It seems that I
must again play the devil’s advocate.
Yes, I arrive to
you today to mount a defense for freemium games (even killers receive fair
representation).
True, this fails to
hold any weight as a discussion of sexism, racism, or anything else usually associated
with this blog. However, I discovered last night that I can:
1) Download a
program that allows me to watch Youtube videos in super slow motion and
2) Many young
women like to dance around in their underwear on Youtube
--so I don’t feel that
I possess much room to criticize objectifying behavior today.
A lot of reasons
exist why we should hate the vast majority of freemium games (I’ll get to both
those reasons and a definition of “freemium”). However, these
games receive far more hatred than they merit.
As John Adams
defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, so, too, must I mount a
defense for freemium games (okay, I embellish today's quest a bit).
Freemium games—for
those of you unfamiliar with the term—refer to "free" games (often
downloadable onto your smartphone or tablet) that usually cost far more than
those you “pay to play.”
The programmers of
freemium games know how to sucker open a player’s wallet via that player’s
addictive tendencies.
Most of these
games start a player with simple set of challenges that, upon the completion of
each, reward the player with colorful lights, congratulatory music, and
onscreen fireworks and confetti. Kind of reminds you of slot machines, huh?
The “free” game
then invents ways to get players to spend real money to purchase various sorts
of “in-game” money, with which to make online purchases of virtual (fake) items
that improve the players’ chances of success on their next fake task.
The game designers
use multiple currencies so that gamers won't comprehend the
true prices their purchases. You didn’t spend twenty dollars to buy your avatar
a silly hat; you spent ten rubies and six feather dippers.
Worse, some of the
game developers allow you to invest your time to create something (a virtual city,
for example), allow you to care about it (you created it, after all), and then
demand routine payments to keep your creation safe from destruction.
The game might,
for example, tell you that an earthquake ruined your virtual city, and only a
payment of ten dollars will return it to its former glory.
Some of these
games trick parents into the belief that they found a simple, suitable game
for their child.
One such “free”
game allows a child to collect and feed fish in a virtual fish tank. The game
even claims that it teaches children responsibility with scheduled times to
feed their fake fish.
Then the fake fish
get sick, and the game asks the children to tap the screen to save their poor,
fishy lives. As soon as the child touches the screen, her or his parents’
credit card takes twenty dollars worth of damage.
Rinse and repeat
until the parents receive an unpleasant call from their bank.
Some of these
games offer players “upgrades” for their virtue fighter, tank, team, walrus,
etc. Weeks after the purchase, the upgrade receives a downgrade, and the
purchaser discovers that she or he must purchase a new upgrade.
Most gamers
discover themselves sucked into these financial tar pits once the game turns
PVP (player versus player).
Take the earlier
example of a game that allows you to build a city. The game protects your city
from other player just long enough for you to feel invested in it, and
then—Bam!
Other players
may—and feel encouraged to—attack and damage your city. You may afterwards
spend real money to rebuild your nonexistent world and attack someone else’s
city in revenge.
Actually, this
feels very much like a real war. The people who make the weapons and instigate
the wars grow rich. Everyone else goes broke. Points for realism, game
designers.
You can
understand, given all this, how much hatred people feel towards these games.
However, someone must defend the good
points.
<sigh> I
guess I will serve as that someone.
I choose to start
with the point that freemium and pay-to-play games hold a lot in common.
Those games you
purchase to play on your PC, video game console, or Mac (just kidding—hardly
more than a handful of games work on Mac) cost money to purchase . . . and then
they charge for expansions, crafting materials, upgrades, and so forth.
Yes, pay-to-play
games usually provide far better experiences than their freemium counterparts. Let’s not pretend, though, that either option offers a truly
“free” experience.
Heck, I grew up in
the eighties. I remember those quarter-guzzling, arcade machines. Remember that
four-playered, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game? I could buy a car with what I
spent on that (admit it, you now hum the Ninja Turtle theme).
Freemium games
never twist your arm, force you to cough up your cash.
Some of these
freemium games demand either your patience or
your money. Let’s return to the city-builder example to illustrate . . .
You try to
construct a new, virtual library. You can either wait eight hours for the
library to appear, or pay two dollars to complete it right now.
I actually like
these sorts of games. I can wake up, select something I want to build, guzzle
fifty mochas because I possess a problem with mochas, go about my day, and
check in (before I go to sleep) on whatever I built.
Time moves in
weird ways when you play a video game. Seven hours fly past you in the time
it takes to “do one more thing” when you play a pay-to-play game such as Skyrim.
I love Skyrim, but I would sink fewer hours into it if the game required my to either wait a few hours (or pay ten
dollars—which I wouldn’t) to craft a new elven sword.
If people don’t
like freemium games, they need never play them. If a player feels that a
virtual product costs too much, that player may elect to not purchase that product.
The programmers
will take note and change track (or go out of business).
I hate to say,
“Your money’s your vote,” (because it serves as a notion that politicians abuse
to suggest that people should actually purchase
as many votes in an election as they can afford), but, yeah, don’t pay and don’t
whine.
If you pay for a
freemium game, then blame yourself. You encourage the practice. If you
don’t pay for them . . . then why complain? Doesn’t seem your problem (until
your five-year-old buys ten thousand dollars worth of fake fish food, or course).
Yes, freemium game
developers offer their product in much the same fashion as crack dealers. They
offer the first taste free, get you hooked, and then start to charge you. They
even encourage you to get your friends hooked.
Freemium games
differ from crack, though, in the fact that they are not crack. A person with
an addictive personality can find far worse habits than a freemium game. Finger painting, for example. Out of control finger painting wrecks lives.
Bogus cellphone surcharges deserve our anger. We need cellphones to conduct our daily
lives. Freemium games on our smartphones? You can just stay out of that. Read a
book, instead.
I publish my blogs as follows:
Tuesdays: A look at the politics of
the entertainment world at EntertainmentMicroscope.blogspot.com.
Wednesdays: An inside look at my
novels (such as Daughters of Darkwana, which you can now find on Kindle) at
Darkwana.blogspot.com
