Meet a Man Who Has Spent $70,000 Playing One Mobile Game

If you invested $70,000 in Netflix back in 2012, you would, roughly, have close to a million dollars now. With $70,000 you can buy a brand-new European high-end luxury car. $70,000 buys more than a 1,000, fully-priced $60 games. $70,000 is a lot of money. It's more than what most people in the world make in a single year.

If I had $70,000 right now, I'd probably put most in the bank, invest a bit of it, and then maybe take my fiancee on a vacation to somewhere nice like Venice or Tokyo. But other people may do something different with it.

Meet Daigo, a 31-year-old man who has spent more than $70,000 on Sony's mobile RPG Fate/Grand Order. According to Daigo, if he's awake, he's usually playing the game, even during meals, and only really ever takes breaks for driving, bathing, or sleeping. Daigo, who seems to be fully aware just how much he has spent on the game, candidly says he doesn't like to think about all the money he's invested.

According to Daigo he simply likes making the characters stronger, and has spent as much as $2,500 on one single character in the game.

The question is: where did Daigo get all of this money to spend on this game? Well, apparently he had a healthy amount saved up from previous work in stocks and futures. The other question is: why? Well Daigo says -- rather simply -- that the game moves him. For example, the first chapter notably almost brought him to tears. That, and he has fun playing, of course.

Players like Daigo have made Fate/Grand Order Sony's most profitable game ever, despite being a free-to-play game, which goes to show just how compelling in-game purchases can be, and just how much money the structure can make for a developer.

Fate/Grand Order is available on iOS and Android devices. Below, you can read more on the game via an official overview from the its listing on the app store:

2017 A.D.

Chaldea, an organization tasked with observing Earth's future, has confirmed that human history will be eliminated at 2019.
Without warning, the promised future of 2017 disappeared.
Why? How? Who? By what means?
AD. 2004. A certain provincial town in Japan.
For the first time ever, a region that could not be observed appeared.
Assuming that this was the cause of humanity's extinction, Chaldea carried out its sixth experiment - time travel into the past.
A forbidden ceremony where they would convert humans into Spiritrons and send them back in time. By intervening in events, they would locate, identify, and destroy the space-time Singularities.
The mission classification is an order to protect Humanity: Grand Order.
This is the title for those who would take a stand against human history and battle fate in order to protect mankind.

Game Introduction

A command card battle RPG optimized for smart phones!
Players become Masters and together with Heroic Spirits, defeat enemies and solve the mystery of human history's disappearance.
It's up the players to form a party with their favorite Heroic Spirits - both new and old.

Source: WSJ