Last week I wrote about game ratings, and I mentioned how ratings don’t speak to how money moves inside video games. So this week…let’s talk money!
I’ll pick on Fortnite
Fortnite looks like a cartoon. Minecraft looks like low-fi LEGO. Roblox looks like…a toy store of sorts? My point is: the game your kid is playing probably looks like “child’s play.” This is intentional! These massive ecosystems your kid plugs into are meant to present themselves as saying, “Relax, this is fine. Your kid is just playing a kid’s game.”
It looks innocent. However, these games are built to take your money! (well, some of them at least, in some form or fashion)
The first time I encountered this with my kid was when they were playing a game on the iPad. It was a unicorn game. It was an “endless runner,” which is a type of game where the character on the screen keeps moving forward for as long as they remain alive, and the player swipes left or right to dodge incoming obstacles. When a run is over, the player drops back into the menu. In our case, the menu was full of unicorn stables. And of course, each stable is locked. However, you can unlock them.
IF YOU PAY MONEY.
This is called “paid unlocks” in games.
It’s a repeating moment in the game where it asks my kid to get my wallet and pay money to play. Naturally, my kid wanted every unicorn unlocked. 🙄
Here’s the thing. Your kid isn’t really asking you for money. They’re asking you to make a decision the game was built to make for them.
💰 How a free game gets paid
In the video game industry, a big spender is called a “whale.” There’s a pretty famous presentation given by Torulf Jernström, co-founder of Tribeflame (a game studio), which outlines psychological tricks used to monetize free-to-play mobile games. He gives this talk to a room full of game developers. The talk is literally titled, “Let’s Go Whaling.” Go watch it if you want to feel sick.
Here’s a few I’m certain your kid will, or already has, encountered:
The middleman coin: V-Bucks. Robux. Minecoins. Dollars go in, coins come out, and you essentially lose count of what you’re spending. You don’t spend $10 on a character. You spend 1,000 V-Bucks on the character. The transitioning of USD to V-Bucks exists for one reason only: so that a price stops feeling like a price.
The shortfall: Fortnite’s cheapest pack is something like $5-8 and gets you something like 800-1,000 V-Bucks (if I recall correctly). Plenty of skins in the game are 1,200 or 1,500 V-Bucks. So you’re either short money on a $23 pack, or you’r going to have leftover coins staring you in the face because you had to put in extra money to afford it. Which then incentivizes you to add more in order to spend what you already put in.
The clock: The item shops in games often rotate daily, or on a schedule. You’ll see “leaves in 14 hours,” or “battle pass expires when the season ends,” for example. The reality is…these are simply digital files that you’re paying for. There is no stock. There is no shortage. The scarcity is manufactured because manufactured scarcity works on adults, and even better on kids.
The one-way door: Buying something is often on tap. It’s the designer’s job to make it as easy and efficient to trigger a transaction as possible. But getting money back? That’s a fucking maze, every single time. I’ve never once had as easy an experience getting my money back in a game as I have putting my money into it. In 2022, the FTC hit Epic (the maker of Fortnite) with $245 million in refunds owed, as part of a $520 million settlement, because Fortnite’s button layout was charging people for pressing the wrong thing while the game was loading, or while the game was waking up from a sleep state. Kids racked up charges on saved credit cards with zero parental consent. And if you disputed the charge as a parent, Epic would lock your kid’s account so they couldn’t play.
The mystery box: I covered this before, so I’ll just give you an example. In 2020, researchers looked at the top 100 grossing games on the iPhone. 59% of them had loot box mechanics in them. Of those, 95% were rated suitable for kids 12 years old and up. (I might add, this was specific to the iphone, but it’s important to know almost every game on an iPhone is available on an iPad as well…)
I’m not here to claim those who build video games are evil. Hell, I’ve designed and built games! But game developers do have revenue targets, and kids are a very soft and easy target.
It’s bigger than the $10 tag
If you only treat this as a money problem, then you’re just a consumer who won’t buy things in games. Fair. But games happily play good cop to your bad cop all day, because games don’t get tired of asking you for money. There’s no risk to them in doing so. A video game never has to look at your kid across the dinner table after you refused to buy something in their game for them.
It’s not a money problem. It’s a manipulation problem.
The Fortnite skin your kid wants is $10. If you kid begins to recognize when something is designed to make them want it…then that is worth $10. Games are often the first time they’ll encounter someone (or something) trying to sell them something they can’t touch (or actually own), and it sure as hell isn’t the last time. So I look at this as one of the best media literacy lessons you’ll ever get for free. It can be an opportunity for you and your kid to learn.
Here’s what I might consider when you encounter any of the above money making tactics in your kids’ games:
Say the business model out loud. “The game is free because they make money when people buy stuff in it.” Even if your kid doesn’t fully grasp that, they’ll likely ask questions back. And a conversation is a great thing. So this is a habit I continue to reinforce.
Turn digital back into dollars. “1,200 V-Bucks? That’s $23 dollars. A $10 pack isn’t enough.” Do the math with them out loud. You’ll begin to make them naturally want to consider the math themselves or at least raise the caution even if they don’t fully understand it. To be clear, this isn’t so much about doing math correctly, but more about recognizing that the number they’re given isn’t the real number.
Wait a day. Often if you wait long enough, the thing they want to buy will no longer be available. Tell them you’ll consider it tomorrow. They’re wanting will begin to slowly evaporate. And if it doesn’t, they’ll learn what it feels like to not get the thing they want and learn to be okay with it. The upside is that the game is still there to play. Not getting the thing they wanted to buy often will not negatively impact their gameplay experience.
Ask: does it change how you look, or whether you win? Cosmetics are a thing in games. They’re an entire marketplace. Pay-to-win is a different conversation. Try and help your kid begin to understand the difference.
Lock the wallet. Don’t store your credit card on the gaming device or console. Not because you don’t trust your kid. Because the button they might press unknowingly was designed to be pressed unknowingly.
At the end of the day, the ESRB letter rating (from last week) tells you what your kid is going to see. The money inside the game tells you what the game wants from your kid.
Free isn’t a price. It’s a business model!
Hit reply and tell me: what was the first thing your kid asked to buy inside a game? Did you buy it? Why or why not?
Thanks for pressing pause with me.
– Patrick