Online Game Currency

The PlayStation Network fiasco has gotten me frustrated about the whole online game currency thing. The millions of credit card numbers Sony had on file were there probably because it’s so much more convenient to buy stuff on PSN when your credit card is stored with them, rather than having to enter it every time, or go to the website and fill in a form. I can’t even find where to do it on their website, so they obviously haven’t made it easy to add funds to your wallet that way. Or you can buy a card online and enter the 12-digit code into your PlayStation, so that you only have to give your credit card info to Amazon.

Similarly with Xbox Live, although with their mysterious “points” system. They’ve made it so that 80 points is $1, instead of something convenient like 100 points per dollar, so that there’s this disconnect between points and money. You’re not quite sure how much real money you’re spending unless you actually think about it and do the division. You can also buy cards like this one and avoid giving your credit card number to Microsoft, much like with Sony’s PSN cards. But with both types of cards, they only come in fixed increments, so you can’t always get just enough currency to cover what you want to buy.

So there’s tradeoffs. Do you give your credit card number to Sony/Microsoft to get the convenience of buying anything on their networks without having to re-enter your credit card number every time? Or do you buy the cards that only come in fixed amounts from another party like Amazon that you trust with your credit card info, and then enter some arcane code into your console? Surely there must be a better way, here in the year 2011.

Well, I’m not an expert on user experience design, so I have no idea if this is actually better, but here’s a way that I think might at least feel safer. If Sony and Microsoft would go through a site like PayPal or Google Checkout, they could have users pay for their purchases by bank account if they wish. You’d go online, add some games or other downloadable content to your cart, and when you’re all done, you click some checkout button. Then Sony or Microsoft just puts it in like a regular order into PayPal or Checkout, and then the user can go pay for it with their bank account or credit card, whichever they feel comfortable with. Whenever the user pays, the network they’re on will automatically have the content download onto the machine the next time it’s online. Yes, it’s less convenient than having your credit card stored in the network itself. But it feels safer. And the payment method is something most users are already familiar with. And there’s no typing in a magical 12-digit incantation to get your funds. And you can always just pay the exact amount. Wouldn’t it be convenient? Well, I think it would be.

Of course, if it were really the future, we’d have cool things like retina scanners or credit cards embedded in our bodies so that nobody but us can ever use our credit cards, and there’d be no fraud. But they’d probably have to invent flying cars before that…