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Duke Maddox
Ms.Taylor
ENGL 1106
3/1/2020
Field Work Write Up
My research question is “What marketing decisions make or break a game’s sales.” TO elaborate, I am exploring what aspects of the game and how It is marketed effect the consumers decision to buy them the most. For my research I wanted to gain a firsthand experience on how much microtransactions, in game purchases that require real money. More specifically, if the inclusion of these purchases effects a person’s possibility of buying a game.
To do this I conducted a in person survey on 38 (So far) other students here at tech. I asked Three questions per person. The first was weather or not they would buy a game if I had microtransactions if they directly effected the game. Out of the people surveyed 77% said they would not buy the game if this was the case.
If this is a trend that is applied to a larger audience, than this could be potentially bad for any company. 77% of base sales is very alarming and would likely make any game that does this tank in sales. It makes me wonder if the overhead from the microtransactions make up for this significantly enough to make microtransactions worth it, or if this trend is even truthful.
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This question is a bit tricky in the case that, players will not realize that the microtransactions effect gameplay until after they buy it, making this idea obsolete. In some cases, game
companies don’t add game, effecting microtransactions until post release. Either way it is interesting to see the growing number of distastes in this marketing strategy.
The second question I asked was similar. I asked If they would play a free game if the game was directly affected by potential microtransactions. This one had a slightly different answer of 50%. The reasoning behind this seems to be that people are willing to give the game a chance because Its free. But some still feel like providing an advantage itself through money would not be fun. The model of being free, while giving advantages to paying players is an increasingly common practice. And It has proven successful due to many players being similarly to my interviewees.
The last question was If they would still consider buying a game if the microtransactions did not directly affect game play, e.i: Cosmetics, Music’s. In this case 82% Said yes. This is what more companies are gravitating to now. This proves the thought that this is the best balance for Microtransactions in games. This would likely bring in the most revenue to the company, by incentivizing people to purchase things after the game comes out, but still not discouraging them from buying the product in the first place.
Duke Maddox 