Gamasutra: Every week, Gamasutra rounds up the top-grossing iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad applications, as current that day in the iTunes App Store. This week's U.S. revenue charts see Smurfs' Village and iMobsters earning top iPhone sales, while My Country and DragonVale remain big sellers on the iPad.
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.
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.
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.