3 ms·

It's not just virtual currencies, it's permanence and tradability, kids don't just buy booster packs and take what they can get, they trade cards in complex way

It's not just virtual currencies, it's permanence and tradability, kids don't just buy booster packs and take what they can get, they trade cards in complex ways, in some cases gift them to friends who wants to play, and the stack of cards is a visual representation of how much you've spent, whereas in some games, PUBG Mobile for example, your cosmetics literally disappear after a fixed time and if you have many duplicates of a common item, you can trade them, but only for the in game currency that can only buy the cheapest forms of crates. Also, depending on the platform kids can spend their parents money with no oversight if their parents don't understand how in app payments work, whereas most parents would never send their small child to a store with their credit card unsupervised.

cmsj 7y ago
Items disappearing takes this scummy business model to a whole new depth of viciousness. A few years ago i wanted to get my young sons a Disney Cars game to play on my iPad. There was a new one available, it was very pretty, but reasonable progress in the game depended on building your town using coins, and every single building you placed, had a timer counting down until it would disappear. I don’t like wishing ill on other people, but it’s very hard to think kindly towards whomever designs games like that. Obviously I immediately uninstalled the game before showing it to my boys. Zero dollars for Disney. If they’d just put a price tag on the whole experience, even if it had been quite high, I would have paid it.