I drove here recently on the bus for several hours and entertained an 8-year-old kid with my iPhone. More precisely, the beta version of one of our games. A couple of minutes later, the boy asked me a question: “Is there a store here?” The game provides in-app’s – both for in-game currency and for real money, but because
this is a beta, of course, only the first option works so far. “There is,” I tell him, “But we don’t have enough money yet.” He played a little more and asked again: “And let’s buy something at the store.” I had to buy what I had enough currency for. Conclusions?
Of course, it is impossible to draw any global conclusions after communicating with just one child, but the fact itself still pleased me. I note that his mom also had an iPhone (on which the boy definitely played Angry Birds and the Disney crocodile Swamp), his dad, according to him, had an iPad at home, and the kid himself had a PSP with him.
After all, gamers of the “previous” generation often do not treat free-to-play very positively: they are outraged when the game constantly asks for something to buy. However, if young people get used to the fact that the store in the game is the norm from childhood, then we, developers of digital content, will have a happy old age :)
It is clear that not every Russian family has so many modern devices. But if even in those where there are, children are allowed to play with them, then this is already good. Well, again, there are much more devices per capita in the West, which means that children definitely get more.