5. Conclusion
The results of the study provide some indication that players who
perform well within the game environment tend to retain in game
advertising messages better that players who perform badly. This
is interesting, in that players who perform badly may have had
more time to view in game advertising while they recovered from
crashes or moved more slowly. Despite this opportunity to spend
more time processing the ads, the qualitative data suggests that
these players instead spent their cognitive resources concentrating
on the game. Overall, compared to weaker players, the best
players appear to be able to process in game ads better because
they can more seamlessly play the game, and, tlus, can afford to
pay attention to peripheral cues that add to the gameplay
environment.
It also seems to indicate that player patterns in retention are
correlated to play interests. From our research the amount of time
a player spends in traditional digital gameplay has a strong
correlation with their ability to recall in game advertising. This is
an important observation for heuristic driven marketers, as it does
not seem to be the case that merely targeting traditional
demographics results in productive retention. The types of
messages that will be retained by players seems to depend on the
types of games they play (traditional vs. casual). In our small
sample, players who preferred longer play experiences typically
occurring on game consoles differed in retention patterns from
players who sought shorter play experiences typically occurring,
in our sample, on smartphones. For marketers, it seems important
to understand that while two players may commit more than 10
hours a week to gameplay, the player who commits that time to
phone games may have very different retention patterns than the
player of console games. For this reason, additional research
should be conducted to investigate retention patterns based on
player habits, instead of merely investigating age, gender and
other traditional demographics.
Lastly, what was not correlated with brand retention is also
noteworthy. In particular, none of the four U&G factors were
associated with the number of brands recalled. However, this was
a first attempt at exploring the role that U&G factors may play in
this area of study, and a stable factor structure was identified.
Future studies by the researchers are likely to look at social
factors in play, as social gratification seems to be an important
factor in positive performance and retention of in game
advertising. This additional research may include investigations
into how specific social patterns (e.g. aggression or cooperation)
affect both the message retained and the amount retained. The
researchers also expect to expand the study to a much larger group
of players and refine the survey tool to include more U&G items
that may tap into gameplay motivations.