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Richard Bai
Production
The Relationships Between Personality , Player Motivation , and Content Purchases in the Free-to-Play Business Models of the U . S . and China Markets
My thesis research was a cross-region analysis between the U . S . and China regions aimed to find players ’ purchasing preferences in free-to-play games based on their personality and motivation types .
In the end , I found the top in-game content for each region and provided three different models for free-to-play developers to use as references based on their strategic direction .
During my research , I used the Big Five Personality and Gamer Motivation Models as the independent variables , and I used types of in-game content as the dependent variable . I also looked at eight types of in-game content that are offered in free-to-play games : Cosmetics , Battle Passes , Exclusives , Loot Boxes , Expansions , Utilities , In-Game Currencies , and Subscriptions .
This research took one year from start to finish . I learned a lot about data collection , cleaning , and analysis during the process .
As a fan of free-to-play games , this topic drew my interest . The cross-region analysis in free-to-play games added many challenges and uniqueness for me as a bilingual producer of Chinese and English games . This research aimed to provide practical insights for existing freeto-play developers who aim to explore a new market and any single-player game developers seeking to develop a free-toplay version of their games . As a result , I received strong interest in this research from several mobile game and AAA developers .
56 PRODUCTION