Prevalence and salience of problematic microtransactions in top-grossing mobile and PC games: a content analysis of user reviews
File(s)chi22b-sub7968-cam-i16.pdf (707.76 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Petrovskaya, Elena
Deterding, Sebastian
Zendle, David
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Microtransactions have become a major monetisation model in digital games, shaping their design, impacting player experience, and raising ethical concerns. Research in this area has chiefly focused on loot boxes. This begs the question whether other microtransactions might actually be more relevant and problematic for players. We therefore conducted a content analysis of negative player reviews (n=801) of top-grossing mobile and desktop games to determine which problematic microtransactions are most prevalent and salient for players. We found that problematic microtransactions with mobile games featuring more frequent and different techniques compared to desktop games. Across both, players minded issues related to fairness, transparency, and degraded user experience, supporting prior theoretical work, and importantly take issue with monetisation-driven design as such. We identify future research needs on why microtransactions in particular spark this critique, and which player communities it may be more or less representative of.
Date Issued
2022-04-29
Date Acceptance
2022-02-11
Citation
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), 2022, pp.1-12
Publisher
ACM
Start Page
1
End Page
12
Journal / Book Title
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22)
Copyright Statement
© 2022 Association for Computing Machinery.
Identifier
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3502056
Source
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22)
Subjects
Games, Recreational
Microtransactions
Mobile games
Dark patterns
Player experience
Ethics
Place of Publication
New York
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2022-04-30
Finish Date
2022-05-05
Coverage Spatial
New Orleans, USA
Date Publish Online
2022-04-29