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My wife and I spent $10,000 on a video game once. It wasn't F2P; it was a kickstarter prequel of our favorite vintage game [0], which we've been playing for 20 years. But the same principle applies.

There are people out there who have a lot more money than us, and are willing to spend it to be entertained. For a lot of games, their idea of a "whale" is someone who spends a couple hundred bucks a month on swag; at that level it's not worth trying to target individual buyers. For some games, though, it's someone who they can get to spend $50,000 on a set of vanity items. If someone is already dropping thousands of dollars on your game, that suggests it might be profitable to have someone gather info on them and see if they have a passion you can target. And often, you can create a whole class of "premium" items for very little work, just slapping a custom skin and a +5% bonus on top of a pre-existing game object.

[0] Descent. http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php to set up the originals; http://descendentstudios.com/ for the upcoming prequel

Startups are about doing things that don't scale--initially. By targeting a few whales you can figure out what strategies work. Once you've validated individual strategies then you can codify them for your millions of other users.

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Several tens of thousands of dollars.