Mobile gaming industry is growing at a fast pace; this was due in part to the explosive growth of smartphone usage around the world and the low entry barrier for the game developers to publish their games. In the early 2000s, as the mobile phone hardware capabilities and the software framework improved to a point that made it possible to program more complex games on it, more and more game developers and publishers began to see the lure of the mobile game market. I believed that there are three major factors that influence the success of the game in this market:.
Unlike in the pre-2007 era where the publishers filtered out most of the developers to enter the mobile game market, almost anyone with the right development tools can enter the market these days. Another analytics firm Adeven reported that two-thirds of the apps in the App Store are never downloaded. This paper will try to answer some of the questions about what makes a user choose the game from the games in the market or app discovery.
In this study we will try to answer 3 important questions and try to come up with an observation of the mobile game customers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- Defining the Relationship Between Price and the Value of Product Games like every other products needs to offer value to the users, people
- Defining Diffusion of Innovation
- Defining Core and Casual Gamers
- The Framework
The discovery of the new product is usually done by the innovators and early adopters, as these are people who like to try new things. Innovators play an important role in product adoption, according to Schiffman, the innovator will be made aware of the new product through mass media such as news website, and from there they will try the product to see if it meets their needs. The next people to adopt a new product will be the early and late majority adopters representing 68% of the population.
A study conducted in the Korean AppStore by Jung, Baek, and Lee in 2009 to 2010 concluded that the most important factors for an app's survival are ranking, user rating, and especially the content of the app. Jung, Baek and Lee, 2012) Another study was done on this topic to see the effect on the app download in relation to the location of the app in the AppStore by Garg and Telang. This kind of behavior can be explained by another research done in 1995 by Hanson and Putler, in this research the participants would choose a software to download, on the download page there would be some information about the name of the software, a small description, number of bytes and the number of times downloaded.
The researcher would then increase and decrease the number of times downloaded to see the effects on the participants. What they found was that the higher the number of times downloaded, more people would download the software, but when the number of times downloaded is lower the opposite happens. These two studies have shown us that the majority of people are naturally easily influenced by what others do. As such, we will look at the reviews and most likely choose the apps that are at the top of the App Store list (works on the same principle as the number of downloads), this is a feature of the early and late majority of users. This behavior is that of PC and console gamers, and as such we don't know if this can be applied to mobile phone gamers or not.
Our framework to describe how people choose the game will be mainly based on the diffusion of innovation theory, where some of the research points to game adoption conducted by several researchers. If the game met certain criteria such as having good gameplay, good graphics and is bug free, then the first players will rate the app and write the review and probably tell other people about this game. As more and more people play the game, the number of downloads will increase in the App Store, and if the game is good, the rating will remain constantly high, which in turn makes the game visible on the top charts of the App Store and people will download it too.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
After the interview process is over, we need to group the interviewees into different types of people based on the response to the interview. Core Gamers: These people look for new games on news sites and like to try out new games that are already available. Occasional Gamers: These people still play games from time to time but are not actively looking for new games.
Based on the definitions above and on the 15 factors of hardcore gamers by Jacobs and Ips, we decided to include some traits of the hardcore gamer from the Jacobs and Ips list and try to emphasize some of the factors to determine a core gamer instead because of hardcore. Play games consistently during free time (as some of the games on mobile phones are designed for short sessions, so if they play games consistently is a good indicator). We have decided to remove some of the factors as we judged that some of these factors are subjective, not important for this research, cannot be applied to the mobile phone, or are a repetition of another factor on the list.
From these three groups, we will then simplify the sentences in the interview so that we can codify it. To codify the sentence, we will choose the phrase or word that best describes the sentence. Then, for each group, we will select the factors that influence their choice of games, what influences their choice and playing of the game, and the ways in which they discover new games in the App Store.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
- Profile of Core Gamers
- Profile of Casual Gamers
- Profile of Occasional Gamers
- Base Gamer Profile
- The Framework of Mobile Phone Game Diffusion
Their choice of game is based on how well the game is designed to use all the features of the hardware, such as having intense graphics, intuitive control schemes, multiplayer capabilities and generally having good game mechanics; this could be due to the fact that they have played on various specialized gaming devices before and thus have seen many innovations in the gaming industry and as such they expect their game to provide most of the features. But what really defines them from other casual gamers is that they are willing to try new games that they heard about from other gamers by reading the gaming community forum or from the gaming news website that showcases the new game, but usually these games don't has any user's reviews or rating as it is just released and no one has to download it yet. They are also not influenced by other users' comments about the game and they trust their gut instinct when choosing a game.
Games are usually recommended to them by their friends, but sometimes when they have time to browse AppStores or Google Play, they will look at the download amount and user rating as the main criteria before choosing whether to download the game or not. . . One of them is that when a game is good, most people will recommend the games to other people or their group of friends by either directly inviting them to play or showing them the game and talking about it; this is especially true for games that require social interactions to either help advance the game or compete against each other. Finally, for the majority of our respondents across all groups, the most important factor is that the game must be bug-free and work as intended, otherwise they will not recommend the game or continue to play it.
They are the ones who will download the game and thereby influence the number of downloads and play it, write reviews and recommend it to their friends. The popularity of a game will often start with the core gamers as they are the ones who will introduce it to the casual players. If the game really attracts a lot of casual players, the number of downloads and user reviews on the App Store will increase exponentially as more and more people hear about the game.
This will put the game on the top chart if it is successful enough and thus the game will be visible to more casual players (whose behavior is synonymous with the late majority of adopters in the innovation diffusion model) will start to approve the game. also. Eventually, when the game's popularity reaches its peak, casual players will start to take notice as their friends around them are playing that game and talking about it; since they don't. If they like it, they will recommend it to other people thus spreading the game in the market.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendations
Try to get an article about your game on a popular news aggregator site, as this will get some of the casual players to notice your game and try it out. Include social games like competitive features or cooperative features in a game as it will give the incentive for people to recommend the games to their friend.
Conclusion
Limitation and Future Researches
Retrieved November 5, 2014, from http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2012/state-of-the-appnation- a-year-of-change-and-growth-in-u-s -smartphones.html.
APPENDICES
Appendix A
Appendix B
