Gamers attitudes towards misleading GamePlay Ads

Nexters Inc. released the results of its research exploring gamers’ attitudes toward Non-core GamePlay Ads.

To conduct the research, Nexters asked its audience to fill in the survey form distributed right in the games, 5212 respondents across the USA, Europe, Japan, and Brazil participated in the research.

The key findings from Nexters Research of gamer's attitudes towards misleading GamePlay Ads are presented below:

Most gamers across the globe have noticed misleading ads within the industry: in the USA, 91% of gamers have seen such ads; in other regions, this number ranges from 71% to 77.2%.

Almost 75% of gamers both in Europe and the US agree or somewhat agree lots of misleading ads turn out to be more fascinating than the actual in-app experiences. In Brazil and Japan, the numbers are only slightly lower, 69.4% and 71.9%, accordingly.
Although it is believed that the community negatively perceives misleading ads, 35% to 46% of gamers across the regions reported they would not stop playing the game immediately but would rather make a decision based on the game itself.

Gamers across the regions are mostly attracted by gameplay and mechanics in misleading ads and least by the new features and user interface.

Top-5 games gamers were most hyped about while watching the ad but then disappointed by it after playing: Puzzles, Evony, Hero Wars, State of Survival, and "Scapes" games.

The research also presents up-to-date insights into gamers in 2023:

In the USA, almost 10% of gamers are older than 60 years in Europe and Japan, this number is halved, while in Brazil, it’s even less than 1%.

In all the regions, the number of players under the age of 18 does not exceed 2.5%, disproving the common stereotype of a medium dominated by kids, tweens, and teens.
Most gamers in the USA, Europe, and Brazil play games over 18 hours weekly. In Japan, almost half of the respondents (49.2%) play for less than 4 hours.

The most popular gaming genre in the USA is casual games, while in Europe, Japan, and Brazil, RPG / MMORPG.

"Misleading advertising is an evolving term, it previously meant advertising that created false expectations, as there was no such experience in the product. With companies adding mini-games with the mechanics from the ads, such advertising is no longer misleading: users can now find this experience in the product; it's just not the core one. As the line continues to blur, we conducted this survey to discover gamers' thoughts and attitudes toward misleading ads," said Anton Yakovlev, Chief Marketing Officer at Nexters.