Background: In the last couple years, the free to play sector in gaming has taken a rise compared to their pay to play counterparts, being able to generate up to 85% of all gaming revenue. More and more game developers have opted to change their game from a paid model to a free-to-play business model, with prominent cases being games like CS:GO and Overwatch. It all started with cosmetics and skins, but companies started to develop new ways to get players into the cycle of spending money in free-to-play games. Purpose: For this reason, the purpose of this study focuses on exploring how the purchase of microtransactions in free-to-play games impacts the way players experience flow. Similarly, we also aim to learn what happens after the initial purchase and how, by using money in this way, players can enhance the quality of their overall play time. Method: We conduct a qualitative study examining how microtransactions impact flow through conducting a set of 21 interviews with players from different platforms and games, 4 individual think aloud protocols, and various relevant reddit posts. Conclusion: Our findings build upon past research, illustrating how there are contrasting effects regarding how microtransactions impact flow. The results challenge previous flow literature, incorporating the novel view that microtransactions and the social context can also help trigger and destroy flow.

Video games have become a great source of entertainment and emerged as a massive industry in the past few decades. Technological advancements and evolution of smartphones have made it easier for developers to develop and launch their games on different platforms mostly in digital form. Where the technology has facilitated game developers, it has also made this industry very competitive. Companies/developers need to consistently review their monetization strategies and make necessary changes to them in order to stay profitable. This study evaluates the monetization approaches of a case game by conducting a public survey. By analyzing the responses received from users from different regions of the world, this study found out how users from different regions have different attitudes towards gaming and how these can affect monetization approaches. Users from different regions spend time on gaming differently and their total number of gaming hours also vary. The findings from the thesis show that the specific hours might be a potential for gaming companies monetization investigation. In-game advertisements is one of the most popular monetization approaches and majority of the users from all age groups, regions, genders, and professions have no issues watching ads to receive some in-game benefits. Similarly, in-app purchase model of the case game proved to be very popular among its users. Subscriptions model, on the other hand, may prove to be another popular model for generating revenue, however, the company needs to address some issues to make users continue with their subscriptions. This study points out some reasons why users stop spending money on the case game. The study identifies some mitigation points as potential aspects that might have impact on monetization.

In recent years, microtransactions have become a norm for monetization and a standardbusiness model in free-to-play games. This is something that affects multiple individuals andhas caused quite a stir among players. Through this research, we want to gain anunderstanding of why some microtransaction types might be considered more acceptable thanothers. In addition, to gaining potential data that could possibly give us a look into the futureof the design of microtransactions. We have gathered our data by conducting online chatbased semi-structured interviews with current and former university students studying gamedesign at Uppsala University.The research found that game design students have a predominantly negative opinion aboutmost microtransactions, especially when they were affecting the gameplay, contrary to whenthey were not.

This thesis deals with a complete analysis of real data in free to play multiplayer games. The analysis is based on the methodology CRISP-DM using GUHA method and system LISp-Miner. The goal is defining player churn in pool from Geewa ltd.. Practical part show the whole process of knowledge discovery in databases from theoretical knowledge concerning player churn, definition of player churn, across data understanding, data extraction, modeling and finally getting results of tasks. In thesis are founded hypothesis depending on various factors of the game.