Once upon a time it was considered evil by most people to take someones money without providing any benefit to people or society (and I am not talking about entertaining video games.) Now the American Dream is about getting a lot of something for bunch of nothing, rules and morals be damned. How?
Youâre replying as though to an article-readerâŚ
How about GAIN? Itâs free to play but it pays you if you play it a lot. Itâs actually a realtime market simulator but it plays more like a game.
Disclaimer: Iâm a founder. It really is completely free and really does pay weekly cash awards.
I know Iâm a little late to this discussion, but I thought Iâd bring this to your attention, @doctorow, from the very excellent MCA Hogarthâs blog (she of the recent Spots the Space Marine spat with Games Workshop), copied from her blog post here: http://mcahogarth.org/?p=12026
Sad Gamers: A Daughter Story
âMommy,â Child declares from the backseat, âI donât like that dolphin game.â
For a moment my brain blanks. We had just been talking about something completely different; this topic shift is rather out of the blue. âThe dolphin game?â
âThe ipad dolphin game,â she says. âThe one where you swim and get coins.â
âOh!â I say. âI wasnât sure what you meant. Why donât you like the dolphin game?â
âBecause it wants to make people sad,â she says, very firmly.
I glance in the rear-view mirror at her. Sheâs looking out the window. âIt does? How does it do that?â
âI donât know,â she says. And then a moment later, âIt makes people want to have more money than everyone else. And then you donât have money to get things. And when you do, you canât get other things.â
Startled, I say, âWell⌠yes. Youâre absolutely right. Games like that just want you to get lots of money and then spend it.â
âI donât like it,â she says. âIt wants to make people sad.â
âIt does,â I say. âSo you shouldnât play it anymore, if you donât like it. You should do other things you like better.â
Helping her out of the car, I reflect that weâve been doing our best to educate her about sales tactics, particularly since so many of them are aimed at children because of their low impulse control. When the two of us are out together, I explain to her why stores give out samples, or why people like to give things to children, or why stores sell things for money. But I absolutely did not expect her to extrapolate that to her freemium dolphin game at five years old. And I especially didnât expect her to make the connection between having money and being happy or sad.
What a world sheâs entering. But I have some hope that sheâll go into it clear-eyed.
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Iâm not a subject matter expert; but my guess is that whatever the vendors know about predicting suckers, rather than merely churning the userbase and reeling in the vulnerable, is something they would prefer not to talk about(not only would it probably end up sounding unbelievably evil 'Well, it turns out that our best lead-generation tactic is buying up sleazy medical data from RealAge and looking for users with likely major depressive disorders." Itâs probably a useful competitive edge when trying to target your marketing and improve those clickthrough and conversion numbers).
The better bet, for actual study, would probably be to look at the literature on âproblemâ or âpathologicalâ gamblers. That area of research is the same ghastly mess that most of psychology seems to be; but theyâve got years worth of head start, as well as some exposure to actual patients, and (limited, not terribly informative in a broad sense) studies of various methods of trying to help them.
Some very early; but interesting, fMRI stuff, along with some reports of drugs that seem to cause/trigger the behavior, and ones that seem to help, not that we really know why, unfortunately.
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Yes, it WENT free to play after (I presume) they adjusted their strategy due to reaching the limits of market penetration for customers who were willing to pay. It didnât start as a f2p game.
We donât blame a smaller, weaker person for folding to physical coercion by a larger stronger person.
Your example ignores the option of running away which is akin to my treatment of f2p. Also physical coercion is not legal while these scummy tricks are somewhat legal.
I really donât think you can find me one example of the kind of game that operates as you describe (non paying players: difficult game / paying players: impossible game.) They do not exist. Why would anyone buy content that makes their game experience less fun? Itâs like buying a massage chair that makes you less comfortable instead of the regular chair you already have.
F2p games work by having an addictive play mechanic which gives you a few levels of play before you reach a point that is almost impossible to overcome without either: a lot of gameplay that is usually restricted by time delays to keep you coming back (to see more ads) over a period of days (instead a couple hours of game binging) OR spending what seems like a reasonable amount (a couple bucks) to get some item that will mean you donât have to complete all that gameplay.
Mix store reviews with online chatter and a basic understanding of game design and itâs pretty easy to figure out whatâs going on. I donât buy in game content for mobile games, ever. When Iâm prompted to engage socially it doesnât bother me because none of my social network profiles are in any way an honest reflection of me whatsoever. The only email address or account I have in my actual name is my work one, so thereâs very little data for them to mine on me through FB or twitter.
The only in game content i d buy is new levels for COD because without them youâre put in a matchmaking pool of far fewer people resulting in a bad online experience. I feel just as ripped off about that but in that situation there is little other choice. The ONLY mobile game that I ever thought whatsoever about buying in game content was tapped out, but I hate the bastards at EA so I just found a cracked apk that lets you spend negative $ instead 
Your example ignores the option of running away which is akin to my
treatment of f2p. Also physical coercion is not legal while these
scummy tricks are somewhat legal.
Well, unless the reason you are vulnerable to physical coercion is because of you canât walk slowly on your cane, in which case: âAt some point if you havenât learned to be able-bodied, you get what you deserve.â
I realize there is a difference in legality, but that doesnât make anyone deserving of being duped or emotionally coerced out of their money. After all, falling for the trick isnât illegal either, but you seem to be willing to blame people who do it. Again, my only real complaint here is that you said people deserved what they got. I think we can simultaneously want people to be responsible for what they do and at the same time not be callous towards people who are taken advantage of.
I think this is a very different problem than compulsive gambling. What Iâve read about compulsive gambling (and Iâm no expert either) suggested that one of the features of a compulsive gambler was that they get a rush from almost winning, whereas most people hate to almost win (since that means you lost). People who play these games seem to have a real aversion to losing. Itâs almost the opposite - they are willing to pay and pay as long as they donât have to lose.
As for how they target these people, I donât even think they do. I think these games are designed with metrics rather than with expertise. I donât think they have to worry about targeting the vulnerable, I think they just engineer the games to churn out the maximum profit (I should say the local maximum) without worrying about how that works.
Adding further complications to an inaccurate analogy wonât fix it. Accept that and come up with a better one. In your analogy the person is being assaulted (which is illegal) and the victim is presented as completely powerless to change the situation themselves. In this case the game devs are not engaging in illegal behaviour and the user has the capacity to educate themselves. How hard is it to type the name of a game into Google to see what people are saying? How hard is it to read reviews on the app store? Not hard.
Yes I will blame people who fall for the trick⌠most of the fault lies in their lap. Who is responsible for infecting a computer with a virus: the virus creator or the person who was careless enough to download some mystery âspeed up your computerâ exe that popped up without them even seeking it and then install it without scanning it for viruses? Yes, the person who wrote the virus clearly set the chain of events in motion, but the person who ran it on the machine is the person who f-ed up. People know about viruses. People know that there are such things as scams. Iâm not giving the scummy game davs a free pass - they should go Die In A Fire for wasting peopleâs money - but scams only work if you donât do your research. Since most of us have access to a planet of information in our pockets I see there being no excuse for being tricked anymore.
@ghostly1 Congratulations, you were the recipient of my first deleted comment:
I love your concern trolling for âvictimsâ⌠As I made clear in my previous reply, victim-blaming is only unacceptable in cases where the victim didnât play a part in becoming a victim. If someone walks straight into a scam without second guessing whether a too-good-to-be-true deal might actually be too good to be true then I have little compassion for their situation.
Iâm going to put more blame on the person who releases a virus ⌠than a person who haplessly allows it to be installed.
No virus is haplessly allowed to be installed. Viruses are installed when people are sloppy or donât protect themselves adequately. There are free tools that automatically update themselves and will stop infected files from even being run. Since thereâs been Hollywood narratives and periodic techno-panic about viruses since the 80âs I donât see ignorance being an acceptable excuse.
Thatâs very noble of you to side with the person who doesnât protect themselves over someone who does something wrong. Since the topic at hand is scammy games and the devs arenât technically doing anything wrong, who do you blame in this case? Seems to me that by your own rules the only person to blame is the person who got scammed.
Not to mention my fixes? That only deserves doubt quotes if you are impossibly incapable of operating a google or parsing the info in an app review. Well, since searching for the app name will likely result in the first page being populated with official promotion pages for the app and since Iâm wondering if this particular app is a scam, maybe it would make sense to use that word in the query? The results for âcandy crush scamâ make it fairly clear that some people are convinced itâs a scam. Searching: itâs not rocket science.
Off to the app store, which youâre clearly having trouble with. Hereâs some choice quotes from the first 3 reviews on the itunes page for the app:
âpity you have to be on face book to surpass more levelsâ <- Any game that is unplayable without social media link-ins is usually a scam
âThey NEVER respond. I lost so many live that the real value cost to buy would have been enough to buy the RIP OFF upgrades!!!â
âPeople who pay for anything in this game deserve the ripping off they get.â
âAddons way too expensive and games rigged to lose so you potentially by lives.â
âHonestly - these devs are as greedy as it comes with ios devices. Canât believe how much they rip everyone off!!!â
Do those sound like the ringing endorsements of happy customers to you? How is this so confusing for you?
Feel free to characterise my argument in whatever way you think makes your point more relevant. Fact is that what I have said is as plain as day: âIâm not giving the scummy game davs a free pass - they should go Die In A Fire for wasting peopleâs moneyâ. Youâre just angry because I dare to lay most of the blame on the people who are scammed and youâve yet to prove to me (or anyone else, Iâd say) why Iâm wrong.
Your last paragraph is the finest straw man Iâve seen built here in a while⌠Almost as if youâve used only quality silks and heirloom grains for its construction. Thanks for telling me what my worldview endorses, even though it is contradicted by my very own words, the words which characterise these game devsâ behaviour as scummy. The bit where I tell them to go die is really secret code for âi love youâ. Where did I say victims shouldnât speak out? My advice specifically encourages seeking the opinion of others who have spoken out. Finally, nice conclusion! Iâm all for allowing us to educate ourselves, how dare anyone say something that would jeopardise our ability to do so! Such people must hate apple pie and freedom!
Really⌠you seriously put MOST of the blame, not on people who actually DO bad acts, but on people who âshould have known better?â I mean, I could understand maybe putting SOME of the blame there, but MOST? Wow, you live in crazy-pants victim-blaming world.
Me, personally? Iâm going to put more blame on the person who releases a virus designed to infect peopleâs computers than a person who haplessly allows it to be installed. Iâm going to put more blame on the person who shamelessly take advantage of people than the people who are taken advantage of. I will ALWAYS blame the person who does something wrong more than the person who didnât protect themselves enough.
Not to mention, your suggested âfixesâ⌠arenât really all that helpful. Letâs do a Google search on Candy Crush saga⌠well, the first few are the developers, who, obviously, not going to be unbiased⌠letâs check Wiki⌠nope, nothing about exploiting people who pay and turning it from a skill game to a money game there. How about the âapp storeâ reviews? First few pages are all high reviews about how awesome the game is, and all the low reviews are complaints that it somehow wonât install or it crashes. So⌠I guess itâs probably okay? Itâs got a 4.5 star rating, after all! I suppose you could go deeper, choose more exact search terms, but⌠how much research are you expected to do for a $1.99 game? That is, before youâre already addicted from playing and experiencing the unethical behaviors? How much research before thereâs an excuse for being tricked?
But no, youâre right, I guess it really IS more the fault of the people who donât research everything obsessively. They should have just educated themselves more. And hey, if they happen to have addictive personalities⌠well, thatâs their fault too! I guess they should just try being better people. Meanwhile, the poor people who actually prey on them, why, theyâre just horsinâ around, they probably donât mean no harm! Letâs just give them a moral free pass (and yes, when you say the victim is more responsible than the bad actor, thatâs pretty much exactly what youâre doing)⌠heck, theyâre probably closer to the intellectual superman ideal that is best for the world, right? At least theyâre not victims!
Your worldview just endorses scummy behavior (and for that matter, criminal behavior, because the same attitude crops up there, too), and encourages victims to not speak out for fear of looking foolish. And when they donât speak out, the ability to educate ourselves gets diminished.
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