Taxonomies for Transactions and User Engagement in Mobile Games

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Windleharth Travis Lee Jin Ha
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

While monetization strategies become increasingly complex in mobile games, there is currently no standard vocabulary to describe different types of transactions. We present two taxonomies developed from studying 65 mobile games—a taxonomy of the types of transactions between game players and companies that transfer or create value for the gamer owner, and a taxonomy of methods companies use to drive engagement and retention with mobile games. We also introduce the concept of a transaction value map to illustrate how these taxonomies can be applied to characterize the transfer of value from cash into the game state. Transaction types were mapped to four major areas: real world value exchange, transaction methods, in-game resources, and in-game purpose. This work provides means for discussing transaction types which helps improve our theorized understanding of monetization strategies in games. In addition, it can be adopted in game marketplace to better inform the players.