The Free-to-play Fallacy

Mobile games... How many times have we read on the news of children 'accidentally' spending a fortune on a 'free' game to the shock of their parents? Considering that cases that come to light probably involve a significant the sum of money, how many cases of 'accidental' spending are there in reality?

Make no mistake, apps are designed to make money. Most free apps make money either through advertising, option to purchase for added features, or, as in this case, micro-transactions, and it is this monetization model that can be an issue.

Micro-transactions, or the option to buy perks, cheats, or speed boosts to get through the game faster, are becoming extremely popular, especially with Farmville-like games, for example, Smurf Village. These games, commonly referred to as cow clickers, tend to give the players very limited activities each game session and the player has to wait, possibly for hours as you get further into the game, before they get more activities to participate in. In order to speed things up, there are options to pay to instantly build stuff, or buy game currency so a player does not have to spend the time to earn it.

Patience is not a common trait among gamers, especially younger ones with more time on their hands. And if parents do not have the proper measures on place, they can spend a lot of money to get through to the next objective, not knowing the value nor the amount of money they are truly spending. Given how the app stores work and the safety measurements in place, these cases should be rare, but people somehow trust their children with the passwords to their accounts with their credit card details attached. And even if that's not the case, a child can be tempted to cry and whine to his parents to buy it for him. And who's to say that it's not actually the parent himself who spends, regrets and then blames it on his child to get a refund?

These games are designed and tweaked to a point where players are tempted to spend money to get ahead, yet are not put off by the slow pace of progression. And therein lies the problem. It's arguably exploitative, especially to certain vulnerable people. Considering the fact that free-to-play games tend to make the most from a very small percentage of its players, this could quite possibly be true.

And it's not just cow clickers. Any free-to-play game, or any game with micro-transactions built in, for that matter, can potentially be exploitative, locking content behind 'energy levels', whereby you need to wait or pay before the next level, or currency walls, i.e. you slowly save up in-game currency or, you guessed it, pay, to unlock the next level or upgrade your character. Game difficulty can even be tweaked such that it's impossible to complete without paying for upgrades. How often have I played a game with micro-transactions and have that nagging feeling that I'll never complete the game because I'm not going to pay.

As parents, it is our responsibility to police our children and educate them on their gaming and spending habits (duh). As gamers, we need to realize what and where we're spending on as well. Quite often, the amount spent on a free-to-play game in order to make decent progress can easily cost more than buying a retail game outright. Of course, it's hard to determine if a phone app is worth our time, but perhaps by not spending time and money in exploitative ones the moment we are sure, we can bring down it's popularity? Well, we can dream, can't we? Perhaps we can start by letting people know of such exploitative games and avoiding them.

If you know of any app with detestable business practices, especially the famous ones, feel free to post in the comments. And thanks for reading!

Nature of MMORPG and 'Addictions' - for non-gaming parents

MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, are a genre of games where large numbers of players can play together in a single game world. Players can see other players' characters, or avatars and can group together to complete game objectives. In fact, there are game objectives that only groups of players, of even up to 40 people, can complete. All these objectives normally have 'loot' or 'gear' rewards - weapons or clothing that enhance the abilities and looks of a character, and tend to be a testament of the skills of a player. Because of the fact that a lot of these gear can only be collected by defeating a 'boss', i.e. a powerful computer controlled character, and only by the efforts of a large group of people, players tend to gather together into 'guilds' or 'clans', basically an online team. As such, friendships are made and bonds are built.

This is a strong reason that players are 'addicted' to a game. In actual fact, he has to play at a certain time for a certain period only because his whole group is there and he cannot leave the team because they really do need him, especially if he is playing a major role that cannot be easily replaced. Quitting a game might be hard for them as well because gamers do feel a sense of responsibility towards his friends. Even though he might be sick of the game, he might just stick around to help his friends.

MMORPG makers sometimes add special events to the game during the year. For example, during Christmas and New Year, there might be special objectives to complete with special rewards that can only obtained during that time period. So you might sometimes find people unwilling to do anything else but stick to their computer during the holidays. To take it further, certain games have 'daily' objectives that have to be done everyday consistently in order that the player may be able to keep up with his friends so they can do the group objectives together.

All these reasons make people who play MMORPGs to seem like game addicts. It might be hard to let them know that time could be better spent elsewhere. While it might be difficult to understand, we can see their gaming schedules as a former of duty. If your loved one is not playing excessively, typically, they might have one or two days a week where they have to group up with their friends to tackle those group fights, which probably lasts hours. Work out with your loved ones to understand when are the days that they have to be online and work on having them spend their time on other things on the other days. We need to understand that they have a responsibility and truly have difficulty stopping during this 'group time' because it affects a large number of people.

With regards to 'daily' objectives, these might be time consuming, but generally, it might be not. Give them a little time each day to complete them and hopefully, they'll get sick of it and move on to a weekly schedule. Such 'obligations' tend to be concentrated at the start of an 'expansion' cycle, that is, when the next 'episode' of the game is released, somewhat like a new season of a drama series.

For parents, it is probably not a good idea to expose children to games like these that restricts and controls a gamers' time. Most gamers are in control, but for younger children and people with addiction tendencies, years could be wasted. There are many other great games that we can direct our children to, and we should be able to find one they can enjoy without having to invest too much time.