If a certain system can be used to trick children into spending thousands of dollars, then itâs probably not a very ethical system.
I wonât stand here and tell you that microtransactions are the devil. I wonât even call them a necessary evil. âEvilâ is too strong a word. Cliff Bleszinski did a good job of defending them here yesterday. But the freemium model is still a deeply flawed system, as evidenced by the five-year-old who (more or less accidentally) spent $2,500 of his parentsâ money in the free-to-play game Zombies vs Ninja this week. Heâs not the only one, eitherâthere are so many similar cases that this week Apple had to settle a class-action suit brought by distraught and disgruntled parents who felt their kids had been exploited.
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Are lax parents who give their kids their iTunes passwords to blame? I donât think so.
Take the case of a friend of mine. When he was younger (think high school freshman) his impulse control wasnât quite what it is today. As a result he wound up charging hundreds of dollars to his parentsâ credit card in one free-to-play game or another. Youâd think a 14-year-old could be trusted with that sort of powerâI carried around a credit card for emergencies at that ageâand at that point you canât plead ignorance. There are typically no refunds for microtransactions, and his parents had to swallow that bill.
What Iâm saying is that certain games are designed in a way that I consider to be exploitative. They draw you in, and before you know it youâve amassed a massive bill full of just-one-more transactions.
My girlfriend is fixated on Candy Crush Saga, along with many, many other people. Itâs a match-three game like Bejeweled with varying goals that change from level to level. I see no value in it. She swears that once you get to around the 35th puzzle (in the iOS version at least), youâve pretty much got to start spending money on it. It even pulls a trick where it pretends to give you a power-up, but asks to charge you when you try to use it. At that point she quit playing, but when I humored her with a $10 iTunes gift card, she went right back to it and hasnât stopped since. Wikipedia defines âproblem gamblingâ as âan urge to continuously gamble despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop.â She hasnât experienced any ânegative consequencesâ as a result of playing Candy Crush, but I know for a fact that not everyone has as much self-control as she does. In what way are these games any different from gambling? Only that unlike gambling, freemium games are available to (and often created for and marketed to) kids.
At its most abusive, the freemium system is designed to exploit people with certain traits, like a lack of self-control. Children exhibit those traits the most, so of course theyâll fall for it hard when given the opportunity. And judging by the fact that Zombies vs Ninja appears to be little more than another uninspired imitator attempting to ride the success of Plants vs. Zombies, Iâd hazard that its Asia-based developers (their website says the companyâs address is âTaiwan,Beijing,Chinaâ) Bakumen, Inc. arenât too worried about taking advantage of people.
I reached out to Bakumen directly for a comment on this subject, but I havenât heard back yet.
Of course, itâs ultimately parentsâ job to police the technology they let their kids use. You can even argue that blaming app-makers for unwanted spending sprees is like blaming game developers for making violent games that somehow fall into the hands of children. Shouldnât we leave poor app creators alone? All theyâve done is create a system meant for adults to use at their own discretion. Itâs not their fault if kids get ahold of it.
But that doesnât account for the reasoning-aged players who do serious harm to themselves and their families by being sucked into the free-to-play spiral, or even for the presence of microtransactions in kidsâ games at all.
The âoldâ game design model rewarded skilled players with progression; free-to-play games with abusive microtransactions replace the time investment required to develop skill in traditional games with a simple monetary value. The problem isnât the kids, or even their too-lax parents; itâs the designers perpetrating this system.
I know if I had a kid or two and the same had happened to me, a $5 iTunes credit wouldnât cut it. Of course, I wouldnât give my kids the password to my App Store account either, but hey. Not everyone knows better.
Photo: [ollyy]/Shutterstock
