Analysis of the Relationship Between Game Price and User Rating

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of the global digital game market, game pricing strategies have become a core operational lever for developers and platforms to balance revenue and user reputation. User ratings, as the most intuitive public feedback of game quality and player satisfaction, directly affect game exposure, sales volume and long-term market vitality. However, the complex correlation mechanism between game price and user rating remains ambiguous: high-priced works may face complaints about insufficient cost performance, while low-priced or free games are prone to negative evaluations driven by pay-to-win mechanisms and rough production. This paper systematically sorts out multi-dimensional influencing factors of game price-user rating linkage, constructs a multi-variable regression analysis framework incorporating production cost, game type, monetization mode and platform difference, and divides games into paid premium games, mid-priced independent games, low-cost casual games and free-to-play games for grouped quantitative research. It identifies mediating variables including content richness, update frequency, in-app purchase intensity and server stability that regulate the price-rating relationship, and verifies heterogeneous effects across PC, console and mobile game platforms through large-scale real market dataset samples. This paper further summarizes typical paradox phenomena such as "high price low rating" and "cheap high praise", proposes targeted pricing optimization strategies segmented by game track, and prospects future research directions covering dynamic differential pricing, player psychological perception modeling and standardized rating evaluation systems. The research provides quantitative theoretical basis and practical decision-making references for game developers, distribution platforms and market regulators to formulate reasonable pricing schemes and maintain sustainable user reputation.