I guess "not letting your kids play IAP funnels disguised as games" isn't an option?
Admittedly IAP funnels are an absurdly large portion of the games on the app stores.
"Making the kid grind for his own damn coins or buy them out of his allowance" is also a suggestion that comes to mind, and would probably start to teach him something about what his time and money is worth. Why is Daddy up late at night grinding in the IAP funnel for him?
> I guess "not letting your kids play IAP funnels disguised as games" isn't an option?
The author states in the article:
Obviously, many parents avoid these conflicts altogether by simply banning such games altogether. While I sympathize with that sentiment, to me it seems extreme; fun and gaming strategies are legitimate pursuits for a child
Personally I think that's a false dichotomy because it's possible to plays games (not necessarily on a screen) that allow fun and strategy while at the same time avoid IAP funnels disguised as games.
> Why is Daddy up late at night grinding in the IAP funnel for him?
Because the people who designed the IAP funnel are even more clever and insidious than the author realises and it's not just children they are after.
> The whole premise of the article is at best a failure in parenting
That's really what I was thinking throughout the article too. His child is in kindergarten. At that age, the majority of exposure to these games comes from the parents.
If you don't want your child exposed to games with broken economic principles that teach you to always want to consume more, then it's easy, let them play something else.
My (not yet kindergarten age) son's favourite game at the moment is hitting a balloon in the air with a paddle and seeing how many hits he can get before it hits the ground. He gets to keep score, practice counting, get some exercise and have loads of fun from all the near hits and misses. It's a game that keeps him amused, and needs minimal active supervision and all it costs is a new balloon every few days once the air from the old one runs out.
How about buying them a phone, and a $20 gift debit card, and then letting the app store jackals have their way with whatever happens to the rest of the cash, until it's all spent?
Probably a horrible idea, considering all the other complexities of the internet at large, and some of the careful supervision it necessitates.
Great points, but a bit misleading if the intent is to present this as something new under the sun. The illogical decision to buy a game boost that will not recoup its cost is not much different from buying a name-brand pair of sunglasses instead of $5 cheapies. Both cases lack any marginal utility in the purchasing decision, so the purchase is justified by marketing. That is, a story is created that the consumer either accepts or denies.
In the game, playing with the boost is more "fun", because you have more agency in the game and thus feel more powerful. You are temporarily unburdened from the artificial limitations of the game.
With sunglasses, there are (often illusory) promises of quality or imaginary utility, or participation in a social narrative that says a certain configuration of plastic is more fashionable than another. Or plain old conspicuous consumption, also a social narrative.
Simply put, IAPs did not invent this style of anti-economic behavior.
I would argue that the analogy isn't really there because expensive consumer products can confer utility just by being expensive.
In a very simple, animal way having difficult-to-attain things communicates that you have the ability to recruit significant resources and therefore are a cool and important guy or gal and deserve respect and consideration.
Whereas having a lot of game points communicates that you may be an addict.
That is conspicuous consumption, and digital goods can perform this function just as well. As an extreme example, the "I Am Rich" app. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
You're missing the point. Usually these games have a number of currencies and no fixed exchange rate between them. Your sunglass analogy uses a single currency.
The article also talks about the lack of profit in using the currency. You buy gems or diamonds, but spending them doesn't help game progress, but just provides visual flair.
If you're in a friendly competition with your friends to gain the high score, there is in fact social utility around IAPs. Also works with complete strangers if you have a particularly competitive streak.
I've got a kid and I've written a line in the sand: we'll pay for apps and games, but we won't pay for in-app purchases [+]. He's free to download games that are filled with IAPs, but he'll have to play it the hard way. There's a lot of pressure from friends to join free-to-play games and it's just impossible to ban them entirely.
[+] ... some exceptions made here for DLC and expansion material that is priced appropriately.
Ah, but the game developer still nails the player anyway. The "hard way" (playing for free only) in many of these predatory freemium games is often designed to require an enormous time commitment to keep up (e.g. events that require user intervention one or more times daily, time limited premium in-game items that have a high price in free currency, requiring lots of grinding, etc.) that the free user is trapped online constantly to provide a social enticement for more players to join the game.
That's true. The consequence of this is that the kids will generally abandon the games after getting tired of this, switching to paid-for games with no IAPs. It's much easier (on me) to let the kids get bored of a game than telling them once a month they can't play a game because it's IAP-heavy.
I don't have children, but as a kid I had a strict cap on “screen time”. In the IAP money-for-time bargain, this makes screen time even more rare and valuable a resource than it is for the rest of us.
I know parents who see this as a reason to give a small, fixed IAP allowance. Essentially they trade a little bit of money to make it less of an ordeal to get their kids to limit screen time, which they consider well worth the investment.
If you view IAP as simply the way of the world, and video games as a reasonable thing for kids to play, this bargain seems pretty reasonably pragmatic. Personally, I think this makes the most sense when that IAP goes toward something that makes the game itself richer, like Hearthstone decks instead of vanity hats, but that's a lesson for the children to learn.
I think a lot of us on HN would prefer a world where games have only up-front costs, but that's basically a niche market now. I'm also sure there are stricter schools of thought on parenting that find the idea of bargaining any of this with children a bit ridiculous, but without having any to help shape myself it's pretty far out of my purview.
Man, i remember the time when games weren't designed to be shit, and cheat codes were discoverable, came in magazines or were traded with friends.
Even sadder is when people end up calling non-shit games "a niche market" and don't even dare to call out shit games that sell cheat codes as "shit games that sell cheat codes".
IAP on mobile is mostly a disaster area, a wasteland of pseudo-gambling addiction mechanisms and timewasting. On other platforms it's not so aggressive yet and may be limited to cosmetic items (eg overwatch).
Even then, the loot crate model that is heavily present in most games today, pioneered by Valve in TF2, CSGO, DotA2 and slightly modified in Overwatch is based on those gambling addiction mechanisms. Random items, different rarities, etc. It's even more egregious in games like Overwatch because you already paid a nice sum for the game, and it's still asking you for more money, drip feeding you a few items here and there, making it pretty damn hard to get the cosmetics you want in the game you already paid for and should have already if this terrible model didn't exist.
Fair point, really. There's a lot of games on PC that have micro transactions but sell no cheat codes, or at least have good enough game design for cheat codes to be pure luxury items, nice to have, but not mandatory.
I prefer a slightly more general line in the sand: we'll pay for what you need§, you pay for what you want.
Needless to say our kids pine for neither paid games nor in-app purchases - they've chosen (mostly) better ways to invest their time and their hard-earned savings.
I've often wondered what it must be like for a 10-year-old these days. Especially lower income ones who go to schools where rich kids have smart phones and you're stuck with some low-level bar phone or, the more obvious situation: no phone at all.
My 13 year old doesn't have a phone and is none the worse (and arguably much better) for it.
His grandfather bought him a top of the range iPhone 7 for hist last birthday, but by his own choice, he's going to sell it and reinvest the capital so that when he actually needs a phone, he can buy whatever's current (or as he suggested the same model or lower model which in either case will be cheaper by then, so he'll save some cash.)
> Especially lower income ones who go to schools where rich kids have smart phones and you're stuck with some low-level bar phone or, the more obvious situation: no phone at all.
Do you really want to have something to do with such "rich kids"? Even as a pupil I didn't. I always had interests that few other children at school were interested in. So I really don't consider this as a problem.
P.S. School was hell, but for completely different reasons.
When I was 10, it was the other kids wearing designer clothes, and excitedly discussing the intricacies of Nintendo games. Being excluded wasn't hell, but it wasn't great.
Here's a thought: If and when a kid wants to make in-game purchases using real money, allow them to earn that money through real-world work: housework, chores, etc. That way they can get a real sense for how valuable the purchases really are to them.
You might even offer a choice: Here, take this $5 bill or I can spend the $5 for you in the game.
Google and Apple should add this feature to their platform. Kids could decide if they want to spend their hard earned money on inapp purchases or in store (via Apple Pay).
eh, the freemium model isn't just based on impulse buy, the deepth and width of constant manipulative psychological tricks they use will eventually break them.
> Obviously, many parents avoid these conflicts altogether by simply banning such games altogether. While I sympathize with that sentiments, to me it seems extreme; fun and gaming strategies are legitimate pursuits for a child.
That's one hell of a false dichotomy. Why not just ban games with in-app purchases?
True, I'd been assuming a context of mobile apps. Though IAPs in console games are on the rise as well, so I don't expect that to last much longer. So far still clear of tracking adverts (far as I know) so they would be good on that front - for a while yet, anyway.
FWIW I have been avoiding mobile games almost entirely since they all started going the freemium route, and I will definitely point my daughter toward non skinner box games (as well as never paying for consumable or "cheat" IAP). If this limits her to mostly non-mobile games, I'm OK with that.
The problem is the implication that "fun and gaming strategies are legitimate pursuits for a child" are only present in games with in-app purchases. That makes no sense at all.
I didn't take that implication away from the author's overall post or the specific sentence that you're referencing. I find it odd that anyone would. For someone to write enough words to be so specific as to remove all ambiguity would not make for interesting reading. Instead I choose to interpret the meaning of their limited words charitably.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the shitstorm that followed the release of Nintendo's Super Mario Run on iOS.
The game comes for free with 3 levels. To unlock the full version, you need to make a one-off in-app purchase that costs around $10 depending on your local currency. But other than that, it has a pretty traditional pricing.
So after release, this otherwise awesome, deep game was getting tons and tons of negative reviews because of the fact that the in-app purchase was, according to many, way too expensive. I followed this topic a little bit on Twitter, and what I saw (I know, very unscientific) was that most of the people complaining where youngsters that most probably spend their most time playing games that require you to pay in order to progress faster in the game. Of course, they usually pay a fraction of the $10 that Nintendo wants, but they do it many times over the lifecycle of a game.
Just compare the $10 that you have to spend in order to play Super Mario Run (assuming that you already have an iOS device) to what you would need to pay to play a Mario game on Nintendo hardware: the cheapest you could do is to pay ~$200 for a Nintendo 3DS + ~$40 for the game. Of course, once you get the hardware, you can play more games on it, but the games are still 4x more expensive than the one release on iOS.
To wrap this up: I think that in-app purchases are really, really bad for the gaming industry and should not be abused the way they are now. Especially Apple should intervene here and maybe put a limit on the items to be sold and ban completely "pay to level up quicker" IAPs.
Also, Apple should offer a demo option for their apps already, instead of forcing developers to abuse in-app purchases for that.
But Apple will never do that, since they earn a lot of money on IAP, and the users who are exploited don't complain. I think what is needed is legislation, but formulating it seems difficult without banning all IAPs entirely.
I'm surprised th article doesn't mention the fact that many games actually change the game design dynamically as soon as you buy IAP in order to milk you for more IAP. They alter the difficulty curve and change the reward levels to encourage more spending so you're effectively playing a different game.
My wife and I essentially banned IAP for e.g. Coins after reading an article about how Candy Crush does this. As soon as it's the game playing you rather than you playing the game, It's time to draw the line.
I don't care that most of the games out there have IAP. There are still plenty that don't, and many of the ones that do are still perfectly playable without buying IAP - even Candy Crush, which my wife still plays.
I've got no problem with IAP that are just DLC, such as extra maps, but buying in game currrncy is a definite no-no. I know for sure the game designers know their business much better than I do.
No, I think this process does a very good job of illustrating an important idea: prices are what people are prepared to pay, not any objective kind of "value". This includes what you can trick people into paying until it's actually made illegal.
These games have a lot more in common with the toxic reinforcement of gambling than they do with regular pay-once games.
Me too. Is this behavior common among the crowd here? I'm in the process of releasing an app with a demo-mode but would like to avoid the "offers IAP"-stamp. Is it better to release 2 apps; a demo-version and a pro-version, rather than to have just one free app with pro as IAP?
The app store desperately needs a demo-mode and better control and filtering of IAP in general. Such as "IAP that can only be bought once (new levels)" vs "IAP to buy diamonds".
> Partly, this is mandated by the business model of apps. In the home video games of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sulaitis explains, a player might pay $60 for a DVD that could provide hundreds of hours of game play, and that consummated the economic relationship; game companies had no economic stake in the playing outcome.
> By contrast, the “freemium” model popularized by Apple’s App store effectively requires game companies to give the initial product away for free.
The biggest problem is that there is virtually no piracy possible on the iOS platforms, and even on Android people don't install shady cracks because they've been bitten by premium-calling trojans.
On a PC, I can try out a cracked game on which I'll spend 50 € or something, but I sure as hell won't spend so much money on a tablet game when I can't test it for at least a day instead the joke 15min that Google offers. The worst offenders need half an hour alone to download ingame assets (Real Racing!).
Also, with a PC or console game I feel I have something valuable - not just the look and feel, where no tablet game can ever beat a real console, but also a physical medium where I know that I can reinstall the game even a decade in the future... in contrast to a mobile platform where I have to trust:
- the platform operator to stick around for the next decade (I'm looking at MS and Google). I can always go to a junkshop and assemble a 1995 PC, or grab an old console, but no way to do so with mobile devices.
- the vendor not disappearing or pulling their apps from the store, thus rendering my purchase worthless if the device where the game is installed breaks
- the vendor keeping their apps up to date - I can still, on W7 x64, play EarthSiege 2 from early W95 days. Try this with an iOS game last updated 2012...
>The biggest problem is that there is virtually no piracy possible on the iOS platforms, and even on Android people don't install shady cracks because they've been bitten by premium-calling trojans.
Ironically, game publishers have turned to the freemium model because it's one of the few models that's both profitable and resistant to today's ubiquitous piracy.
>Also, with a PC or console game I feel I have something valuable - not just the look and feel, where no tablet game can ever beat a real console, but also a physical medium where I know that I can reinstall the game even a decade in the future...
Not really. If/when the services for your PC or (particularly) console game go away, your ability to access patches, including the now de rigeur day one patches to fix last minute bugs, as well as DLC goes away with it. Online service for the Sony PSP and original Xbox have ended already, for example.
It's one of the reasons I'm very particular about buying games from GOG whenever they're available there vs. other services, since those games are DRM-free.
I disagree on "ubiquitous piracy", as much as there will always be people pirating just because, with steam and the much higher risks in terms of malware for pirated games, I doubt piracy is anywhere near as high in percentage terms as it used to be way back. Not to mention that anti-piracy software these days (Denuvo) seems to be extremely resilient.
(some) game publishers have turned to freemium because it makes more money with less risk: would you risk spending many millions of dollars to compete with something like Witcher 3 (lots of risk, uncertain rewards) or spend a LOT less and float several different "freemium" balloons and then invest in marketing for what seems to have traction? (very little risk, very certain rewards)
He should just buy his son a laptop and put a zachtronics game or factorio or minecraft or any other game that has some sort of educational or artistic goal. Heck, for high score, just put runner game on there. Mods can fulfill boosts, etc.
His trump card is the fact that all of his friends are playing [free game] and so he also will play it period and will be exposed to the in app purchases. We are fun little social creatures.
The question is what options do game designers have that don't involve making crummy games and yet still allow for free games and in app purchases? 'Hats' and other cosmetic options and genuine expansions are the only two I am aware of. What else has others heard of or seen?
Only time I payed for in-game currency was so I could buy lures to drop for players at the restaurant or park I was at, or so my girlfriend could stay occupied while she was stuck in bed when recovering from surgery. It made me feel good to buy that stuff and spread the wealth, instead of feeling awful, and it was easy to justify because "it's only a dollar". I'm convinced that companies need to tap into this a lot more.
This is actually an important part of the market. A lot of the income of these games comes from "whales", players who spend a lot of money (sometimes thousands a year) on them. These are typically people with high expendable income but a strong desire for social status, and one of the ways they try and get social status is by buying such items (which makes them very beloved and helps retain other players too)
"You got the first X levels for free but if you want more you'll need to pay $$". Sure worked for Doom.
Which sadly makes nowhere near as much money since $5 is considered pricey for a phone app, especially for a casual game, and doesn't have that possibility of attracting a few big spenders who will go on to fund a significant portion of development.
> "This game, on the other hand, REQUIRES you to pay in order to advance. That's the most retarded money-making strategy I've ever heard of. [...] most people aren't going to fall for your greediness"
To support your point, here's a review of a game. The game has a few free levels, with a single IAP to unlock the rest of the game. This is the classic Doom model.
> There's plenty of content here too, especially after you cough up a little money.
> (That's a bad thing)
> Though the game is "free" on the App Store, it's actually a glorified demo, the full version of which you unlock with a one-off payment. Getting to a point in the game where you can't progress, only to have a prompt pop up hinting that you should give the company some money, feels a bit tacky.
> His trump card is the fact that all of his friends are playing [free game] and so he also will play it period and will be exposed to the in app purchases.
If the friends are not much smarter this is rather an argument against the game to me. If the friends urge him (your "We are fun little social creatures" argument), one should tell the child to quit being friends with them, since they get the child down - thus they not people one should want to be friend with.
one should tell the child to quit being friends with them
My mom gave me advice like this when I was in the 3rd grade. I followed it. What she didn't tell me is that in school, the 30 kids I was with were going to be the same ones in 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade and 7th grade. I was ostracized by those friends, and having been shunned by that small group of friends (just 4 other kids out of 30), I was persona non grata to those others. Even when other kids joined the class between each year, they quickly found out that talking to me was a quick way to also be shunned. Between that incident in 3rd grade, and when I finally moved in 8th grade, I can count the number of other children who talked to me on 2 hands, and the number of total words spoken to me was less than a hundred. It's bad advice to ignore the fact that we are social creatures. Children can be exceptionally cruel.
>
If the friends are not much smarter this is rather an argument against the game to me. If the friends urge him (your "We are fun little social creatures" argument), one should tell the child to quit being friends with them, since they get the child down - thus they not people one should want to be friend with.
This seems like bad advice.
School is unlike the adult world. Children are essentially stuck there for a decade or more - they can't (easily) quit, walk out, tell the boss to go fuck himself or otherwise do much else other than show up the next day.
I'm not trying to be edgy when I say that in many ways it's like prison - you have little choice over who you associate with and things like violence amongst the inmates are accepted there in ways that would never be tolerated on the "outside".
> School is unlike the adult world. Children are essentially stuck there for a decade or more - they can't (easily) quit, walk out, tell the boss to go fuck himself or otherwise do much else other than show up the next day.
This is a good argument against the school system.
> I'm not trying to be edgy when I say that in many ways it's like prison
Indeed I always felt school as a prison, too.
> This seems like bad advice.
Here I think differently: The only winning move is not to play along with all the bad habits. The whole school system is also a good reason to never ever have children.
Score attack games where you basically run to the right, although there are other variations (like ninja games). Alternatively just get the kid into speed running, same idea. Some examples:
Free to play games are very carefully designed to manipulate you into making In App Purchases. This ethically dubious when the customers are adults, but with children it's downright sleazy. My kids are young enough that I can choose which apps they can install, so I can ban all apps with IAP or ads. This means they are heavily slanted towards Toca Boca and the BBC. Incidentally, Amazon Underground is great for getting paid Android apps legitimately for free, including free IAP.
I recently looked around at "baby apps" hoping to find something to launch before letting my one year old play with my phone. (She loves smartphones more than any other object but I don't appreciate the random calendar entries and text messages she sends.) Every single one I found had advertising and half of them had in app purchases. The people making these apps must assume I'm an idiot.
Something like "bubbles" tends to be popular with the younger kids. My kid also was a big fan of "Petting Zoo" (by fox and sheep GMBH) around that time. (It was briefly free in the app store - it's somewhat abstract and interactive with simple gestures.)
The "pat the bunny" app is also pretty accessible for a young kid.
Use "guided access" mode if you want to keep her from switching apps.
As he got older, he enjoyed stuff like the tiny hands sorting games, the Dr Panda apps, "little builders" and other fox and sheep apps, and the lego/duplo stuff. Around three he was also a fan of lara croft go and monument valley, parts of which he could do after watching me. He would build his own lara croft go (and hitman go) scenarios with his playmobil 1-2-3 and magna-tiles.
As far as screen time goes, we settled on weekend (and holiday) access to the device, but we're pretty much making this up as we go.
Look at Sago Mini games. When mine were one, their favourites included Sago Mini Babies, Boats, Space Explorer and Forest Flyer. My three year old still loves them, and my five year old still plays them occasionally too. Also Toca Boca, though those are mostly aimed at slightly older kids. Toca Pet Doctor was a particular favourite when they were younger, though it does require some fine motor control (and is excellent for teaching tap and drag control) . Let me know if you want any more suggestions. It's no coincidence that these are all paid apps. They have no ads or IAP. You can get a lot of them free on Android with Amazon Underground if you have Prime.
Thanks for these suggestions (thanks also to dunham in sibling comment). I was having a hard time finding/evaluating the paid options, it's great to have your insights.
> The people making these apps must assume I'm an idiot.
No, they believe (and this is a belief for which there is overwhelming empirical evidence, not an unsupported assumption) that there exist lots of people with low tolerance to up-front costs from whom money can be made via advertising and IAP.
You may not be one of those people, but then you, alone, are insignificant in the market.
It sounds like we're just coming around full-circle to the days of video game arcades. Except instead of going to the mall and possibly seeing other people, we've all got the arcade in our pocket.
Inflation-adjusted, these in-app purchases on freemium games are still cheaper per-play than the quarters I fed the machines as a kid.
To unlock a track costs 3999 dynamite. There are 6 unlockable tracks.
There are some characters that can be unlocked. Some are premium: King Tom costs 5399 dynamite; Cyber Angela costs £39.99; Hyper Tom costs £29.99; Super Angela costs £22.99; etc etc.
The characters have power ups. You can increase the duration of the power ups by collecting in game items from vaults. You can open vaults early using dynamite.
You don't need these characters, you can probably complete the game without them. You don't need the power ups, and you could slowly grind your way through the upgrades. And you can unlock the tracks via playing the game.
But it's baffling to me that you could pay > £100 and not have the complete unlocked content.
Yikes, that is rather staggering. I wasn't thinking about that kind of Creative Assembly-level DLC extortion on mobile games.
My experience has only been with something like Candy Crush, or the bubble shooter one, where, if I recall correctly, you got three lives a day, and could pay a dollar or two for more if you lost - thus being relatively on the same paradigm as arcade games or pinball. I don't remember if there were other whizz-bangs and powerups you could buy, but I never bothered.
The other lesson these kinds of things teach is "This is how piracy and hacked APKs work. This is where you download them, and this is how you keep your device safe."
I learned about piracy/copyright infringement when I was 7 years old, using "Fast Hackem" for the C64 for getting around disk sector errors. Those lessons stuck with me up to today, where pretty much anything is available, at any time.
Is it wrong? Is it right? I'm not going to moralize. Not my place to. But one thing I can say, is stunts like what these skinner-box designers do, and what a lot of content companies do, end up hurting them in the long run.
video game arcades were skill-based gameplay, if you were good at gyruss you could play a LONG time on your quarter; yes, it was expensive while you were learning, but that promoted skill acquisition, the better pattern recognition, memory and hand-eye coordination you developed, the more you could play with the same amount of money.
IAP and coin-based gameplay is not skill based, it's addiction based, which is NOT something you should encourage: the reward loop is completely different, fear-of-missing-out and scarcity-based gameplay do not create any positive effects, save maybe training your child to be a future patron of casinos and similar establishments
> the global market for in-app purchases (not all aimed at kids) is estimated to hit about $30 billion next year, which is especially impressive considering that fewer than ten years ago it was zero
I wonder if people are shifting their discretionary spending patterns or if it's one of those situations where the market is 'creating' money.
As a random comparison the North American comic book market is about a billion USD.
Well if all IAP buyers would collectively decide to buy comic books instead, and all IAP programmers would decide to switch careers to comic book illustrators, the output of comic books would be comically high. So I'd say it's a shift in spending, mostly.
"But!" you may say, empathically, "these programmers lack not just self-respect and purpose in life, but artistic skills as well". I'd say it doesn't much matter – they'd probably find some other work, and the money would find some other purpose and the net difference would be "how much more efficient were they at producing IAP content vs. their second best job option" and "how much worse is whatever consumers buy instead of IAP content".
I think if a game is in any way competitive, paying money for extras should automatically require you to compete only against others who paid the same amount. Then it becomes a challenge based on who spent the same money the most effectively, and not rich kids decimating people with less time or money to invest.
In addition, EVERY TIME a purchase is being made, the game should be required to remind the user of how much money they’re really spending, by comparing the purchase to something common (like food). For instance: “The $9.99 you are about to spend on this one-time-use box of gems for this one game could also have bought you lunch today. Proceed?”.
Should the place you spend 9.99$ on a sandwich at tell you "You could have bought the ingredients for 2 sandwiches and made them in 10 minutes"?
Or more equivalently "You could have made 10 meals if you at canned beans and rice instead of our food?"
The money for games should come from disposable income that can be lost without harm, people who don't know that won't listen to advice from the games.
I’ve been concerned about predatory freemium games for a while. They seem to extract immensely more value from customers while providing little in return other than quick dopamine fixes.
What can we - specifically engineers without the power to make beneficial changes in distribution channels like the App Store - do to curb this?
Where do we place products like League Of Legends? I would never in a million years pay for consumables in a game but something like LoL in which you purchase characters and skins seems justifiable to me. I purchased £40 of content from that game because that's typically what I paid for such a high quality PC game in the past. I've heard of people spending hundreds though.
To me these mobile games are forgettable grindfest machines with gamble mechanics created purely to trick kids into spend their parent's cash...
IMO, paying for characters is at least bordering close to pay-to-win, but skins are more or less donations.
I like SMITE's way of handling this: you can either buy/grind for gods individually, or you can pay $30 to get all gods immediately. After that, the only remaining microtransactions are pure cosmetics, like skins.
I don't mind paying for DLC content but spending money on in-game consumables is a no-no. With games designed to maximize spending of gems, it's hard to find games worth playing these days.
There are plenty of good games out there that don't go the IAP route, but they're pretty rare on mobile platforms - this is one of the major reasons I prefer PC gaming.
I've even had games that I purchased (Galaxy on Fire 2) that didn't have IAP go 'free to play' and add IAP after the fact, making my fully purchased version now loaded up with advertisements.
I simply don't purchase or play games on mobile platforms anymore, and neither do my children.
Yes, I primarily meant mobile. I could see myself playing some mobile games if there was a way to find any. But the market is filled with hundreds of Clash of Microtransactions clones and it's impossible to find anything by browsing.
I mostly play on PC but it's not totally unproblematic either. There are so many games but not too many good ones.
But the vast majority of the games industry produces mobile pay to win games because it is more lucrative. I would welcome a change.
I often find myself out and about and would like to play a game on mobile for 10-20 minutes, but I am having a really hard time finding a game that I first of all actually like on mobile, and doesn't have the IAP going on.
I am the exact opposite. I very much mind paying for a DLC. The game should ship as close as possible to a complete state.
However, I don't mind paying for consumables and upgrades. I work 40 hours a week. I don't have time to farm the in-game goodies. Let me pay to keep up with my unemployed friends ... otherwise I will simply go the illegal way and buy gold from a chinese farmer.
I play primarily simulators, where the "content" (cars, racetracks, planes, trains, etc) is meticulously detailed and expensive to produce. They are appropriately priced and I don't mind paying because I know the quality is high (others prefer free mods).
I don't mind paying a modest amount for some more traditional content, as long as there's enough production value in there. Art, music, storyline, game design, etc. Especially if I have enjoyed the game so far.
I agree that the game should be playable out of the box. Or have otherwise fair pricing (like Hitman for example).
But I was mildly upset about the DLC in Civilization 6, for example. $5 for one new civilization and one scenario is a bit much.
So I'm a bit split on DLC. But I don't play pay to win games, I absolutely despise that.
Be careful, that money you bought from that Chinese gentleman could've very well be obtained by hacking one of your friends for it. Or obtained through shady (possibly rigged) gambling sites. Or "legitimately" obtained through gold farming (either manually in an Asian sweat shop or using bots) in a way that makes the game near unplayable for legitimate players (hoarding resources, driving inflation, ...)
Source: I've been involved with people in the gold selling business.
Clash of Clans is actually fairly balanced if you don't pay at all. The most common use case for buying gems is to make upgrades happen quicker (typically if you are in a close clan war), but it is completely possible to spend no money at all and still progress.
In addition, the IAP can get you to a particular state faster but it doesn't really give you an advantage once you're there. So it's a fair fight between someone who's been grinding for a year vs someone who's been playing for 3 months but paid to speed up his progress.
It's getting harder. There's the obvious social pressure of course, when every other kid has the latest iPhone starting in kindergarten. My family is fortunate to live in a community where there's a fair amount of social diversity and tolerance, so the kid with no cellphone doesn't stand out very much.
Our kids are now in high school, and some teachers are beginning to expect kids to have smartphones. My daughter told me her teacher sent out an announcement of an assignment, and was surprised that some of the kids didn't find out about it instantly.
It's not uncommon for kids to have their smartphones taken away from them, either as a punishment, or because the phone has become an addiction. We have had to impose the rule: "When you are in the house, your phone is on the charger in the kitchen, where we can see it."
I know parents who have gotten their kids flip phones, to break the phone addiction. Tracfone still offers them, AFAIK.
Literally every other name you might choose to apply there is less correct than that one, and by using any other name all you do is perpetuate the idea that they are anything but that.
Worse, you keep people from making the easy logical steps in judging game, wherein if you do think of "iap" as cheat codes, the game design becomes either "can be played normally" or "nigh-unplayable without cheat codes". A game to which the latter applies thus becomes easily evident as what it really is:
A reasonable course of action is to vote with your wallet and only buy full-priced games. If you were going to spend money on IAPs anyway, might as well use that money to support higher quality products that deliver a deeper experience and whose business model does not involve getting people to cave in a little more dough every week.
Crashlands by Butterscotch Shenanigans is a wonderful example of a criminally underpriced premium game with dozens of hours of fun and entertaining content. Best of all is you're supporting a handful of guys and gals who are committed to ethical (and fun!) game creation.
I think the article touches on some interesting points, but it doesn't really go into any of them, including the warped understanding of economics.
However, I am interested in learning more about these exchange rates that don't add up and the bonus' that don't help the players but still appeal to them.
There's really no difference grinding away at work or grinding in a game. Or buying a bottle of water containing the same thing you flush your toilet with.
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Yes, your kid will go to school with other kids who may be given money to play Candy Crush without earning it. You still have a choice as to whether to play the game for your child and give them free money (helicopter), let them play free range without the money (they may deduce that it's boring or that you don't love them), or give them an allowance for doing chores (they learn to make tradeoffs)... lots of other choices too.
What's irrational is complaining about being given the choice of how to raise your child, and then deciding that you are raising them in a way you don't like, but doing it anyway. Maybe it's human to be self-defeating, but it's not like other people won't notice, if you write about it.
> and then deciding that you are raising them in a way you don't like, but doing it anyway
That's really the thing here. The author realises these things are manipulative, and perhaps have a negative influence on his child's ability to think and reason about the world, and yet he's still staying up in order to help him play them.
> I used to be like you. I use to look down my nose and cluck and those stupid, pitiful Republican-type people who would dare let their children ever do anything except sit in a circle and read the most pristine and white-washed of full-text childrens' books.
I guess not, because that's nothing like me.
Of course children get exposed to other influences, but if you're staying up grinding Fruit Pop and/or similar glorified Skinner Boxes for your kindergarten aged children, the problem is not exposure from your child's classmates.
I don't give my children a sheltered, white-washed environment, but at the same time that doesn't mean I need to expose them to the manipulations of psychologists and behavioral scientists who design these 'games' to try and extract as much money as possible from the impressionable people playing them (children and adult alike).
> There's a cultural bias going on. Fight that, not the parents.
Fight that how? Isn't saying "this culture is not what I want for my kids" exactly that fight? Isn't it also exactly what you're saying makes one come off as a liberal hipster?
I don't have kids yet, so I'm curious and worried about this. Do parents need to make sure their kids are socially popular? Is it simply not possible to instill positive values and encourage friendships with other kids with similar values?
I feel like I know plenty of well adjusted adults who were "weird" kids. I think that's a-ok. Am I a hipster?
lol it's not "you vs me" with the bad parents spoiling childrens and the good ones having to succumb social pressure
seriously as a parent you set the standards, if you're the first one to fail under social pressure the children will for sure follow
the right response is to provide better activities for everyone. be the parent that brings kids to park and builds stuff with them or anything age appropriate but cool interesting fun and inclusive. or if you must pamper digital primadonna host xbox parties with sensible game selection that aren't brain drains.
craft your kid inclusivity in a sane way, instead of just blaming everyone else for your children personality.
it's not easy because there is no formula to apply that works every time. I managed to make that work by creating a set of rules to play pen and paper rpg using bionicles and teching mine to master for that very simplified game. made them heroes and drove their whole class off their phones at least for a day a week. young kids doesn't have to be or feel included all the time and it's actually best if each develops their own thing so they can share the spotlight.
What you are describing is well and good but also nothing new. Parents putting financial pressure on others by spoiling their kids with toys and treats isn't a new phenomenon. The article is misguided in aiming its ire at IAP(there's plenty of other legitimate grievances to have with them, but think of the children is just emotional clickbait).
There's nothing wrong with the concept of age gating. Why not let kids play slot machines on the bus? Why not let kids dose themselves with stimulants on their ride in?
Chemically it's all more or less the same. Dopamine releases are dopamine releases, and as a society we have pretty conclusively determined that kindergarten is not the right time for any brain to handle that. Especially once you descend into the level of outright psychological manipulation that is the freemium app market at present.
Admittedly IAP funnels are an absurdly large portion of the games on the app stores.
"Making the kid grind for his own damn coins or buy them out of his allowance" is also a suggestion that comes to mind, and would probably start to teach him something about what his time and money is worth. Why is Daddy up late at night grinding in the IAP funnel for him?