Woman spends $500 on in-app purchases

[WolfAmongWolves]

I recently came across this interesting little article:

 

http://jezebel.com/oh-god-i-spent-494-04-playing-the-kim-kardashian-holl-1597154346

 

In it, a grown woman bemoans the fact that she blew almost $500 playing a silly Kim Kardashian game on her iPhone. We've all heard countless stories about unsupervised kids using their parents' credit cards to spend ludicrous amounts on in-app purchases. What intrigued me about this story is that here it is a grown woman. She is totally aware of the situation. She knows that the "game" requires no skill, no strategy, no thought or concentration, that it is just a vehicle designed to get her to spend money, and she is mortally embarrassed to be playing it. At the same time, she admits that she was having a blast, and her account of the game is hilarious to read.

 

For me, this was an eye-opening account of how these games work and draw in casual gamers. I've downloaded similar "games" on my tablet, but the lack of real gameplay always bored me after the first few hours (sometimes minutes), and the heavy-handed attempts to get at my wallet turned me off. For $500 the author of that article could have bought a modern gaming console and several top-notch games, but she probably would never dream of spending that amount on an actual game system. From a marketing standpoint, that's brilliant, but from a gamer's standpoint, it's downright scary. What do you think?

 

[+chicgamer]

I've played a couple of the casual fashion games, but I quickly grew tired of them because I really couldn't progress further because I wasn't willing to spend money on them. However, I see how someone who feels a connection to her avatar in this game could totally get swept up in the fantasy world and start spending money. Of course, spending $500 is excessive, and, i would think, rare, but I could easily see people spending $5, $10, $20, or more and justifying it as it's less than what they'd spend on a night out, etc.

 

Anyway, I hate the way these games are set up, as they are blatant attempts to just suck money out of you. The whole point of them is to be able to acquire new clothes, etc., and that can only be done by spending real money. When the goal merely is to give someone else my money, I quickly become disinterested (especially when that person is Kim Kardashian—I still don't understand why she is considered a celebrity).

[+HammR25]

Sounds like she spent $500 so she could write an article about the game.

[Algus]

I only got bit by one of those games, Defenders of Texel, pseudo RPG/pokemon type game where RMT was used to collect more characters to add to your battle party. It was actually a fairly fun game but you needed IAP in order to successfully clear events and collect more high-end fighters. There was a small degree of strategy involved with deploying the right kind of units.

 

I don't know how much I spent but I played it for several months. I don't regret it but it was very shallow for the amount of money that I would spend on it.

[Reaperman]

I don't have a smartphone yet, but I suppose if it brings anywhere near $500 worth of entertainment (mindless or no), I don't see how I could have a problem with it.

 

I suppose our problem is that the game is bad, but that's probably not a common reaction, which is probably more about the money and that it's being wasted on gaming in general by an adult, of all people. We could pretty much all write our own stories about blowing $500 on a game that would receive about the same reaction in most places.

For a few of mine there's that xrgb-mini, driving wheel/stand, omega MVS--just imagine trying to explain a $500 16-bit system to one of the normals. ...And Razion keeps freaking taunting me to purchase it for the low-low price of just $550 preordered, in its least expensive form.

 

Then there are all those star citizen fans who are into it $1000 (or well, well, WELL over that) --they won't even have a game for another couple years, and they've already bought their way through most of it. If it provides entertainment by making people happy, or even just giving them something to do for an extended period, why not thousands of dollars?

 

Is it really any different that 'wasting' that money on a watch, boat, rv, or sports car? I'll bet she's already gotten at least a 'jetski worth of time' out of her $500. Looking at it that way, heck, it's a bargain.

Edited September 15, 2014 by Reaperman

[WolfAmongWolves]

 

Is it really any different that 'wasting' that money on a watch, boat, rv, or sports car? I'll bet she's already gotten at least a 'jetski worth of time' out of her $500. Looking at it that way, heck, it's a bargain.

 

Good point, and one I hadn't really appreciated. If the people who play these games and spend oodles of money on them actually feel they got their money's worth of entertainment, then the games may not be a bad deal for them personally.

 

I guess the part that still leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that these app games are so primitive and cheaply made, and are programmed to get the players stuck and spend money. A $50 PC or console game is almost always a masterpiece of production, with movie-length cinematics, a great musical score, professional voice acting, and a compelling story. You can see where the $50 per game went. The app games on the other hand typically have none of that, but require you to pay much more in order to be able to complete the game. A PC or console game has a rising difficulty level; with each fight/race/mission the opponents get tougher and you have to get better at the game in order to advance. The app games get tougher too, but no amount of skill or practice will help you advance past a certain point; you typically have to pay real money or spend days/weeks grinding away at the same stage. When you finally complete a challenging $50 PC or console game, it leaves you with a sense of accomplishment, maybe even with a hint of sadness that the game is over. On the other hand, when you finally manage to complete a mindless app game by spending $500, I'm not sure that it doesn't leave you with a certain sense of shame, regardless of how much fun you may have had while playing it.

[toptenmaterial]

Kim Kardashian has been tainted by Kanye's DNA juice and is unclean.