How are online game apps influencing consumer behavior?
Online games are a crucial part of the lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the globe. Whether you’re a pro gamer or a casual player, you cannot deny that online game apps greatly impact our day-to-day behaviors, including our buying habits.
In this blog, we explore exactly how these online gaming apps influence consumer behavior and what psychological tactics they use to achieve that.
Let’s dig in.
1. Instant gratification and mini transactions
Online gaming apps have made mini-transactions famous. With it, players can make small in-app purchases to power up their game avatar or enhance their overall chance of winning.
This tactic often leads the players to make many such small mini-transactions. The guiding principle here is to provide the players with instant gratification with small purchases.
Let’s say you need 10,000 in-game gold to upgrade your character and win the next round of quests. But you only have 5,000 golds. However, the game shop offers 10,000 golds for $1 as a part of their 75% limited discount offer.
Clearly, you will be tempted to make the purchase to upgrade your game avatar instantly instead of relying on time-consuming grinding.
2. Engagement and rewards
Successful online game apps have an uncanny ability to grab users’ attention and captivate them with gameplay. The games in these apps are crafted to be engaging.
It gives the players challenges to overcome, quests to achieve, and mouth-watering rewards to earn.
For example, a color prediction app captivates its audience with a fun and easy prediction game. And it keeps the audience engaged with the promise of realistic rewards.
This gives the player incentive to keep playing, slowly guiding them to place more bets and make more in-game purchases. After all, promotions, discounts, and rewards are the best ways to influence consumer behavior.
3. Virtual currency
Online gaming apps use in-game virtual currencies, allowing the players to upgrade their equipment, modify character stats, or make bets.
The currencies can be in the form of gold, diamonds, crystals, or other types of virtual money. You name it.
Since they are not real currencies, such as the US dollar, players often spend virtual currencies without thinking too much. This quickly depletes the players’ virtual currency deposits, prompting them to make in-game purchases to refill it.
Although grinding for hours can refill their in-app currency, mouth-watering incentives, such as 5,000 crystals for only $5, make players reluctant to do so.
That’s how most gaming companies influence consumer behavior and subtly lead them to spend more.
4. The power of community and belonging
Most online games, especially RPG, world-building, or sandbox games, build and foster online player communities.
Here, players can share their gaming experience, share tips to clear quests, and bond with other like-minded people.
These communities make the users feel a sense of belonging. Gaming companies use this to create loyal followers who promote their brands, motivating others to join their games and make in-app purchases.
5. The effect of personalization
Many online gaming apps allow their users to customize their in-game characters’ costumes, armor, weapons, special abilities, and more.
This notion that players can design their characters and game environment in the way they want is very appealing to most users.
Gaming companies use algorithms to analyze your in-game behavior patterns to provide customized offers, discounts, and personalization options.
These offers are very tempting to the target audience, leading them to make in-app purchases more often.
Conclusion
As you can see, the online game apps significantly influence consumer behavior.
They use virtual currency, rewards, online communities, and many other psychological triggers to turn players into loyal followers, ultimately influencing their buying patterns.
Having a clear understanding of these tactics can help you make informed decisions and you will be less prone to fall for them.