Context. There has been a remarkable growth of the mobile game industry since the raging pandemic covid-19 destroyed many businesses across several industries [1]. Nowadays mobile gaming has been one of the highest performing industries globally, raking in more billions in revenue [1,2]. Understanding the direction and aspects to improve the quality of products and reduce the cost is important for a mobile gaming company to stand out. There is a plethora of literature on how to improve the related product quality [3]. One of them is to analyze and optimize the various requirements in each version update, and how these requirements could be elicited from the company’s development plan and user feedback. Specifically, mobile game companies would review the user comments of their products from various application platforms such as Google Play and Apple store, select the informative comments with specific user requirements according to their own standard, and finally elicit and then implement these requirements in the follow-up version updates. During this process, it is important to control the lead time---the time cost for mobile game companies to review and select the valuable user comments, make decisions to apply the changes, make a development plan afterwards and finally put it into action. In the current increasingly intense competitive environment, time-based dimensions of a product such as the lead-time are becoming an increasingly important component in assessing strategic advantage, since having products early increases the possible market introduction window. Meanwhile, traditional long lead times and high inventory levels may be less appropriate and more costly endeavors that may not even achieve product parity [4]. To compress the product lead time was the priority task to help companies keep their competitiveness [5]. To fulfil this aim, fundamental changes must be made in every function that affects the delivery of the product. However, most existing literature focuses on the lead time in the traditional software industry, which can be different in the case of the mobile game apps. We herein in this paper explore the contents of lead time in the mobile gaming industry. We designed a series of steps to explore the real situation of lead time in the mobile gaming industry. Differences between mobile gaming and traditional software industries are also of interest to be explored.       Objectives. The main purpose of our research was to study the lead time which would be caused during the process of implementing users’ requirements. We tried to achieve the purpose from two aspects: First, we investigated whether there were differences in the lead time of different requirement types. Second, we investigated whether the lead time differences existed in different types of mobile games.   Methods. Our group used Case Study as the main research method to investigate the lead time in real cases.   Results. .First, there were differences in the lead time of implementing different types of requirements. Such as the lead time of bug fix types of requirements would be shorter than feature added types of requirements. Second, different types of mobile game apps had differences in the lead time. For example, MOBA games would take longer time on Function update or Feature request types of requirements, and FPS games would take longer time on exclusive event types of requirements. The details would be shown in part 4.2 and 4.3.   Conclusions. Two research questions in our thesis were answered. When mobile game companies dealt with requirements in user feedback, the lead time objectively existed. We could calculate the length of the lead time of different types of requirements. Moreover, different types of requirements had various lead times. For example, the lead time caused by bug fixing requirement would be shorter compared with that of adding new functions. And this research provided some fundamental results to both academic field and mobile game industry field.   Keywords: Mobile game apps, User reviews, User requirements, Lead time

The Free-to-play (F2P) model is the primary business model applied in indie mobile games nowadays. However, the fact that less than 5% of players are paying is still a big problem for developers. There is a theoretical gap in understandings of how to increase revenue without lowering the quality of the game and deliver more valuable and better gaming experience for players. Some assumptions and empirical methods need to be verified. The aim of this research is to understand a series of specific design and development questions of F2P games, including game inner mechanics, game structures, and monetization strategies. We attempted to find consensus between developers and players. In addition, this research also sought to find out how F2P mobile game can provide as a comprehensive service in order. It sought to find a sustainable and profitable business model for each game by integrating monetization organically inside of the game without sacrificing players’ enjoyment. We used a mixed methods research approach, including both interviews and surveys, to examine the opinions and behavior of developers and players based on the Acquisition-Retention-Monetization funnel.