App Review: Smurfs’ Village — New innovations in money extraction

So I saw the news item about an 8-year-old ringing up $1,400 in charges (for “Smurfberries”, no less!) via the Smurfs’ Village iPhone game. All of the reporting has focused on how such a thing could happen: Via a “15-minute loophole”? An older sister passing along the iTunes password? An 8-year-old not understanding real vs. game dollars?

I decided to look at the design of the game itself for clues. Spoiler: they weren’t hard to find.

A Little Context: In-App Purchase Done Right

Here’s the excellent game, geoDefense Swarm. It comes with many levels and is great to play from the moment it’s installed. But players can also buy more levels within the game itself. Here’s what that looks like.

First, one sees the normal menu for choosing a level to play:

Tap “Hard Levels”, and then scroll all the way to end (i.e. you’ve played all of them as I have), and you’ll see geoStore / Get More Levels:

Tap that and finally, we’re shown the geoStore with a “Level Pack” product description, and the very soberly displayed cost, $0.99:

Smurfs’ Village In-App Purchase Experience

So is Smurfs’ Village pretty similar? Did these kids go clearly out of control, finding their way to the in-app store to purchase more items? I decided to take one for the team and install the app. I can now say that the answers to these questions are NO and NO.

Here’s a pretty typical screen in Smurfs’ Village. I’m “purchasing” a house to build on a piece of land. The link into the real-dollars shop is the graphic on the bottom right:

Tap that, and you’ll see a nearly identical screen — for purchasing (no air-quotes this time) Smurfberries:

At this point, one may wonder why any children’s game should have something for sale for $4.99, let alone $99.99. Why would we even want Smurfberries? It doesn’t take long to find out. Leaving the shop, we tap our garden to see when the blueberries will be ready:

Intermixed with the info that 3 seconds are left, are instructions for using Smurfberries to force the blueberries to appear instantly. The cynical among us will see this as a thinly veiled ad, taking up 1/3 of the message display. But perhaps this is an isolated case? Unfortunately, NO. Over and over again, the game stops us and tries to sell Smurfberries:

The pattern becomes obvious: every step along the way, Smurfberries “help” our Smurfs work faster and better. (Scary…) Smurfberry “use” is woven into the fabric of the game in a variety of places:

Summary

This isn’t a game; it’s a money-extraction tool marketed to children ages 4 and up.