Where there is money to be made, there will be ancilliary industries dedicated to supporting or investigating that money making. In the same way that our MMOs pop up and ask for subscriptions or microtransactions, there are often other money making enterprises orbiting them.
Market Research is a good example and here for MMOs we can call on the tireless work of SuperData Research.
AListDaily recently looked over one of SuperDatas reports on the thorny problem of retention in Free To Play MMOs. Have you ever wondered how many people are still playing after that first month? After six months? The drop off is being monitored.
The shift in how companies approach free to play titles affects all gamers. The move from an acquisition focus, think Farmville and Zynga, to a retention one is important to gamers if they want a product they would be happy to log back into.
As with any MMO though, the first 30 days are key. How many games have you tried and departed before that first golden month was done?
The analysis in the post is based on the login data collected from both large and small free-to-play MMOs, involving over a million users aggregated over a five year period. According to their site SuperData receives behavioral and spending information from more than 37 million gamers across over 500 titles every month.
Source And Further Analysis: AListDaily
Image Data Property of SuperData Research