I don’t mind some free to play things like say TF2 where anything you buy is cosmetic and all of it can be crafted in game later if you are patient.
Then there is the pay to win faster/have an edge which annoys me but apparently it works. Even though this states an extreme case and this guy I bet could have easily obsessed about other things to the detriment of his health.
I wonder how hard it would be to start up a game like this and rake in the…no wait stupid ethics.
No, but there are people who wouldn’t spend $3,000 on a camera like I would.
My concern is older people who have access to the technology but don’t entirely understand that they do have the option of not purchasing in-app. Such users may not exist at all, but it would be analogous to what I’ve seen collecting coins. A company that offers, say, a special deal for a silver dollar might send five or six other coins on approval with the order. Some people, particularly if they’re older, don’t send these back. And then they get regular shipments which they continue paying for.
It saddens me, and it’s happened more than once, that I’ve been in a coin shop when someone came in with a “collection” they’d found in a recently deceased relative’s closet, most of it unopened.
No cash for pixels is my heuristic.
I’ve played my share of F2P games, and spent very little money on them. Any game that wants me to pay to speed up gameplay? Pass. But I will shell out the occasional buck or two for things like premium characters, etc.
Yeah, come Halloween and Xmas time I will buy a few crate keys for the holiday crates on TF2, partially because TF2 is a game I play off and on consistently and I would like the servers to stay up and definitely get $20 of fun out of the game over the year. More of a tip jar subscription with a silly costume item for the in game character. This is an approach I have no issues at all with even though some people will still get too into it and drop way more money than they can afford but I think the not actually needing the paid content to win/be better cuts down on a lot of that.
Eh, people have spent more money on less tangible things.
I mean, you go to the movies, you view those pixels, all you take home is the experience of viewing, but that storytelling is worth money to you. Others wouldn’t pay a red cent to do the same thing. Sure, the stakes are a lot lower in this example, but this guy enjoys the thing and the experience.
As long as he’s not putting his family out on the streets, have a good time. I mean, he landed a job in the industry as a result of this whole thing, he’s easily made that money back.
Good for them!
I generally have an issue with the “addiction” model of business. That is, a coffee shop, a liquor store, a casino, cigarette vendors. But, it’s hard to pretend that it isn’t a great way to have a profitable business. And people seem to need their addictions, and even revel in them.
I get that these games are widely available and it’s possible that someone who has some mental limitations would fall into the trap of purchasing things without quite realizing the ramifications, but I’m not sure how you stop businesses that pedal addictive substances or entertainments from being good at what they do.
And for the person who is attracted to things like this, maybe this addiction is better than going to a casino.
[quote=“ChickieD, post:11, topic:59680”]
maybe this addiction is better than going to a casino.
[/quote]Oh definitely. Given to how much I love video games, there’ no chance I’d ever drop dollar one in a casino. I’d never make it out.
Why would you spend $3000 on Clash of Clans?
Well, I wouldn’t…
The best bit of reading I have done on how casino’s work is Harry Anderson’s Games You Can’t Lose: A Guide For Suckers which just a great read on sucker bets some fun history on big gamblers as well as the second half about how you never win in a casino.
I feel very fortunate to not have whatever special thing it is that makes people get high from gambling. But I totally get how that is attractive to people. Casinos scare me because of the way they seem to suck people in. When I was in Vegas, I enjoyed playing the penny slots; it was really a cheap way to entertain myself because I made enough back to keep going and think I spent about $20. What I did like about Vegas was the way it runs 24 hours. It was fun to go downstairs at 3 am and be in a crowd.
As I was heading back to my hotel room I spoke with a guy in the elevator who had had to get $10k wired into his account to cover poker losses. That, to me, would never be fun. But I do get how people love that thrill of maybe having $10k wired in.
For me it was that bit in Casino about the whale who had all the resources but still ended up back in the casino: http://www.anyclip.com/movies/casino/the-big-gambler/#!quotes/
Another example of the Pareto Distribution in action. A number of industries rely on a tiny number of customers who spend very large amounts of money on their products, such that the amounts of money are life harming and/or the amount of product consumed is life/health harming. Gambling and liquor come to mind but the situation exists all over the place.
It also exists in health care where a small minority of people in a given population are responsible for a very large percentage of health care costs. You could hire a caretaker for each one of these people and give them the job of making sure they take their meds, make and keep appointments and perform proper follow up care. Even if you paid the caretakers $50k per year, you would save a fortune. But we won’t do that in the US because both the healthcare providers and insurance companies would make less money if we cut healthcare spending.
This one hits close to home. My mother in law lives alone and has been depressed for a long time while living with a chronic illness that makes it very difficult to leave the house.
We bought her an iPad last year and she was truly addicted to Candy Crush, which basically was her gateway drug to Clash of Clans. She turned into one of those that spent a ton of money on those gems. Her spending total reached into the range of $25,000 before we found out she was doing this. We only found out about it because she was hospitalized and we had to take over her bank accounts. We were all beyond shocked that this could happen. What’s worse is that these were credit card purchases. When we tried to prevent her from using her cards, she convinced friends and neighbors to buy her Apple gift cards with cash that they sell at grocery stores here in Canada. This article should be about her, not the measley $3K guy.
We also tried to contact Apple about preventing her from spending more money and other options but there was always a workaround to getting more gems. We didn’t want to take away her iPad in fear that she would stop talking to us. She was clearly mad at us about knowing as well as embarrassed to have spent so much money.
I saw an interesting article about gambling this weekend.
http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/chips-ahoy/
I don’t get it. I get no rush from gambling - I have a friend who worked for a company on the horse racing industry and was part of a syndicate who owned a horse so I went to the races a few times, but it always seemed like a dumb way of losing money, and casinos are just miserable.
Oh my gosh, what a terrible experience for you! I am so sorry you had to go through this.
I imagine that any locked down version would not really please her, given what she went through to get gift cards.
What a total mess.
