For the past couple of weeks I’ve been seeing commercials for the NEW Pirates of the Caribbean online game from Disney. The big push in the commercial is that you can play for FREE!
I decided to go ahead and sign Charlie up so he could play it today. I knew there would be a catch with the “play FREE” thing. I know they HAVE to make money somehow, so I wasn’t surprised when I found out they had different levels of play. Basically, the more you pay, the more advanced features you get. The FREE version is a “light” version of the game. No problem, Charlie is only 6, he’s probably just going to walk in circles and hit everything he can find with a sword. It’s not like he’s going to get into the whole Multi-Player/Community facet of the game yet.
After I signed up, downloaded and ran the game I figured out the REAL catch to trying to play the game for FREE. Turns out that if you don’t pay for access, you get thrown into the “FREE BASIC ACCESS QUEUE.” This is the equivalent of being forced to sit at the back of the bus. I’ve been sitting in the Queue for over 2 hours so far staring at the intro screen to the game. My bet is I never see the actual game (maybe if i sign in at 3am!).
How do I know this is the catch? right on the intro screens they put this link:
“Don’t Want to Wait? Upgrade to Unlimited Access”
Personally, I think they should have been a little more honest and used this as their link text:
“Thanks for getting conned by our multi-million dollar ad campaign stating that you can play our fantastic new Pirate Game for FREE. We are glad you appreciate how carefully we crafted our campaign to target your children. Obviously it’s a pretty hollow offer, so now that you have your child begging you to let them play the cool game that they saw on the TV commercial, just suck it up and give us our $9.95 per month. We’ll also be happy to accept a yearly payment for the bargain price of $79.95. Again, thanks for getting sucked into yet another commercial scam!”
I suppose their text is a little shorter.
In short, if you are going to advertise a GAME to KIDS that they can play for FREE, make sure they can really play for FREE. Throwing out bait like this, and then switching to an entirely different setup at the last second just pisses off the consumer – ME.
What is even more upsetting than not getting to play the game as promised, is that this immoral corporate marketing tactic is probably working, and Disney is raking in the cash hand over fist.
But, who would want to listen to what I have to say. After all, I’m just sitting at the back of the bus.