Man Spends $70,000 Playing Fate Grand Order
Fate Grand Order, an online free-to-play role-playing game where players take on the role of ‘masters’ who summon and command powerful ‘servants’ to fight enemies, recently saw a man spend a cool $70,000 on it and he says he has no regrets. How did the man, identified as 31-year-old Daigo from Japan, spend so much on a free-to-play game? Well it is because while the game is totally free to download and play, it is a freemium product in which if a player wants to make improvements on his or her video game characters and progress faster, then they have to spend real money.
The real money Daigo spent was used to buy the in-game currency called ‘Saint Quartz’ which as he narrates once saw him spend as much as $2,500 upgrading and leveling up a new character who he had bought for an initial investment of $500. He also owns up to playing the game constantly and the only time he is not playing is when he is taking a shower, driving or sleeping which considering the amount of money he has so far sunk into what he describes as his hobby, does not happen often!
It is fair to say that this is quite a sizeable bounty to sink it all in a game so the question becomes where he got all that money from. The answer, according to Daigo, is that in his previous occupation in stocks and futures he managed to save up and that is the source of the money he has spent so far. How then does he justify spending such an amount on a game? Well, he says that the game moves him. It moves him so much that he was in tears after playing his first chapter. He says the way the story is structured creates an emotional bond with each character, creating a bond with them that eventually sees him cash out in the tens of thousands of dollars.
The man who still lives with his parents, who also don’t have a clue that their son has spent such an amount on a video game, is just part of the group of people whom the game’s biggest detractors have warned are being turned from gamers to gamblers. This becomes apparent when you dig more into how the game operates and you realize that in-game a player has only a 1% chance of summoning a five-star servant and this remains constant unlike in similar games where the chances of earning a five-star servant (or hero depending on the terminologies in the game) increase the longer you go without getting one. This way of operating by Fate Grand Order has seen the game get a lot of heat and there seems to be some people who don’t like these sorts of games at all.
Dedicated players like Daigo are the main reason why the Fate Grand Order franchise managed to bring in an estimated revenue of over $1 billion in the fiscal year that that just ended in March of this year. They are also the reason why Sony Corp’s profits have been on the rise after a lean period where without it Sony was amassing massive loses. Weirdly, the game is still out of the top ten of the list of the most downloaded gaming apps but is surprisingly second in the list of the most profitable mobile gaming apps during the same period of time.
Mr. Daigo fell victim to the Gatcha games’, as they are collectively called, tendeancy of roping in players with the initial free-to-play promise only to discover that if they are to enjoy the game fully they need to spend real-life money. The games’ developers have mastered the technique of making new players feel comfortable with the game as is while at the same time rewarding premium players like Daigo, who are willing to pay the price, significantly. Daigo says that he isn’t finished spending yet and that he is willing to continue spending as long as he feels there is still enjoyment in the game. Judging from his general attitude towards the game this seems highly unlikely at this stage.
The 31-year old is also lucky that he doesn’t seem to have gone into debt due to the game and seems generally happy, happiness no one can begrudge the man no matter their attitude towards the game itself and how it operates. One of the more memorable sound bites from him is the quote, “some people spend $18 on a movie and feel moved, I’ve spent $70,000 on Fate Grand Order. But it moves me.” Notably, he also says that he would rather forget the amount of money that he has spent on the game as it clearly isn’t about the money for him but rather the joy of game-play. Daigo also added that he follows his parents’ instructions to the latter and does what they tell him to do.