Case Study of Player Behavior in a Mobile Free-to-Play Interactive Story Telling Game

With mobile gaming becoming ever more popular, it is necessary to understand various aspects of player behavior in those games. This is especially true for free-to-play games as revenue comes from a small subset of the playerbase. This article presents a large-scale analysis of data collected over 9 months, comprising over 10 million players of a case study free-to-play mobile interactive story telling video game. The data are analyzed from a temporal standpoint, followed by presentation of findings in three important player engagement aspects: 1) retention; 2) conversion (i.e., players becoming payers); 3) lifetime revenue collected. These findings confirm the importance of early conversion in casual mobile games as the retention is low due to wide target audience. Additionally, players who convert very early also tend to spend more in the game in general. Most of the monetization depends on a small fraction of large spenders as one fifth of the entire revenue comes from only 2% of spenders. The article stresses out the key checkpoints in casual gameplay that are potentially most profitable topics for further research and player targeted actions. The insights of long-term analysis are relevant to both academia and industry in the efforts to optimize service quality, players' satisfaction, and profitability.