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.
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.
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.
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.