Improved Retention Analysis in Freemium Role-Playing games by Jointly Modelling Players’ Motivation, Progression and Churn

Abstract

We consider user retention analytics for online freemium role-playing games (RPGs). RPGs constitute a very popular genre of computer-based games that, along with a player's gaming actions, focus on the development of the player's in-game virtual character through a persistent exploration of the gaming environment. Most RPGs follow the freemium business model in which the gamers can play for free but they are charged for premium add-on amenities. As with other freemium products, RPGs suffer from the curse of high dropout rates. This makes retention analysis extremely important for successful operation and survival of their gaming portals. Here, we develop a disciplined statistical framework for retention analysis by modelling multiple in-game player characteristics along with the dropout probabilities. We capture players' motivations through engagement times, collaboration and achievement score at each level of the game, and jointly model them using a generalized linear mixed model (glmm) framework that further includes a time-to-event variable corresponding to churn. We capture the interdependencies in a player's level-wise engagement, collaboration, achievement with dropout through a shared parameter model. We illustrate interesting changes in player behaviours as the gaming level progresses. The parameters | 103

How to reduce termination on freemium platforms—literature review and empirical analysis

“…Our literature review reveals that there are numerous publications on freemium business models using data from gaming sector (e.g., Hadiji et al 2014;Ross 2018;Ascarza et al 2020;Hagen et al 2021;Karmakar et al 2022). These are usually free-to-play games, i.e.…”

“…Here, revenue is generated through in-game purchases or advertising. However, subscriptions usually play a minor role in these freemium games (Karmakar et al 2022). Unfortunately, in these studies focusing on gaming, the investigations of churn or customer loyalty refer to free to play applications.…”

“…As some of the factors they use are quite specific to online games, they cannot be readily applied to other areas. Another example is Karmakar et al (2022). The authors consider player cooperation and player performance achieved at each level.…”

“…Consequently, we expect, the higher user's participation, the higher her or his involvement, the lower the probability of termination. Moreover, Karmakar et al (2022) emphasize the importance of user engagement for customer loyalty in freemium models. The authors conclude that, in line with user involvement, user engagement is also an indicator of personal interest in the content of the premium version.…”

Active Learning Methodologies at the University Classroom

“…Many applications are seen in the literature, to mention few ones, the readers can read the works of [28], [31], [32], [33] or [34], amongst others.…”