Moronic Comments About Spend Depth
I hear this moronic comment circulated over and over again, asking what a game's spend depth is, that it needs to be at least this arbitrary number. What does this even mean? If someone says a game needs to have a spend depth of at least $10,000, great, I'm charging $10,000 a loot box. Does that mean the problem is solved? Of course not. The same thing goes with, say, Match-3. Players can nearly infinitely spend on extra moves, always completing the wrong match and triggering another extra move purchase opportunity. Does that mean that Match-3 solved some magic monetization problem? No!
What people are trying to gesture at are two distinct questions, and collapsing them into a single number is a mistake.
First: where does the power curve end, and what does it cost to get there? In games without infinite consumables (read: Peace shield, not XP boosters), spend depth is really shorthand for the price of convergence. How much money does it take to reach the end of meaningful progression, or close enough that marginal gains flatten? More importantly, what does the shape of that payment-to-power curve look like?
A healthy curve is convex early and concave late. Early spend feels impactful, mid-game spend accelerates options, and late-game spend buys diminishing returns. When people say "this game needs $10k of spend depth," what they usually mean is that the curve ends too early, so whales run out of things to buy that matter. That's an issue with the shape of the curve rather than the price of items.
Second: is some arbitrary spend constant actually worth it? Even if a player can spend $10k or $20k, the more important question is whether doing so produces outcomes where the costs justify the benefits. Creating a system in which that level of spend feels rewarding is literally the point of much of economy design.