Flow of the Game: A Hidden Markov Model of Player Engagement in Online Mobile Games

With the rapid development of mobile technology and consumers’ increasing demand for portability, the mobile gaming market has experienced huge growth. To ensure the success of mobile games, game publishers need to keep their players engaged and, at the same time, seek monetization strategies that do not interrupt players’ engagement. This paper examines how in-game challenge-related factors (i.e., perceived challenge and fluctuation of perceived challenge) and a novel mobile game monetization strategy—reward ads—affect players’ engagement. Reward ads, a popular in-app advertising monetization model in which players can voluntarily watch an ad in exchange for a reward within the game, can help publishers generate revenue without breaking the flow of the game. We develop a Hidden Markov Model and employ detailed tap-stream data from a mobile game app to study how challenge-related factors and reward ads affect players’ dynamic engagement state evolution. First, we find that players’ perceived challenge level has a positive, but diminishing, marginal effect on players’ engagement state transitions. Second, a higher fluctuation of perceived challenge increases the probability that players move to a higher engagement state. Third, the scaffolding earned by watching reward ads can help players transition to a higher engagement level. Furthermore, we study the moderating effect of perceived challenge on reward ads, and we find that reward ads are more helpful in engaging players when the perceived challenge is higher. The findings enhance the understanding of players’ engagement with mobile games and provide design guidance for mobile game publishers.