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As many of you know, I’ve been playing the hell out of Heroes of Dragon Age. Part of it has been for work, part of it has been for fun, and part of it has been habit. I’ve also been lurking in the Heroes of Dragon Age forums. Reading about the in-app purchase adventures of many players has been a revelation. I’m astounded by how much money some players drop on in-app purchases and how frequently they do it. In the immortal words of Brian Fellow, “That’s crazy!!!”
As a longtime Pokemon fan, I totally understand how addictive collectibility in videogames can be. Mobile games exploit that addiction and mask the habit in clever ways. Like several of its competitors, Heroes of Dragon Age doesn’t show in-app purchases in actual currency. It uses a gem system. Gems can be purchased in various increments, with 1,600 gems offering the “best value” at $99.99. Many players lose track of the actual dollar value of gems after they’re purchased. It’s much easier to justify 49 gems for an awesome new character than it is $5 for a virtual dolly.
The developers of Heroes of Dragon Age release new character packs every few weeks. Players can buy a chance to acquire new characters. It’s all about the random-number generator. Sometimes you’ll get lucky on your first pull and sometimes it takes dozens of attempts to get the character you want. When a hot new character or characters get released, some players spend hundreds of dollars on in-app purchases until they get the heroes or villains they want. Perhaps I’m just too used to the cartridge/disc model of gaming, but that seems completely nuts to me.
The free-to-play videogame model is relatively new and still evolving. Even in its infancy, I’m amazed by how successful it can be. It blows my mind that Heroes of Dragon Age players are spending hundreds of dollars on in-app purchases for a videogame that could very well be offline in three years. They’re not even buying new characters. They’re purchasing a lottery ticket for a chance to win the character they want. One poster in the Heroes of Dragon Age forums said they he/she spent a little over $300 until he/she got the latest “hot” character.
I wonder what these in-app purchase whales will feel like when the game goes offline. Will they be satisfied with their in-app purchases and consider it money well spent? Or will they be shocked by how much money they spent on a game that they can’t play anymore? As much as I’ve been enjoying Heroes of Dragon Age, I can’t imagine spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on in-app purchases. I’d feel like a dick when the game goes offline and my in-app purchases have gone to heaven.
Of course this could very well be a generational thing. A lot of younger gamers are being raised on free-to-play games and it’s possible that they think this is simply how the videogame world works. What do you think about gamers spending hundreds of dollars on in-app purchases for games like Heroes of Dragon Age? Can you see yourself dropping that much dough on a mobile game? Kindly share your thoughts in the comments section.
In my professional experience I’ve seen this kind of spending reflected on smartphone bills of my clients’ employees. At large companies a $200 phone bill for one person would not set off many alarms if any.