zwolanerd

When you open the game Make It Rain: The Love of Money, you are greeted with a splashscreen that quotes Matthew 6:24 (but leaves off the reference) –

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (NIV)

The title of the game references the first part of another verse, I Timothy 6:10 –

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” (NIV)

I’m not entirely sure why the game uses these verses, but then again, I’m not entirely sure that this is a “game” so much as it is a means of self-torture.

The screenshot I’ve attached to this post shows you the game board. You have a stack of bills. You swipe that stack of bills from the bottom to the top, which causes the bills to fly off and get added to your total. Once you “earn” enough money, you can buy upgrades that change the bills to higher denominations (each bill in that screenshot is worth $10,000), or allow you to collect money while the app is closed, or let you earn extra money per second whether or not you are “making it rain.”

Every so often, the FBI swoops in, in the form of a wheel of fortune. Spinning that wheel gives you the chance to get off scot-free or lose a bunch of money. You can also pay a bribe and have the whole thing swept under the rug. And, oh, you can buy 5 bribes for 99 cents – actual cents, real-world cents – which is how this free-to-play game intends to make its money.

The real cost to you as a player, however, is pain and suffering. I am not talking about the usual mental pain and anguish games cost, either. This one has caused me actual physical pain in my fingers and wrists. The faster you swipe, the more you get, and every time you buy an upgrade there’s another one that costs exponentially more right behind it. Eight hours after playing for twenty minutes or so (I was absentmindedly swiping while watching an episode of Seinfeld) my wrist is still stiff. I’m sure a bit of that is my age (perhaps there should be a warning for players over 40), but Repetitive Motion and Carpal Tunnel Syndromes are real things no matter a person’s age.

I’m not entirely sure how swiping the money from the bottom of the screen to the top is making you get said money, but when you can buy upgrades like “Insider Trading” and “Buy a Local Judge” (nevermind having the FBI crash your party now and then), there’s clearly something fishy going on. It’s never really explained. My best guess is that the act of swiping (from bottom to top) is analogous to the act of swiping (stealing).

I’ve had to reinstall the game twice. Once because it just stopped working, and again because I upgraded my phone’s OS and the game wouldn’t automatically reinstall. I lost my progress both times and had to start all over again. “Had to?” you ask? Yes. Before it failed the first time I had already earned two achievements. Then I earned 4 more. I needed to reinstall so I could chase down the remaining 14, see.

And now we get to some sort of answer. “The love of money,” the Apostle Paul says, “is a root of all kinds of evil.” Perhaps a love of achievements (another currency that ultimately does a person no good) leads down a similar path? The rest of that verse says this:

“Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

The pain in my hands as I type this post is certainly causing me grief, and I have come to understand this game is a twisted satire designed to punish me for wanting to finish it. The splashcreen warning should have been enough and I have no one to blame but myself.

 

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Download Make It Rain for Windows Phone here, for Android here, and iOS here. If you must.

Tags: iOS, mobile, Windows Phone

Written by: Mark