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Children are lurcative, for sure.

This is a major reason for parents not to let their children use their smart phones for gaming. Honestly I understand how it is legal but it shouldn't be. The whole free to play concept is misleading and borderline lying, yah you can play some of the content free but the whole game itself isn't free. When you start marketing these products at children you are knowingly tricking them.

This should be false advertising and fraud.

Honestly if I was Nintendo or Sony I would fund a documentary about this. A way of attacking mobile devices, have the documentary created by a prominent film company maybe the guy who made "Super size me" and hire him to make a documentary that shows parents the dangers of free to play content. Invest maybe ten or so million dollars in making this film and use your connections to get studios of major publishers to talk about the free to play model.

Then launch the documentary and finance getting it out there. Maybe a small marketing campaign etc....etc... Make sure the public is aware of what the free to play apps are trying to do. Using the media like this could work majorly in Nintendo and Sony's advantage we all know media is a powerful tool and it has been used against Nintendo in the past.

Fact is the console manufacturers have to show parents and consumers the dangers of supporting these free apps or even free to play games. The dangers of these games on their pocket books and their privacy. I could easily see a very good documentary coming out about the downfall of gaming due to free to play content.

In fact If I had the cash and the resources I myself would be interested in going all Michael Moore on the F2P industry!

lol you guys are playing the "I am a big idiot excuse"

Its a free app where you can play the game but can get a better experience buy buying items.

You are not forced these items and you need to put in your Itunes password before you buy the items.

The items are a rip off but you do not have to buy them.

Its called personal responsibility.

that's wrong... most of the time the whole game is free and you can unlock everything with grinding.. BUT they offer ingame cash or unlocks if you don't want to grind.. parents should have better passwords and disable IAP ... it's not that difficult..

^^^

You'd have to be beyond stupid to give up money in this "i didn't know I was paying" scenario.

Talk about some lazy people these days.  Rather pay money to unlock everything in a game.

lol imagine RPG games on consels had that.

Buy 10,000 experience for 10 dollars !!

Tales of vesperia?  5 bucks = 5 levels....Well something like that.

The thing is. When players outsource to each other. i.e buying gold or paying someone else to grind xp for you in mmo. People whine and moans how it ruins the game.

And now, the devs cut out the middle man and sell these "services" and it's all of a sudden okay?

Expectations.

When you buy and play a quality MMO like say WoW you know what you are getting into. Blizzard isnt going to pull some microtransition shit and exchange real money for virtual items, so therefore when people do do things like the aforementioned you are entitled to find it "cheating" and against the standard expectations of that MMO.

On the other hand free to play games like Mafia wars that try to nickle and dime you every 10 min. is expected; before you even started the game it was expected that microtransactions were imminent, so those who would "whine and moans how it ruins the game" wouldnt even bother playing.