[kjreact]

That is a good question, is there any harm to play freemium games if the kids aren’t allowed to spend any money?

My view is that freemium games tend to be engineered to hook people into playing for long periods of time. They use strategies similar to how casinos hook gamblers with behavioral conditioning giving intermittent rewards for long play time; basically timed dopamine hits.

So going back to your question regarding not spending money, even though they’re not spending money now they are being conditioned to find such behaviors in games as a norm and one day when they have a source of income themselves those dopamine hits are just a few dollars away.

But my kids are strong willed and they won’t fall for these tricks, you may say. That may be so but the fact that they’re participating in these game platforms is drawing in other children who may not have the same mental fortitude.

I guess my long winded rant is just to say that we shouldn’t be promoting these casino-like games. We should be promoting games that foster creativity and a sense of achievement without pay to win shortcuts and gambling for rewards.