Game in-app purchases are warping kids’ understanding of basic economic ideas
qz.com
qz.com
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?
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
> Instead, I am drawing my finger over lines of imaginary fruit on an iPad, trying to rack up points so he can better enjoy a game called Fruit Pop
really?
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.
Probably a horrible idea, considering all the other complexities of the internet at large, and some of the careful supervision it necessitates.
I mean, consider the sad tale of "Slender Man."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/13/slender-man-st...
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.
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.
It is disturbing to me, but it is the reality of things :/
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.
[+] ... some exceptions made here for DLC and expansion material that is priced appropriately.
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.
§Birthdays, christmas and rewards aside.
Must be hell.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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".
You might even offer a choice: Here, take this $5 bill or I can spend the $5 for you in the game.
If the in app purchase is in front of them now, and they have cash in the account, they will spend.
I wouldn't be surprised if having some sort of financial responsibility from a young age greatly limits this behavior.
That's one hell of a false dichotomy. Why not just ban games with in-app purchases?
It's almost impossible to do in any practical sense, and that's extremely frustrating.
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.
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.
These games have a lot more in common with the toxic reinforcement of gambling than they do with regular pay-once games.
I'm sure they weren't too happy about Apple showing it's an app with IAPs because it lets people avoid the mental traps.
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".
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...
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)
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?
For example: "lures" in pokemon go mostly help other people.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
But for Super Mario Run it garners them 1-star ratings that call it "a scam" since it's not free.
https://twitter.com/drbarnard/status/810333059165945856
> "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"
This reviewer calls it "tacky".
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Glyph+Quest/review.asp...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Relevant comic: https://xkcd.com/488/
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
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.
"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".
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?”.
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.
What can we - specifically engineers without the power to make beneficial changes in distribution channels like the App Store - do to curb this?
To me these mobile games are forgettable grindfest machines with gamble mechanics created purely to trick kids into spend their parent's cash...
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'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.
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.
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 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.
Source: I've been involved with people in the gold selling business.
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:
Broken.
Battle toads was nigh unplayable without cheat codes
Battle toads as a game was broken, yes.
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.