’s oddly gratifying to watch my carefully arranged defenses do their job. As the village grows, there’s an ego-adrenaline to building my own powerful empire. It’s hard to walk away from all that.

Hard indeed: the Kansas City Royals’ season nearly derailed because so many players were addicted to Clash of Clans — the coach had to call a meeting asking them to spend less time on the game.

One last datapoint on free-to-play economics, from the era:

Per Statista’s August 2015 chart, Game of War – Fire Age was pulling in $1,386,580 per day.

Every story above found its echo in the decade that followed — the whales, the battle passes, the $18,000 starships. The games changed; the psychology never did. If this piece sends you back to Hearthstone or the classics it profiles, most of them remain playable today — a pack of Hearthstone-style card games included — and the wiser play is the one Chris would endorse: never charge it.