Nina of Spawnkill.com writes:
"Smurfs’ Village for the iPhone, iPad, and the iPod Touch is a nice trip down to memory lane for those that remember the Smurfs growing up. All the lovable characters from the old sitcom make an appearance in the game – Papa Smurf, Brainy, Jokey, and Greedy are just a few that you will encounter. While the trip down memory lane is fun, this Farmville-type game can be very frustrating. Though the game is free, your progress will be slow, because it runs in real-time, unless you are willing to spend money on some micro-transactions. This takes all the fun out of the game for me and can really deter people from playing."
NZGamer:
Free-to-play games and microtransactions have brewed a storm of controversy in the gaming world. While most of the press on this topic focuses on the business side, I decided to explore how different freemium systems impact the experience of gameplay.
Eight-year old British girl Lily Neale loves her dad's iPad. She plays games on it all day: My Horse, Campus Life and Smurfs' Village are among her favourites. She loves these games so much she happily racked up a real-world bill of more than £4,000 in in-game purchases (more than $6,000), tapping away at prompts to buy more jewels, coins and upgrades. Her father is somewhat less of a fan.
I wouldnt refund him anything. Idiot should've either put a lock on downloads or not given it to her in the first place.
I do agree with you but I'm sure he didn't realize at the time, don't you need to put your password in before you buy anything though?
I did not realise giving my creditcard to my 4 year old daughter on the internet was stupid can I have a refund on the £35,000 car she just bought? NO because I'd be an idiot to do something like that. The guy clearly is an idiot and should not have been refunded. If he does not look into the products he is giving to his 4 year old daughter that contains all of his credit information then it is his own fault.
An important part of the problem lies within the store system. The default behaviour should strictly be a password screen for each transaction, or maybe something along the lines of a screen unlock motion to remove barriers while providing some security. However, that's not the default behaviour. Once a password is entered, it's valid for a good while.
I sometime give my cell phone to my baby, and there's a lot of potential to buy stuff everywhere even by randomly pressing without any conscious effort. Free to play games with ad popups, in game store screens everywhere. Luckily, I use a virtual card with a cap of 0. I'm immune to these silliness, but not every card has that feature.
agreed they should implement some kind of password protection to ensure that there would be no accidental or unwanted purchases.
This. As long as the default behaviour is to not protect the customer, the companies share some responsibility, not because its their fault but because they make it so easy to buy stuff but then bury store preferences deep and don't remind people of their options.
This story just keeps on repeating itself.
Parents need to realise that iPads are not toys and if they are going to let their kids play with them, then they need to watch what they're doing.
no the ipad is fine, parents need too learn the free too play, is not free. an their be chance things like this can happen with kids if your not watching.
GamesAsylum: Yeah, we’re doing this – a history of Smurf games. Don’t go rolling your eyes just yet though, as there’s a little bit of history to be had here. One of these games was seen as a ‘killer app’ upon release, quite a few ended up on a big blue scrapheap and some can fetch a fair bit of money.
Smurf Racer looks rad!!!
Loved Smurf's Nightmare back in the day, it had an eerie soundtrack though.
Smurfs are scary.
hate games that make you use real money in order to progress at all