Reddit user lukeyk94 publicly confessed on Reddit that he had purchased a sparkling banana from Banana for $53 (more than many full games), then calling himself an idiot for doing so. In this case it is easy to agree with his statement, which however deserves to be explored further because it describes very well part of the current video game market and gamers. Naturally we are talking about a collectible from the hit Banana, the game of the moment on Steam.
Bananas for everyone
Ours wrote exactly in the title of his post, published in the Steam subreddit: “I bought this shiny banana for 53 dollars because It seems like I’m an idiot.” In the post he then wrote: “I’m not going to lie: this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve purchased in my entire life.” Then he posted an image showing his purchase: the Shiny Banana, of which only 100 exist.
Banana is definitely the phenomenon of the moment on Steam, where it is breaking record after record of contemporary players. Players are attracted by the prospect of obtaining sellable items in the in-game store without doing practically anything (just start the game every few hours). Most are worth a few bucks, but some can even be sold for interesting sums, like $53, apparently.
The game itself involves clicking on a banana in the center of the screen to make a meter grow. Enough. It’s working because players make money from selling items, so does the developer, and so does Valve. In short, it is a system that can potentially move millions of dollars without anyone practically lifting a finger, relying only on the greed and desire of video gamers to be part of a mass event. Brilliant, not much to say.
