What
Makes
a
Freemium
Game Player Become a Paying Player
Sandra Boric and
Christine Strauss (pp201-217)
doi:
https://doi.org/10.26421/JDI3.2-1
Abstracts:
This paper presents a derivation of freemium game players
playing and paying motivations and demographic attributes
by aggregating the results of 17 studies. For further
characterization and a clear distinction from other gamer subgroups,
this paper also contains an aggregation of playing
motivations and demographic attributes of video game players in
general, and of non-freemium game players. Our results suggest that
socialization and competition are common motivations
for playing a freemium game, and we derive enjoyment
to be a particularly important playing motivation for freemium
games. We further find that freemium game players who proceed to
pay particularly name economic factors and applied,
freemium game-specific mechanisms as motivations. Regarding
demographics, while the studies which were analyzed to derive
freemium gamers playing motivations have a dominance of
female participants, the studies which were analyzed to derive
freemium gamers paying motivations have mainly male
participants. For analyses by both motivations and demographic
attributes, we suggest a more differentiated picture including genre
and platform considerations. For marketers and developers, we
suggest a differentiation between markets, a mechanism transparency,
and an emphasis on socialization in freemium games.
Key words:
Social Analytics, Gaming Business Model, Video Game
Player, Customer Analytics, Payment Motivation, Customer Demography,
Digital Entertainment