A study on iOS In-App Purchase behavior shows that most money spent on IAP is for things of fleeting value, like the eagle that skips you over a level in Angry Birds:

While the consumer is indeed purchasing virtual items that are most often consumable, what’s most important to understand is the psychology behind these games. In freemium games, consumers are experiencing compelling, immersive entertainment. They feel gratified when they progress, accomplish goals, create a unique world, and in some cases, show off to their friends. In exchange for this gratification, they are willing to spend real money, and lots of it.

Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, “abusive” — a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. “Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,” he said, “the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.” He added: “I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.”

What I want to know is, when game designers get good enough that they are really playing chords on the same neurochemical brainstrings as drugs and gambling are, well, what happens next? I don’t understand why people are so hung up on the violent content of games, which seems totally and utterly harmless to me, and why the moral panic brigade seems to ignore the increasingly skillful way in which game designers manipulate the risk/anticipation/reward loop in people’s brains.

…And the pages that inspired them:

• But Mom!: Various moms from different subcultures take their middle-school aged daughters back-to-school shopping. Ideally the subcultures the mothers and daughters identify with are as different as possible, and the kids as awkwardly middle-schooly as possible, and the moms as anxious as possible, The prototype episode in my mind has a Berkeley urban farmer with a long grey ponytail agreeing to take her sparkly daughter to Sephora as long as she reads this Naomi Wolf book. During this exchange, the daughter’s eyes never leave her phone’s screen.
• Rapemen: Shellac and Odd Future compete to make the most money on a ‘tour’ of the world They don’t have any shows booked and they never know where they are going. The producers drop them off in each city and we watch them scrambling around to see who can make the most money while they are in town by booking a show, doing in-stores, selling merch. Etc. It’s a contest. Plus there will be all sorts of challenges and punishments, like if Odd Future makes more money in a town, Albini has to personally digitally remaster the Big Black catalog. Also, under the credits, Brooklyn Vegan commenters are shot by a firing squad. That’s just a bonus.
• Ghostface Killah Presents The 84th Academy Awards: Ghostface hosts the Oscars, just like James Franco and Anne Hathaway, only hilarious and coherent. Plus there’d be a million guest appearances. Also, there’d be a memorable sketch involving RDJ as Iron Man and Ghost as Toney Starks.