Unfortunately I've not stumbled into a large amount of money. I'm instead referring to a Facebook game by the same name as the television quiz show that became popular when I was in University. The Facebook game adds some social steps (the first few questions are answered by a group of players and their values fluctuate based on how many people get it wrong) but at its very core it's a time limited trivia game with 4 multiple choice answers just like the tv show. Instead of actually winning cash (wouldn't that be nice) you accumulate a running total of cash won across all games which is treated as an experience total. Make enough money and you level up!
It's a fun little distraction if you like trivia, which I do. But as with all Facebook games you should ask yourself how they're intending to make money. Well, you're limited to how many times you can play each day. If you want to play more than that you can buy more from the store. On the surface this looks like the only way for them to make money though they do have little rewards for spamming your friends. In short, it's like pretty much all Facebook games. Spam your friends and pay if you want to play a lot...
Of course it turns out there's a second way to spend money on the game and I feel like I got scammed into using it. To explain how we'll need a little background...
The tv show had lifelines where you could get help from outside sources if you weren't confident that you knew the answer. The Facebook game has the same sort of thing. At the start of the game you get to name two of your friends to be your lifelines. Then during the course of playing the game when you need to select an answer you can click on one of those two people. You automatically get credit for the right answer in the game and your friend gets sent the question. If they get it right then both of you get some experience. If they get it wrong then both of you get substantially less experience.
One of my friends, Ike, ran a Millionaire game show for MathSoc when we were in University. I used him as my lifeline the first time I played (I think I only had 2 friends even playing at the time so I had no choice.) and he made a comment on Facebook about how someone was crazy for sending him a 'Real Housewives' question. I sent it off because there's an immediate payoff for sending it off even if the other person won't have a clue! But then I felt bad after he commented so when I played again a couple days later I kept my eye for a question he'd probably know. (By this point I had 4 friends playing which leads to the selection screen above. My other two friends were auto-chosen but I wanted to tag in Ike and send him a good question.) Lo and behold the very first question was about Steve McQueen. (My complete lack of knowledge about movie actors was the stuff of legends amongst my University crowd so I really needed the help.) Turns out Ike knew the answer (hurray!) and commented on Facebook that that was more like it.
Encouraged by the positive reinforcement I went in to play again with Ike as a lifeline to see if I could send him another good one. Here's the screen I saw when I went to change my lifelines...
Notice the difference? I didn't! For those who may not play a lot of Facebook games the little icons on the buttons there say that I can pay Facebook credits (which have to be bought with real money) in order to unlock those guys as lifelines for my second game. The layout is the same. The buttons are in the same spot. The lines start with the same words. I wanted to do the same thing I'd just done so I clicked in the same sequence I'd clicked before. Instead I clicked on a button which wanted money! I guess this is their main way to make sure you spam ALL your friends to sign up... They gave me 6 games to play today but I only have enough friends to lifeline 2 games. But for losers like me I can pay money to pretend I have more friends!
The kicker? It didn't ask for confirmation or anything that I wanted to spend money. It just made a quick cash grab and went on with its life. 5 credits amounts to about 50 cents so it isn't like they walked off with a lot of my money but it really pissed me off when it happened. Nevermind that sending Ike a trivia question isn't worth 50 cents... I feel like they didn't make it clear that's what was going to happen. Worse, I feel like they intentionally designed their UI the way they did in order to trick me. (I have reported them with the 'Dispute an item purchased while playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Game' link, so we'll see what happens.)
What may be the worst part of this is Facebook has apparently cached my credit card information. I had those credits on hand (left overs from when I bought some stuff in Galaxy Legion) but it bothers me that an app can snag credits without confirmation and that Facebook has stored the information needed to sell me more credits. What if that button had cost 50 credits? Would it have auto-charged my credit card to buy them?
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