Global Monetization and Play
What do global spending patterns look like?
Expanding on Project 1, we can take a look at how general play behaviors intersect with game spending habits. What are players spending the most time and money on? What platforms and genres are most popular globally and in different areas of the world?
Global Patterns Among the Top 1% of Game Spending
For the highest amount of spending on the global scale, there are patterns in what is receiving the most revenue, measured in US dollars. Combining spending data with the behavioral clusters from Project 1, for the top spending globally, most spending is happening on iPhone. E-Type countries and territories are also spending the most among these players; these are the places with a high amount of mobile play and include the United States, Canada, Japan, and the Russian Federation.
Below is an interactive table showing the summed number of spenders and total spending, averaged over a year of spending data, as well as average play per day and duration of play per capita. The table can be sorted on any of the measures to rearrange the data by most or least spending, spenders, average play per day, and average duration per capita.
Engagement with different genres also differs by behavioral type when looking at the clusters established in Project 1. Puzzle games dominate in terms of spending in A-Type, C-Type, D-Type, and E-Type places. For B-Type, sports games are more enticing for spending, while G-Type places favor casino games and H-Type places trend toward more spending on role-playing games. When it comes to number of spenders, however, puzzle games dominate in all behavioral clusters, except for G-Type places, where Casino games also have the most players spending money.
Below is an interactive chart demonstrating these dynamics. Hover over a point for more information.
So What Does This Mean?
Spending behaviors differ alongside other play behaviors, but do not always align. More play per day and more duration per capita do not necessarily correlate with more revenue for games, nor does more spending necessarily always mean more individual spenders. These dynamics call for more investigation into why certain places might gravitate toward specific genres in their play behaviors and why different spending behaviors do not always align well with other play activities.
