About a week ago, I was sitting in a chair, legs propped up, waiting for the conclusion of several football games as I sat in on a fantasy football gathering of my friends. Football is great, but seeing how my knowledge of the NFL is rather limited, a huge desire was kindled to scour the iTunes App Store for some form of mindless entertainment to pass the time while people around me gesticulated and wildly flailed their arms as their players gained or lost points.
Meanwhile, I chanced upon a little game called “Criminal Case” which requires you—as a detective—to find clues and analyze bodies by playing little scavenger hunt mini-games and solving murder mysteries by nabbing the right suspect. Throughout the game, you can earn stars and gain coins to pay for different outfits and hairstyles, as well as other power-ups. It’s about as stupid as it sounds, and best of all, it’s free. If, by free you mean, “Requires you to spam friends mercilessly on Facebook until they play with you and then offers ludicrously expensive virtual food items to refill one’s energy bar,” then yes, it is free.
Being someone who usually avoids game crazes (I successfully eluded the clutches of both Farmville and Candy Crush, no applause necessary), I do possess some semblance of understanding of what makes these games insanely popular and lucrative. These free apps hook players with the addictive gameplay structure and then tantalize the player even more by offering in-game incentives (such as power-ups) that can only be purchased using real-world money, instead of virtual candy-land tokens. In the Kim Kardashian: Hollywood app (which, yes, at one point was downloaded onto my phone), this extends to clothing, energy and stars, so that you too can win at Hollywood. Not only that, but these games force their consumers to wait for a period of time (minutes, hours, even days sometimes) to refresh their energy or to unlock levels before they can continue playing, hoping that instead of going through the spasms and pains of this virtual withdrawal, you’ll instead cough up $4.99 in real-world money and immediately get an injection of sweet, sweet energy.
And it works. The companies behind these games make millions. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is set to make over $200 million this year. Candy Crush makes upwards of $230 million annually. To reiterate: people are spending millions of dollars on fake clothing, money and accomplishments. Without doubt, these include some of the same people who refuse to spend $15 dollars on something such as an actual, real shirt.
Video games have been around for a while and plenty of people have spent $50 dollars and up for a flagship game, which is certainly more expensive than a few increments of $5 or $10 for “instant analysis” or “extra energy” for one’s mindless iPhone game. However, there seems to be a difference in the way that big console games seem to offer hours of entertainment and story in exchange for, usually, a one-time fee, whereas app games seem to rely on getting certain consumers that fit their profile — which I imagine is something like “People with expendable income and an intense desire to NOT have to wait until tomorrow to satiate that mad desire for matching candy tiles” — and are mercilessly exploiting this. These companies know that certain people will spend hundreds of dollars to just keep their virtual wardrobe updated, and this segment is their target market. Doesn’t something about that seem a little wrong?
So, is this right? Is it okay to create something formulated specifically so that certain people will be utterly unable to resist? Or, should we as a community just chalk it up to a lack of willpower and inability to make anything other than poor life choices? I would try to answer this, but unfortunately my phone has buzzed, my energy is refilled and I’ve got about 36 puzzles to solve and 17 Facebook friends to invite before I can move on to the next case.
