Recently, I came across an article, Segmenting slot machine players: a factor-cluster analysis by Sandy Chen, Stowe Shoemaker and Dina Marie Zemke, that provides even more insight into why people would spend money on a social casino game. The post also included information that people gamble for three reasons – economic, symbolic and pleasure-seeking – and only one of them was tied to making money. Those questions prompted me to do research before starting my position in the social casino, which led to my blog post Why would anyone buy a virtual good?. a virtual tractor) and assumed the two must be related. Moreover, I also did not fully understand why people would spend real money for a virtual good (i.e. It was, however, difficult to argue with the data that showed social casino consistently the most profitable genre in social and mobile gaming. After all, people gambled to win money, or so I thought. When I accepted my first job in the social casino (free to play slot machines) space, I did not understand fully (or believe) why anyone would pay to play a casino game (slots, poker, bingo, etc.) if they could not win money.
