
Game in-app purchases are warping kids’ understanding of basic economic ideas - smalera
http://qz.com/873348/50000-coins-for-1-99-how-mobile-game-in-app-purchases-are-warping-kids-understanding-of-basic-economic-ideas/
======
egypturnash
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?

~~~
imron
> 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.

~~~
LoSboccacc
I agree, plenty games sans the iap bullshit to play, both digital and not.

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?

~~~
imron
> 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.

------
javadocmd
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.

~~~
AbrahamParangi
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.

~~~
javadocmd
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich)

------
mmastrac
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.

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
> _...but he 'll have to play it the hard way_

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.

~~~
mmastrac
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.

~~~
harlanlewis
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.

~~~
Mithaldu
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".

~~~
pjc50
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).

~~~
pikzen
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.

------
godson_drafty
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.

~~~
jpalomaki
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).

~~~
jay_kyburz
Young kids don't have impulse control. Event most young adults can save from
week to week.

If the in app purchase is in front of them now, and they have cash in the
account, they will spend.

~~~
kahrkunne
Not for all kids. My 10 year old brother has no problem with these things.

I wouldn't be surprised if having some sort of financial responsibility from a
young age greatly limits this behavior.

~~~
LoSboccacc
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.

------
justinpombrio
> 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?

~~~
GrinningFool
I would love to limit games to those with no IAPs and a fixed up front cost,
no advertising, and no dial-home advertising toolkit integration.

It's almost impossible to do in any practical sense, and that's extremely
frustrating.

~~~
izacus
What do you mean? Pretty much all console games are like that. And Nintendo
has a huge offering of good kid-friendly games on 3DS/Wii/WiiU.

~~~
GrinningFool
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.

~~~
Spoom
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.

------
iagooar
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.

~~~
ulrikrasmussen
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.

------
simonh
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.

------
pjc50
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.

------
spilk
Honestly, seeing the "offers in app purchases" message on an iOS appstore
listing makes me extremely unlikely to download it.

~~~
0xCMP
I always check what kinds of IAP there are in those apps too. If it looks
dumb, I won't download it.

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.

------
spikej
I just set up emulators with older games that don't have this kind of crap
built in...!

------
mschuster91
> 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...

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
> _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.

~~~
tetraodonpuffer
> ubiquitous piracy.

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)

------
SolarNet
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.

~~~
icefox
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?

~~~
alasdair_
Things that improve the playing experience of friends, rather than simply pay
to win, also work.

For example: "lures" in pokemon go mostly help other people.

~~~
cableshaft
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.

------
ascorbic
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.

~~~
c22
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.

~~~
ascorbic
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.

~~~
c22
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.

------
douche
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.

~~~
DanBC
Talking Tom Gold Run: 5400 dynamite costs £79.99

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.

~~~
kefka
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.

Relevant comic: [https://xkcd.com/488/](https://xkcd.com/488/)

------
georgeoliver
> 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.

~~~
matt4077
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".

------
makecheck
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?”.

~~~
BoorishBears
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.

------
eswat
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?

~~~
justinjlynn
Stop working for predators?

------
intellix
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...

~~~
Nullabillity
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.

------
exDM69
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.

~~~
blitzd
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.

~~~
exDM69
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.

------
gigatexal
Glad I uninstalled clash of clans for this very reason

~~~
MikeKusold
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.

~~~
bmm6o
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.

------
karllager
A general question to parents: Is it possible to raise a kid without a
smartphone today?

~~~
analog31
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.

------
Mithaldu
It's not in-app purchases. It is: cheat codes

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.

~~~
grogenaut
Cheat codes don't expire.

Battle toads was nigh unplayable without cheat codes

~~~
Mithaldu
Even expiring cheats are still just cheats.

Battle toads as a game was broken, yes.

------
StephenConnell
Remember when you did not have a cell phone and instead you loaded games on
your TI86 calculator? All those games were free!

------
alxmdev
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.

~~~
thefalcon
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.

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wodenokoto
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.

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z3t4
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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nixorex44
It's crack Madden cards I spend a crack habit weekly for my son all his cash I
have to hold like he on drugs only positive it's not

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fuzzfactor
This is by design.

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nixorex44
Yess it crack Madden cards spend a crack habit weekly

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anigbrowl
By design

