A game like League of Legends can be a huge time and money suck due to plenty of in-game microtranscations, but the sorts of things you can buy (character skins) aren't crucial to success in the game.Įnter mobile/casual titles. A Call of Duty or Skyrim addict may pour thousands of hours into a title, but relatively little cash past the initial $60 investment and a bit of merchandise.
While traditional game addiction hoovers up a player's time, there's usually something of a limit on the amount of money that can be sunk into a game. It's a weird hybrid of gambling addiction and more traditional video game addiction, neither of which is anything new, but the combination of the two is a relatively novel emerging phenomenon, and one all the mobile games giants are taking advantage of to full effect.
