Oh No, My Three-Year-Old Has Discovered Microtransactions

My wallet is being demolished, one dollar at a time.

“Hey Dad, can I buy a house in Toca?”

This is the demonic phrase I’ve been hearing several times a day lately. It’s one of the first things out of my three-year-old’s mouth in the morning, literally shaking me awake to help with the morning routine, and it’s sure to come up again before bedtime. 

You can try and brush it away with “we’ll talk about it later,” or say “no” and hope she’ll grunt and accept the outcome. But often—too often—I’ve rolled over and allowed her to purchase another beautifully-designed set of icons in Toca Life: World.  

I knew was coming; it’s just a matter of when for any kid today. Finally, my youngest is old enough to understand she can go a little deeper on the apps and games that she interacts with. I’ve been able to skate by for shockingly long on coming up with blatantly false excuses for not buying anything extra that I figured “hey, maybe I’ll just spend a little more time close to the sun!” But now, I’m very much getting burned.

There are a few tensions at play here. 

One, Toca Life: World is fantastic. It’s gorgeous and thoughtful, and in a world of exploitation on mobile devices, it’s one of the best ecosystems you can dump a few bucks (or, uh, more!!) into. Here’s what I wrote about Toca Life: World last September, when I profiled the company for Crossplay and admitted I regularly approved microtransaction purchases for Toca Life: World more than basically anything else: