Live, Play, Pay: Understanding Long-term Player Experience in the Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) Era from a Retrospective Approach

This study examines how video game monetization shapes long-term player experience in games-as-a-service (GaaS) through a retrospective lens. Responding to recent calls for player-centric and temporally sensitive accounts of how players make sense of monetization as shaping their gaming experiences over time, this study adopts a mixed-methods approach grounded in the UX Curve, complemented by questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The findings show that long-term gaming experience is shaped by the dynamic interplay between monetization design, play and pay practices, and players’ social and life trajectories. We identify three recurring patterns: (1) how GaaS models with their changing monetization strategies reshape players’ expectations and sense-making over prolonged engagement, (2) a self-reinforcing cycle between play and pay driven by dissatisfaction, and (3) intergenerational nuances in players’ anticipation of, and attitudes toward, gaming and monetization. Methodologically, the research demonstrates the value of retrospective, long-term UX evaluation tools for surfacing how pragmatic, hedonic, and eudaimonic elements shape dynamic processes of attitude formation, remembered experiences, and meaning-making. Together, these contributions highlight the importance of long-term and life‑course‑sensitive perspectives for designing and analyzing monetization as an integral, lived aspect of contemporary gaming experiences.