The Currency Disconnect

My daughter once asked me for 800 of an in-world currency to buy something in a game. Not £8. Not money. A number that meant nothing to her in real terms.

That disconnect is intentional.

When platforms use in-world currencies, research shows children struggle to connect virtual currency to real money. You buy the currency with pounds or dollars. The child sees it as part of the game, something they collect or spend like any other game mechanic.

The real money becomes abstracted, distant, something that happens on a parent's phone rather than in the world they're inhabiting.

This serves a purpose. When children don't connect the in-world currency to actual money, they spend more freely. When they do understand it's real money, they still don't grasp the value. What does £10 mean to an eight-year-old? They know it buys things, but the weight of it, the hours their parents worked to earn it, the choices families make about what they can and can't afford, that understanding develops slowly over years.

Children have no concept of how hard money is to earn. They don't see the commute, the difficult meetings, the stress of making rent, the calculations parents do every month about what's essential and what's luxury. Money appears when they ask for it, or it doesn't. The connection between work and earning, between earning and spending, between spending and consequence, that develops through experience they haven't had yet.

Platforms know this. The currency separation makes spending feel like gameplay rather than commerce. Children see progress bars filling up, items unlocking, social status increasing. The transaction happens in game mechanics, not financial terms.

I understand why freemium models use this approach. It works. 80-85% of leading applications use free or freemium models, and a small percentage of users generate the majority of revenue. The model is financially successful specifically because it makes spending feel easy and consequence-free.

The issue is what this does to children who don't yet have the cognitive development to understand they're making financial decisions. They're not adults choosing to spend money on entertainment. They're children being guided into spending patterns before they understand what spending means.

When Ian and I think about oodlü, we keep coming back to a different principle: children shouldn't be in charge of spending in open world environments.

The currency they use should be earned through engagement, not purchased with real money.

This solves several problems simultaneously.

First, it removes the exploitation of children's naivety. When currency can only be earned, not bought, children aren't being guided into financial transactions they don't understand. The game remains gameplay rather than becoming commerce disguised as gameplay.

Second, it equalises children in the space. What they have depends on their engagement and effort, their ability to spend time earning currency through activities. One child with wealthy parents and one child without have the same opportunities to acquire items and status. The dynamic mirrors school uniforms: you don't have one child in expensive trainers and another in hand-me-downs. Everyone starts equal.

Third, it teaches the relationship between effort and earning. In oodlü, the in-world currency is called oodles, and children earn it through engagement. When they spend oodles on items, they're connecting actual effort with that purchase. The opposite of what happens when real money buys virtual currency. They're learning that what you have comes from what you do, from time invested and challenges completed. That connection between effort and reward is foundational to understanding value in ways that purchased currency actively undermines.

This matters more than it might seem. Social pressure around virtual items is real. Children compare what they have. They notice who can buy premium items and who can't. The financial inequality of their families becomes visible in a space that should be about play and development.

Does this mean we can't make money from the platform? No. We can sell to adults. Subscription access. Organised group features. Adult-focused marketplace items. But children themselves shouldn't be making purchasing decisions, whether they understand those decisions as financial or not.

I'm writing this as a guiding principle rather than an absolute commitment. Building a sustainable business whilst protecting these values will require careful navigation. The realities of running a platform at scale may require adjustments. But it's where we're starting, and it's the model we're committed to protecting as far as we possibly can.

The currency disconnect serves platforms well. It makes monetisation easier. It reduces friction in spending. It generates revenue from users who might hesitate if transactions felt more like actual purchases.

But it does this by exploiting children's developmental limitations. By making spending feel like gameplay. By abstracting real money into game tokens that don't carry the same psychological weight.

We're choosing differently. Currency earned through engagement rather than purchased with money. Equalisation rather than stratification. Protection of children who aren't yet equipped to make financial decisions, even when those decisions are dressed up as gameplay.

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