Last month, I gushed about Smurfs' Village, a ridiculously addictive iPhone game that rewards you for working your little blue friends to death so the village leaders--specifically Papa Smurf--can live in relative luxury. In the past couple of weeks, I've seen three people playing it on the Metro. Admittedly, this isn't quite Angry Birds-level success, but I feel it's only a matter of time until people realize that building and maintaining a mushroom village from scratch is infinitely more rewarding than sending birds on kamikaze missions.
There have been a few significant changes to my village in the last month. By taking away what little space I'd given the Smurfs for lawns, I've been able to all but stack their homes on top of one another, freeing up land on which to put more gardens. Which means more crops to harvest, which means more gold and experience points. I couldn't be happier with our current revenue projections. Well done, slaves. Smurfs. Whatever.
Thanks to a software update, the snow has melted and Smurfette is visiting until Valentine's Day, granting experience points to nearby Smurfs as she strolls through the village. Unfortunately, it's only a brief visit. She warns you that she'll be leaving soon unless you build her house, which costs a ridiculous 30 Smurfberries. This comes out to $5 in real money through iTunes, or weeks of effort to acquire that many Smurfberries for free. High-maintenance bitch. (Amusingly, if you do have Smurfette's house in your village, it currently has dozens of Valentine's Day gifts from Smurfs piled up in front of it. One Smurfette. Dozens of Smurfs lusting after her. If this wasn't a children's entertainment property, this scenario would end very, very badly.)
Which brings us to the real reason I'm giving an update on how my village is doing, since it's not like I expect anyone has been on pins and needles, waiting to find out.
Well, that sucks. I certainly feel bad for that family. (Although...$1,400?!? That's 2,800 Smurfberries! Think about what kind of village you could build with that! I can't even bring myself to spend $5 on 50 Smurfberries, even though it would save me weeks, if not months, of game play.)
But let's hope people keep things in perspective, and parents and public interest groups don't start suggesting the need for all sorts of silly rules and regulations to prevent this from happening more frequently.
Fuck!
Don't cave, Apple! The economy's doing better! Families can afford to have their kids blow $1,400 on an iPhone game! (Lest you think I'm being completely heartless, the article goes on to say that when the parents complained to Apple, they refunded the money. So everything's fine. But this is what separates me from Steve Jobs. I would have just emailed the family a picture of me smoking a $1,400 cigar.)
What really gets me, though, is that the parents admit that they gave their kid--not the one who actually spent all the money, but her older sister--their iTunes password. Are you kidding me? If I had a kid, I'd let her play with matches before I let her play around with iTunes. That shit gets expensive.
The biggest fear, of course, is that if these complaints catch on and Apple gets scared or Congress gets involved or whatever, companies will face too many hurdles when it comes to in-app purchases, and they won't even bother making the game in the first place. So while it's tragic that there are kids out there who don't know the difference between real money and virtual money, why should adults like me suffer? Adults who, okay, yes, probably should be doing stuff other than playing a game called Smurfs' Village, but that's neither here nor there.
Ultimately, it comes down to freedom. Apple's freedom to make money, my freedom to play a game, indeed, everyone's freedom...except for the Smurfs, who, as I write this, are about to finish up a crop of Brussels Sprouts, and will next immediately be put to work on growing some Golden Potatoes. They don't need freedom.
There have been a few significant changes to my village in the last month. By taking away what little space I'd given the Smurfs for lawns, I've been able to all but stack their homes on top of one another, freeing up land on which to put more gardens. Which means more crops to harvest, which means more gold and experience points. I couldn't be happier with our current revenue projections. Well done, slaves. Smurfs. Whatever.
Thanks to a software update, the snow has melted and Smurfette is visiting until Valentine's Day, granting experience points to nearby Smurfs as she strolls through the village. Unfortunately, it's only a brief visit. She warns you that she'll be leaving soon unless you build her house, which costs a ridiculous 30 Smurfberries. This comes out to $5 in real money through iTunes, or weeks of effort to acquire that many Smurfberries for free. High-maintenance bitch. (Amusingly, if you do have Smurfette's house in your village, it currently has dozens of Valentine's Day gifts from Smurfs piled up in front of it. One Smurfette. Dozens of Smurfs lusting after her. If this wasn't a children's entertainment property, this scenario would end very, very badly.)
Which brings us to the real reason I'm giving an update on how my village is doing, since it's not like I expect anyone has been on pins and needles, waiting to find out.
Over the winter break from school, 8-year-old Madison worked to dress up her simple mushroom home on the iPhone game Smurfs' Village. In doing so, she also amassed a $1,400 bill from Apple.
The Rockville second-grader didn't realize the Smurfberries she was buying on the popular game by Capcom Interactive were real purchases, much like buying a pair of shoes from Zappos or movie tickets from Fandango. After all, lots of children's games require virtual payments of pretend coins, treasure chests and gold to advance to levels.
But like a growing number of parents, Madison's mom, Stephanie Kay, was shocked to find very real charges from iTunes show up in her e-mail box days later. (Washington Post)
Well, that sucks. I certainly feel bad for that family. (Although...$1,400?!? That's 2,800 Smurfberries! Think about what kind of village you could build with that! I can't even bring myself to spend $5 on 50 Smurfberries, even though it would save me weeks, if not months, of game play.)
But let's hope people keep things in perspective, and parents and public interest groups don't start suggesting the need for all sorts of silly rules and regulations to prevent this from happening more frequently.
But the practice is troubling parents and public interest groups, who say $99 for a wagon of Smurfberries or $19 for a bucket of snowflakes doesn't have any business in a children's game. Though a password is needed to make a purchase, critics say that the safeguards aren't strong enough and that there are loopholes.
"Parents need to know that the promotion of games and the delivery mechanism for them are deceptively cheap," said Jim Styer, president of Common Sense Media, a public advocacy group for online content for children. "But basically people are trying to make money off these apps, which is a huge problem, and only going to get bigger because mobile apps are the new platform for kids."
Fuck!
Don't cave, Apple! The economy's doing better! Families can afford to have their kids blow $1,400 on an iPhone game! (Lest you think I'm being completely heartless, the article goes on to say that when the parents complained to Apple, they refunded the money. So everything's fine. But this is what separates me from Steve Jobs. I would have just emailed the family a picture of me smoking a $1,400 cigar.)
What really gets me, though, is that the parents admit that they gave their kid--not the one who actually spent all the money, but her older sister--their iTunes password. Are you kidding me? If I had a kid, I'd let her play with matches before I let her play around with iTunes. That shit gets expensive.
The biggest fear, of course, is that if these complaints catch on and Apple gets scared or Congress gets involved or whatever, companies will face too many hurdles when it comes to in-app purchases, and they won't even bother making the game in the first place. So while it's tragic that there are kids out there who don't know the difference between real money and virtual money, why should adults like me suffer? Adults who, okay, yes, probably should be doing stuff other than playing a game called Smurfs' Village, but that's neither here nor there.
Ultimately, it comes down to freedom. Apple's freedom to make money, my freedom to play a game, indeed, everyone's freedom...except for the Smurfs, who, as I write this, are about to finish up a crop of Brussels Sprouts, and will next immediately be put to work on growing some Golden Potatoes. They don't need freedom.
2 comments:
I read this article aloud this morning to a bunch of mothers I work with and they all ran to their phones to make sure their children weren't spending "real" money on it. But when I asked if any of their young sons were playing Call of Duty they all said yes without a qualm. To me there's no difference - parents deserve what they get when they don't know what their kids are playing.
You are a great writer. You literally had me laughing outloud. Glad to know I'm not the only adult who plays smurfs. It started for my 9 year old and I soon found myself constantly hounding her to not use up the precious berries!!
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