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Feed Me or I Die!
Players spend a lot of time making characters they care dearly about. (You will never understand this unless you've invested endless hours in something that can be erased in seconds.) So there are two techniques to keep virtual characters "alive": pay to feed them (by buying virtual food) or, less creatively, pay to get access to them. Designers are now adding more and more things a player needs to do to keep a character alive. For instance, keep them healthy through visits to the virtual doctor. In fact, designers can give your "pet" or "character" any disease they like, and you have to deal with it. Not kind, but its another monetization model.
