- Reaction score
- 1,678
It is nighttime and my young son is asleep; I am awake and trying to help him. If he were a little older I might be gluing something onto a science project or baking cupcakes for a school event. Instead, I am drawing my finger over lines of imaginary fruit on an iPad, trying to rack up points so he can better enjoy a game called Fruit Pop, a matching game similar to the wildly popular Candy Crush. Specifically, I am trying to increase the stack of coins in his account so that he can buy boosts that alter the game in some way (such as giving the player more than the normally allotted sixty seconds per turn).
After a while, it becomes evident that the easiest way to obtain coins is simply to buy them with real cash—such as 50,000 coins for $1.99 (the most common in-app purchase in Fruit Pop). Many parents will recognize that in-app purchases on apps largely aimed at kids are one of the most insidious inventions of modern times. Not surprisingly, they are also lucrative: the global market for in-app purchases (not all aimed at kids) is estimated to hit about $30 billion next year, which is especially impressive considering that fewer than ten years ago it was zero.
Part of the indignation is that most parents would prefer not to see their kids rack up spending on any kind of game. Yet as our experience with Fruit Pop and other games demonstrates, there is another set of lessons that seems undesirable. The design of many of these games sends potentially confusing signals to children about fundamental economic ideas like value and pricing.
Read more here. (Quartz)
After a while, it becomes evident that the easiest way to obtain coins is simply to buy them with real cash—such as 50,000 coins for $1.99 (the most common in-app purchase in Fruit Pop). Many parents will recognize that in-app purchases on apps largely aimed at kids are one of the most insidious inventions of modern times. Not surprisingly, they are also lucrative: the global market for in-app purchases (not all aimed at kids) is estimated to hit about $30 billion next year, which is especially impressive considering that fewer than ten years ago it was zero.
Part of the indignation is that most parents would prefer not to see their kids rack up spending on any kind of game. Yet as our experience with Fruit Pop and other games demonstrates, there is another set of lessons that seems undesirable. The design of many of these games sends potentially confusing signals to children about fundamental economic ideas like value and pricing.
Read more here. (Quartz)
