You Can Almost Taste The Shame

I have a confession to make. It's not pretty, but it has to be said.

I play Vampire Wars on Facebook.

It's not big, and it's not clever. In fact it can actually get pretty tedious. But Thus far I haven't actually gotten completely bored with it. Like, for example, every other game and app I've ever used on there. That probably says something about me, but I'm not gonna think about that right now.

For those of you who are lucky enough to not know, it's basically a resource management spreadsheet. You have stats and counters which recharge over time. You spend your counters doing missions (I.E. clicking the do mission button) or fighting other players (I.E. trying to guess which person in the list has the least chance of kicking your ass). You gain experience and level up, earning points to increase your stats and counters. Your ultimate ability in combat is, quite naturally, decided by how many friends you have. More friends conned into installing means more abilities used. Like most "free" games online it has a 2 tier currency system. You have the low tier that you can earn in game from missions, muggings and minions. Then you have the high tier Favour Points used for all the actually useful stuff. To be fair you can earn them during play as you achieve the sort of arbitrary goals common to any games trophy system, but they're rarer than rocking horse shit. So you'll be hard pressed to earn enough to really get at the good stuff. This is, of course, fair enough. Two tier currency is fairly common in the "free" game market, almost to the point of omnipresence, and it's not implemented here with nearly the same level of obnoxiousness as I've seen elsewhere. You CAN play without playing, but those who wish to spend will obviously have the advantage. At least you can work towards saving up enough for ONE limited edition ability or stat boost or whatever.

It goes without saying of course that in terms of character names there is a distressing trend of Twilight wannabes and other related gayness. Though the other day I was attacked by someone calling themselves the Angle Of Death. A matter of death by degrees? Perhaps. Personally I plumed for the name Draculon, in the fine tradition of giant vampire monsters featured across various Ultraman shows. I was tempted to go with Daculas, who was I believe in Ultraman Jack, I felt it was a little to close to Dracu-Lass. And you can't tell me that's just a bit to D.C. Mind you, Dracu-Lad and Dracu-Lass should so be underage vampire superhero sidekicks it hurts. Possibly helping out Draculord? But I digress.

One of the main things that sets this spreadsheet apart from the others, aside from the theme, is the paper doll avatar. Customizable within limits you can buy new bits of clothing (in both currencies) and add a bit of personalisation. They even have a function where you can Judge other peoples avatars, thus confirming this games goth credentials. This is me:

Behold my glory

Tasteful I'm sure you'll agree. Personally I feel it's better than some of the other possibilities. Let's just say the Twihards are adequatly catered to, and it's gayer than a boatload of sailors rigoursly bumming the hell out of each other. And they all look EXACTLY THE SAME. Anyway, my rambling intoduction is actually about to yield some relevance for those who have been paying attention. Except for the bits about Twilight fans. Those guys couldn't be less relevant if they tried.

The thing is they've recently introduced a new feature, and it caught my attention enough to run the numbers. Makes for some quite interesting conclusions. The feature seems innocuous enough. They've introduced a bit of pseudo-crafting in the form of "The Artisans". Basically you can now get some funky/rather gauche (delete as applicable) demon wings made for your avatar. All you need is 300 units of the appropriately coloured Devil Hide. If that sounds like rather a lot it's because it is. But don't worry, because there's some stat boost attached. And if you craft all 3 you'll get a further stat boost. So that's not too bad, right? Maybe. But in order to accumulate Devil Hide in anything approaching the levels you'll need to actually get wings before you die of old age is going to prove a bit of a challenge.  But we can always buy some with our favor points, right?

This is where the terror sets in. Just for fun I decided to see how much it would actually cost someone to buy a set of wings outright. That is, how much REAL MONEY they would need to achieve this:

Raaaa. Ph3ar my might. It's well goth..

So, 300 units for 1 pair of wings. And we can buy 10 units for 10 Favour. So how much does Favour cost in real terms? Allow me to demonstrate:

Favor	Actual Money	Pence Per Point	Times 300
21	£3.460	£0.165	£49.429
42	£6.920	£0.165	£49.429
85	£13.840	£0.163	£48.847
215	£34.600	£0.161	£48.279
440	£69.210	£0.157	£47.189

So based on the rate available as of writing, without doing anything to earn the relevant units other than buy them directly one set of wings will cost you from slightly under £50 to slightly less under £50.

FIFTY QUID. Five X 10 to the power of wallet. Simply to achieve....

 Suddenly the difference seems somewhat less impressive

I may not know much, I'm pretty sure you can get a blowjob for less than that. I'm just saying. Factor in the cost of all 3 colours (surely the work of literally minutes in paintshop) and you're looking at close to a £150 quid, which would probably get you some sort of horrifying internet fetish sex. Or a GOOD blowjob.

Now, obviously this is all a rather extreme, worst case scenario type situation. Even those who actually pay for the pleasure of playing a spreadsheet with a timer wouldn't commonly just buy the whole lot. Maybe they'd buy SOME, and work at getting the rest from other sources. But thats no the point. Because this is the internet. And if there's one thing the internet has taught us it's not just that at least one person will. It's that at least one person ALREADY HAS.

You may now weep for the future of the species.