Do those free players waste time on the games? Some do, certainly, but not all of them. While there are certainly some who are coerced into spending large amounts, the vast majority of free-to-play gamers actually pay nothing for their games. The addiction issue is a little trickier. As a gaming snob, I can sniff that “there’s no accounting for taste,” but spiritually speaking I don’t see Biblical grounds for saying that one person’s game standards should trump another’s. The problem is, whether I like it or not, millions of people seem to legitimately like these games.
This should be an easy call for a Christian to make, right? They rarely have creative or clever or novel game mechanics. Shouldn’t we condemn them? They seem to function as entrapment for some players. Some players only spend a little once in a while, but the industry also relies on “whales,” big spenders who can drop hundreds of dollars at a time.Īnd so we come to the theological crux of these games. A “freemium” game like Clash of Clans pulls in more than $1 million a day. Skinner’s research done on rats and food rewards. The problem is that these games are clearly designed to encourage compulsive spending, often in ways that are based on B.F. Nobody forces a player to pay anything, and the idea of paying for entertainment is pretty normal. Then they become frustrating enough that paying to speed up the process or accentuate the experience is very tempting. But most of these games are built to encourage easy entry. A free-to-play game like Clash of Clans, for instance, is easy to pick up and start playing: you collect money, build military units and go to war. Third, they all allow for in-app purchases - that is, the player can buy stuff within the game.Īnd here is where the format gets downright diabolical. Second, most of these games are quite simple to play (although there are notable exceptions). First, as the name implies, people can start playing them without paying anything. For smartphone users around the world, “free-to-play” is synonymous with “addictive.” Games of this sort vary widely, but they generally share several key characteristics. The reason the game is noteworthy, however, is that it’s free-to-play. There’s very little skill and only a bit of strategy involved: you check in two or three times a day, move them around and then leave. You must provide your little wards with food, clean water and power. Fallout Shelter is mostly a promotional product, put out by Bethesda to tout their upcoming blockbuster Fallout 4, yet it’s left me wrestling with ideas about right, wrong and the value of entertainment.įallout Shelter is a base-building game - the player manages and expands an underground vault full of cute, cartoony people in the aftermath of nuclear apocalypse. I got hooked on a little iOS game last week that made an unexpected impact on me.
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