Appolicious has an interesting analysis of survey data from Flurry Analytics on the spending habits of folks who make in-game purchases. What is interesting is that players spent most of their money on temporary in-game boosts,
Flurry broke up the kinds of in-app content that can be purchased in most freemium games into three categories: “durable” things, like in-game items that offer a permanent boost to a player; “consumable” things, or things that get used up when they’re used; and “personalization” things, like character costumes. Of the three categories, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of the items people were buying fell into the “consumable” category, meaning players are buying things that will only temporarily affect their game.
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Flurry found that most of these “consumable” items being bought in freemium games were “premium currency.” In essence, other games’ Smurf Berries. Mostly what players are buying, it seems, is the ability to get to the game content they want without having to do the work or the waiting to get there. And that’s exactly the strategy of freemium game development.
The interesting thing about the Smurf Berries is that Smurfs Village uses a typical freemium mechanic where a certain amount of time has to pass before a task is finished. Buying the Smurf Berry allows this to be accelerated, so the user is either a) paying to avoid actually having to play the game or b) paying to have the game function properly.