Game Market Research Articles

Principles for Engineering Social Interaction in Asynchronous Mobile Games

Since their first appearance, mobile devices have had exponential technological growth and have gained other functionalities besides standard calls and messaging services. With the advent of smartphones, the mobile gaming market has grown enormously to become one of the most widespread forms of gaming. This paper devises guidelines for engineering online multiplayer asynchronous mobile games. The findings emerge from the launch of a new game where, alternately, players try to guess the answers given by other players to a given set of questions. Departing from the meaning of usability in ISO 9241-11, the authors define idle-ability as the capacity of a product to realize operational and satisfaction goals in a specified context of sociotechnical idleness. Moreover, design principles are proposed to improve idle-ability in the selected genre of mobile games. Asynchronous games are traditionally integrated into social platforms and online communities. The work offers recommendations for its separate deployment in the market, exploring the potential of invisible social bonds among its players.

Evolution of the Video Game Market

The videogame industry had evolved since its initial appearance, and along with it, so has target market. This study attempts to analyse the trends throughout the years through observation of marketing materials such as printed and video advertisement commercials. The analysis is done by applying standard practice values employed in advertising communication on chosen samples of said commercial ads from each era of video game history.

Game Developer Competition Between USA and China

This study aims to obtain a comparison between two biggest economic Country, and see they focus on games industry global market. In this study researchers took the data from secondary data in global market game then analyzed data quantitatively and objectively by comparing data with USA & China video game market as the subject. The result of this study expected to be used as recommendation for game developers in choosing which platform to focus in designing their games by following patterns of subject reference that has been existed, in accordance with a model in design business criteria.

Motives for Playing Video Games in the Context of Time. Results of Empirical Research

Video games are one of the most popular leisure activities. The multitude of games and ways of playing (individually, in a team, online, offline, etc.) allows players to meet their various needs. Thus, from the point of view of game developers, it becomes important to recognise these needs and adapt the product to the expectations of players. Taking the dynamic development of the video game market into account, it seems significant to recognise the players’ motives for spending their time on playing. Therefore, the aim of the article is to identify the players’ motives in terms of the type of need being met and to find an answer to the question whether there is a relationship between the time spent on games and the motives for playing (does the fact that we play longer change the type of need being satisfied?). The text refers to the results of research conducted in April 2020 on a sample of 2,527 players in Poland. The subjects of the study were people who actively played video games – every day or several times a week.

How does media richness foster online gamer loyalty?

The online game market is highly popular, resulting in fierce competition among game makers and prompting them to find ways to strengthen gamer loyalty. Online gamers enjoy interacting, socializing, and building quickly formed relationships, i.e., swift guanxi, which greatly rely on games as media through which to exchange rich messages. However, it is not known how these aspects foster gamer loyalty. To fill this gap, we examine how media richness aspects form gamers’ perceptions of presence, interactivity, and swift guanxi, which help foster gamer loyalty. We used a total of 1350 online gamers’ responses to test our model. The results show that two of the four aspects of media richness effectively enhance presence, interactivity, and swift guanxi, which in turn strengthen gamer loyalty. We extend media richness theory by identifying some novel consequences of media richness, i.e., presence, interactivity, and swift guanxi, and establishing their interrelationships. We also ascertain the mechanism that leads from media richness to gamer loyalty. Our findings identify the drivers that game makers can use to strengthen user loyalty to online games, software games, and gamified systems.

Evaluating Tutorial-Based Instructions for Controllers in Virtual Reality Games

Virtual reality (VR) has disrupted the gaming market and is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. Yet differences between VR and traditional mediums, such as controllers that are visible in the virtual world, enable entirely new approaches to instruction. In this paper, we present four studies, each using a different VR game. Within each study, we compared three different modalities of tutorials: Text (text-only), Text+Diagram (text with controller diagrams), and Text+Spatial (text with controller tooltips appearing on top of the player's virtual controllers). Data from our studies show that the importance of tutorial modality depends greatly on game type. In a third-person shooter, Text+Spatial led to significantly higher controls learnability than Text and Text+Diagram, and also led to significantly higher performance, player experience, and intrinsic motivation than Text. In a puzzle game, Text+Spatial led to significantly higher controls learnability and performance than Text. Additionally, Text+Diagram led to significantly higher controls learnability than Text. However, in a wave shooter and a rhythm game, differences between conditions were negligible on all measures. Our studies show that game type is an important factor to consider when designing tutorial modality.

The Impact of Community Involvement on Game Life-Cycle: Evidence based on Gaming Platform Steam

Later stages of the product life-cycle are characterized by diminishing sales and declining prices. Especially firms with substantial product development costs, as is the case in the video game industry, are dependent on long product life-cycles to amortize initial costs. This confronts firms with the fundamental challenge of maintaining the value of their product from the consumer’s perspective and thus delaying the natural price decline. We investigate whether product features that facilitate community involvement and interaction are an effective means to keep the product stimulating and relevant in the long run. Using extensive data from the PC video game market, we show that the inclusion of interactive, community-engaging features allows firms to both charge higher prices and delay the natural price decline of their product. However, for one of the investigated features we find the opposite effect, which we explain by subsequent analysis. Thereby, we gain valuable insights into the importance of robustly designed incentive systems in community-focused features. Our findings could help firms in their efforts to design attractive and economically viable products with prolonged life-cycles. Keywords: Product life-cycle; digital goods pricing; user communities; co-creation; digital gaming platforms.

Changes in user experience and satisfaction as media technology evolves: The reciprocal relationship between video games and video game-related media

In video game market, there have been diverse user-generated contents related to game information. Users, therefore, can obtain game-related information not only from traditional mass media such as television or radio but also from interpersonal communication media (e.g., social network services) and masspersonal communication media (e.g., real-time streaming services). The purpose of this study is to investigate factors affecting attitudes toward content itself as well as toward alternative media that provide content, and to investigate the moderating effects of different communication types. We predict a complementary relationship between video game and video game-related media using a structural equation model reflecting joint effects between different media. Online communities in interpersonal communication have positive effects on attitudes toward video games and video game-related media due to active interactions among users and the usefulness of shared information. In this study, we confirmed that attitudes toward online communities positively affect actual intentions to play video games, thus indicating that there is complementarity between video games and online communities.

Grenoble 1968, Albertville 1992, and the Establishment of a Strategy to Protect and Market the Winter Olympic Emblems

As president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Juan Antonio Samaranch ushered in many significant changes. Among the more noteworthy developments he oversaw during the 1980s were the opening to professional sportspeople and the marketing of the Olympic games. The latter became a welcome source of income while the cost of media coverage kept increasing. A comparison of two winter Olympics uncovers the marketing approaches that were already in place in the 1960s, traces their development in the 1980s and 1990s, and highlights the resulting legal aspects and the economic consequences for the budget of the games. Archival records from the IOC and the organizing committees of the Grenoble 1968 and Albertville 1992 Olympic Winter Games demonstrate the transformations related to the evolution of the IOC’s marketing strategy to include the Olympic emblems and highlight the innovations initiated by the local organizing committees. Unlike earlier successes in marketing and selling the television rights to the games, efforts to protect and market the Olympic emblems only became effective in the 1980s.

There Is No Immersion: Critical Intervention through Hypermediacy in Metagames

In 2020, Draw Me a Pixel released There Is No Game, a game that playfully engages with the concept of the metagame and its varied meanings to examine the relationship between developers, games, and their audiences. The game has much in common with other metagames released during the boom and bust cycle of the indie game market in terms of its themes and playful attitude toward its players. Like many of these games, it features an antagonistic narrator, who, upon launching the game, announces that there is no game. The concept of a game resistant to play has become a recurring theme in many metagames that critique industry pressures, trends, and players’ playful resistance to designed experiences. This article examines There Is No Game’s use of hypermediacy (as a feature of both its narrative and design) to deliver its critique of the industry, while offering insight into its own development. More than simply breaking the fourth-wall, hypermediacy becomes the instigator for critical reflection and is used to highlight the challenges faced by indie developers and the material conditions in which games are made. Yet, unlike its predecessors that share this critique, There Is No Game offers an optimistic perspective on the future of the industry.

RANCANG BANGUN GAME MOBILE BERJENIS ROGUELIKE MENGGUNAKAN STRUKTUR CERITA BRANCHING NARRATIVE

In 2018 the total revenue from the digital game market has reached 137.9 billion USD with mobile being the largest segment of the digital gaming market. The games downloaded on Google Play have several categories, one of which is the role-playing category. That's where the opportunity to follow a trend appears by making an Android game that has the roguelike genre, which is a subgenre of role-playing games. Most games with the roguelike genre don’t have a story or it has a linear one with no control over the emotions of the player character, so this game will be made with a branching narrative story structure which allows players to choose the storyline to make it more interesting. A branching narrative offers the player with important choices; every choice offers a unique outcome to a certain scenario even though the number of outcomes in the story is limited. The survey shows that the branching narrative in the game can increase the curiosity of the player to the story in the game, increase the desire of players to play the game again, and that the branching narrative is strong enough to increase the desire of players to make an In-App Purchase.

Replaying online games for flow experience and outcome expectations: An exploratory study for the moderating role of external locus of control based on Turkish gamers’ evaluations

Online game playing represents a prominent consumption pattern of the digital world. The online games market is therefore a major topic of concern for behavioral research to understand and explain the consumer responses. One vital consumer response that should be examined in this regard is the replay intention in online games. Therefore, this study holds the topic from a holistic perspective by not only focusing on one single online games category and aims to explain replay intention through the flow experiences and outcome expectations and explore the existence and role of locus of control in this framework. 507 people from Turkey were surveyed in this study, and gathered data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The main findings were: ‘challenge’ and ‘interactivity’ as representatives of flow experience in the games do have positive effects on replay intention, the utilitarian and hedonic outcome expectations of gamers are positively related to their replay intentions, and external locus of control moderates all these relationships. As a result, various implications and suggestions are offered for the gaming research and the gaming sector.

Research on the Selection of Supply Chain Marketing Models Based on E-commerce Service Levels

Based on the game theory, the service sensitivity coefficient is introduced to construct four marketing game models, which include a single flagship store, a single self-operated store, a direct sales-flagship store, and a direct sales-self-operated store, in combination with numerical analysis methods to analyze manufacturers and e-commerce platforms in different situations. The study found that the service levels affected the profit of each entity in the supply chain. The service levels of self-operated stores were higher than those of the flagship stores, and the opening of direct sales channels had a stimulating effect on the service levels of e-commerce platforms to a certain extent. In consideration of the service levels and the ability to build direct sales channels, the direct sales-flagship store marketing model is the best choice for manufacturers whereas e-commerce platforms are more inclined to open self-operated stores. However, the opening of manufacturers’ direct sales channels is not necessarily beneficial to e-commerce platforms.

Design

Design

Investigating deception and the impacts on online game players’ choice in China

This article aims to present and analyse the relationship between online game companies and players under four types of deceptions in Chinese game market: mechanism imitation, direct rip off, top-up enticement and negative marketing. The main purpose of this article was to understand how deception affects players’ decision and which type of player is ‘sensitive’ when deception happened. There are 356 valid survey results about attitude to deception collected from players on social network. MGPM* model is used as the data analysis method. Analysis revealed that top-up enticement reduces players’ motivation at highest extent. Players motivated by ‘derivative motivation’ are sensitive and more tend to quit game than those motivated by ‘general motivation’. This research indicates if game company figured out player group structure, when facing survival problem, it can adjust operation strategy by adding deceptions with innocuous effect to players’ motivation to cut operational cost. Meanwhile, the research supplied supporting evidence saying leading companies in game industry should adjust its strategy, changing cognition to growth, reducing deception separation among players and operating from the industrial health perspective.

Designing Player Intent through “Playful” Interaction

Designing Player Intent through “Playful” Interaction

Development and Implementation of Java Game Engine Based on Network Information Technology

With the development of computer technology and network technology, various digital learning methods have seriously impacted the traditional education and teaching mode, among which gameplay learning represented by teaching games has attracted wide attention of educators. It is considered to be the most effective way to stimulate learners’ learning motivation. Mobile game is an important part of mobile phone value-added service. The research of mobile game engine has extremely important application value for the development of mobile phone game. This paper mainly studies how to realize a high-performance mobile game engine. Through the analysis of mobile phone operating system, mobile game market, mobile phone game user needs, the technology selection and main function modules of the engine are determined. Through the research of java technology, the technical architecture of engine server and client is determined. Performance and algorithm optimization are the focus of this paper, because performance issues are the biggest bottleneck in developing games on java phones.

Manufacturer’s “1-Up” from Used Games: Insights from the Secondhand Market for Video Games

The video game industry has a robust secondhand market for games, even though some of the major gaming-console companies possess the means to shut it down. What is the special ingredient in this industry that would incentivize a manufacturer to give tacit approval to buying and selling used games? In this study, leveraging a game-theoretic model, we investigate the effect of gaming console on a manufacturer’s strategy in the presence of a secondhand market for games. We find that when the manufacturer offers a console that provides additional value outside of playing games (e.g., media hub with apps), the secondhand market improves the manufacturer’s profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare, all at the same time. Moreover, the manufacturer enjoys greater benefit from the secondhand market as the intrinsic value of the console increases. This is in stark contrast with cases where there are no consoles involved or the consoles do not offer any intrinsic value; in such settings, the manufacturer would opt to shut down the secondhand market. Overall, our results have implications that apply not only to the past and present of the gaming industry but also to its future and to other types of platform-based markets for contents.

A comment on Paul, Weinbach, and Wilson’s (2004) “Efficient markets, fair bets, and profitability in NBA totals 1995-96 to 2001-02”

This paper revisits Paul et al. (2004) using a more recent data set to test for inefficiencies in the totals market for NBA games. Using data from the 1995-96 to 2001-02 seasons, Paul et al. (2004) found the market as a whole to be efficient, but that this was not the case for bets on the highest of point totals. Using data from the 2012-13 to 2018-19 seasons reveals a market that is more efficient than that of their earlier work, as the null hypothesis of a fair bet is not rejected for the higher totals. However, winning percentages in excess of 52.4 % were found further in the upper tail of the distribution of points totals relative to the earlier period.

Pay to play in freemium mobile games: a compensatory mechanism

PurposeA rarely discussed type of indulgence good is “virtual” goods featured in freemium games, one of the most important platforms for online retailing. The freemium business model becomes popular amid the growth of mobile games and smartphones. The purpose of this research is to look into the factors that influence the intention to play freemium games and purchase in-game virtual goods, as well as to compare male and female millennial gamers in Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest mobile gaming market. This research discusses the phenomenon in the context of compensatory consumption.Design/methodology/approachThis quantitative research used an online questionnaire for data collections. A total of 275 millennial mobile gamers were selected via purposive sampling. In total, there are six factors incorporated in this research: utility, self-indulgence, social interaction, competition, the intention to play freemium games and the intention to pay for virtual goods. This research used structural equation modelling (SEM) via AMOS software to test the hypotheses.FindingsThis research reveals that (1) utility is a negative predictor of the intention to pay for virtual goods, (2) self-indulgence is a positive predictor of the intention to play freemium games, (3) there is a mediation effect of the intention to play freemium games on the relationship between self-indulgence and the intention to pay for virtual goods, (4) social interaction is a positive predictor of the intention to pay for virtual goods, (5) competition is a positive predictor of the intention to play freemium games, (6) there is a mediation effect of the intention to play freemium games on the relationship between competition and the intention to pay for virtual goods and (7) the intention to play freemium games is a positive predictor of the intention to pay for virtual goods.Research limitations/implicationsThis research has several limitations: first, half of the study’s millennial respondents were students whose gaming expenditures might depend on their parents or guardians' willingness to accommodate their gaming activities. Therefore, there might be some biases in the intention to pay for virtual goods. Second, the numbers of female respondents outweigh male respondents (44.4% males), hence the sample representativeness issue in a slightly male-dominated gaming industry in Indonesia. Third, the game genres the millennial respondents mostly played were the battle royale and the shooter games. Other game genres (e.g. puzzles) might involve a different mechanism. Lastly, the authors measured the compensatory consumption concept indirectly, such as by measuring variables associated with lack of time (utility), the need for virtual achievements or online recognitions (competition), mood-related issues (self-indulgence) and lack of belongingness (social interaction).Practical implicationsGame developers and online retailers (e.g. Google Play Store, Android App Store and Microsoft Store) should incorporate competition, indulgence and social interaction elements when designing and promoting freemium games. Based on the results of this research, a combination of these three elements improves the likelihood of purchasing virtual goods via online retail platformsOriginality/valueThis is the first research to demonstrate a link between online retailing and compensatory consumption, particularly in the context of freemium games. This research extends the literature on online retailing in the context of freemium games, which has received little attention. In addition to theoretical support, this research provides new empirical evidence for previously unexplored and unsupported relationships.