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Space sim Squadron 42 is "feature-complete" and gunning for Starfield's lunch with massive new video
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Gaming
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I'd guess that the idea here is that a "whale" is someone who will spend a lot of money on something. Historically, catching an (actual) whale meant that you'd caught something that was very valuable; my guess is that this is where the phrase came from. Whales were valuable because at the time, they were an economically-reasonable place to get oil. Fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) is a way to extract oil from the ground.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I can see where they're coming from. A "whale fracking operation" is not a standard term that I've ever heard before, though I get what the guy probably meant.
Oh yeah I took it to just be wordplay, interpreting wordplay is still sometimes stupid hard for me, even despite the fact that I speak English at a near-native level and can understand each word individually.
It's a good question how "whale" ended up having this particular meaning. I was in the games industry for way too long and first saw it used in the context of big spenders in freemium mobile games, but I have a vague memory that it's used in the same way in the gambling / casino world. Your guess for the history sounds pretty believable, and it seems like the ginormous size of whales could play a part? Big spenders stand out from the "small fish"