Microtransactions have become an integral part of the digital game industry. This has spurred researchers to explore the effects of this monetization strategy on players’ game enjoyment and intention to continue using the game. Hitherto, these relationships were exclusively investigated using cross-sectional survey designs. However, self-report measures tend to be only mildly correlated with actual media consumption. Moreover, cross-sectional designs do not allow for a detailed investigation into the temporal dimension of these associations. To address these issues, the current study leverages smartphone trace data to explore the longitudinal effect of in-game purchase behavior on continual mobile game use. In total, approximately 100,000 hours of mobile game activity among 6,340 subjects were analyzed. A Cox regression with time-dependent covariates was performed to examine whether performing in-game purchases affects the risk of players removing the game app from their repertoire. Results show that making an in-game purchase decreases this risk initially, prolonging the survival time of the mobile gaming app. However, this effect significantly changes over time. After the first three weeks, a reversal effect is found where previous in-game purchase behavior negatively affects the further survival of the game. Thus, mobile games without previous monetary investment are more prone to long-term continual game use if they survive the first initial weeks. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed. As such, the current study adds to those studies that use computational methods within a traditional inferential framework to aid theory-driven inquiries.

中文翻译：

---

通过智能手机跟踪数据探索游戏内购买对手机游戏使用的影响

微交易已成为数字游戏行业不可或缺的一部分。这促使研究人员探索这种获利策略对玩家的游戏乐趣以及继续使用该游戏的意图的影响。迄今为止，仅使用横截面调查设计来调查这些关系。但是，自我报告的措施往往只与实际的媒体消费有轻微关联。而且，横截面设计不允许对这些关联的时间维度进行详细研究。为了解决这些问题，当前的研究利用智能手机跟踪数据来探索游戏内购买行为对持续使用手机游戏的纵向影响。总共分析了6,340个对象中大约100,000小时的手机游戏活动。进行了具有时间依赖性协变量的Cox回归，以检查执行游戏内购买是否会影响玩家从其曲目中删除游戏应用程序的风险。结果表明，进行游戏内购买最初会降低这种风险，从而延长了移动游戏应用程序的生存时间。但是，这种影响会随着时间而显着变化。在开始的三周后，发现了一种逆转效果，以前的游戏内购买行为会对游戏的进一步生存产生负面影响。因此，如果没有最初的金钱投资，手游在最初的头几周就可以长期使用。讨论了方法论和理论意义。因此，