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Report: 82% of US gamers made an in-game purchase in freemium titles in 2023
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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I think I can count the number of freemium games that I've played on one hand. DoTA 2. World of Warships. Path of Exile.
...actually, that's all I can think of. There must have been some others somewhere in there.
Awesomenauts is now freemium, but back when I played it, it wasn't.
And I can't recall ever purchasing anything in-game from a F2P game.
I'm not ideologically opposed to it as such -- I mean, I like traditional expansions, and I suppose that paying for a base game and buying additional content out-of-game isn't that different from having a free base game plus in-app purchases. Or maybe like having a demo version, something that's less-common these days. But I've never seen something that seemed worthwhile.
But I just can't imagine what in God's name people are playing and buying in this camp. I'd always assumed that it was a small handful of whales that actually bought this stuff.
Just based on other statistics...according to this, 48% of US games are females, and based on past reading, those kind of competitive F2P games that I've tried, MOBAs and the like, do not sell well with them. That is, if those statistics are correct, there has to be a whole genre of F2P games targeting female gamers.
kagis
https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/
Yeah. The most-popular two genres among female gamers, according to this (slightly older) data, is Match-3, followed by Family/Farm Sim. There must be some huge world of F2P farm sims out there.
People buy cosmetics because they think they look cool and want to support the game they like. In WoWs, some premium ships are honestly hella fun in unique ways (while others are dumb op but of course some ppl pay for that too). In gachas it's a mix of just wanting the character and gameplay advantages.
Personally the stuff I don't get is spending money on the mentioned match 3 games, farm sims, and casual mobile games in general. Which are a huge market as mobile gaming is, for whatever reason I cannot comprehend, the largest gaming market in terms of revenue.
Accessibility? Most people have their smartphone with them more than they do their computer, so they can play while waiting in a line or something.
I agree that technically, smartphones don't compare all that well with computers, but the platform than you have beats the one that you don't, I suppose.
https://time.com/6174510/how-much-screen-time-is-too-much/