According to the research conducted by Newzoo, mobile gaming is now the most popular type of digital gaming. Mobile gaming is expected to have 3.0 billion players by the end of 2025. This figure indicates that the majority of players, in gaming overall, prefer mobile games. Analysts and researchers are now trying to understand the place that technology and media consumption behavior are created by reward systems, economic models, and short engagement scenarios. 

Mobile gaming is no longer viewed as a minor distraction. Games have now been created for smartphones, the gaming device for billions of people, thereby altering the way games are designed, distributed and consumed. It is this change that researchers in media, economics and technology are attracted to. 

Rather than focusing on the entertainment value, the most recent research analyses the restraints of design: how they affect habits and decision making, so monetization and reward systems are created and maintained. It is for this reason that mobile gaming is ranked as the most popular and widely used medium.

Study explores how digital reward systems influence user behavior

There is little mobile gaming activity without a reward system. Developers let users step through a series of challenges and then offer a reward for completing a series of exercises. This is typical of mobile gaming today. Users are offered daily challenges with little incentives. They are often offered bonus spins, which encourage participation. 

Developers use tiered levels of rewards earned through mini and micro transactions to herd users toward behaviors that give the game a desired level of activity. This is called structuring engagement.

Users have developed data ecosystems to share and track these rewards to maximize the value of their free labor. Players use community developed data trackers to form time coordinated game play. These systems and game-play extend the purpose of the game. Play becomes a non-remunurative job.

Reward systems create real-world behavior, as shown with survey data. In a survey of mobile gamers, Almedia (2024) found 54% of gamers increased the frequency of game play, and 42% reported real-world rewards tied to their game play. These reward systems extend the use of the app.

Mobile games as part of evolving digital culture

Scholarly consideration is a direct function of the prominence of mobile games as a form of popular culture. Mobile games have a staggering audience. According to Newzoo’s Global Games Market Report, in 2024, there were about 3.42 billion people in the world with a mobile device. Close to 2.85 billion people in the world are projected to play on their mobile devices, solidifying smartphones as the dominant device in the gaming industry.

This is a cultural phenomenon with significance. Mobile games contain social components, i.e., cooperative play, social competition, leaderboards, and the sharing of digital assets, that are intertwined with the phenomenon of digital social. The social features of mobile gaming are being studied from the perspective of social gaming culture to find the links that shape social traditions, or social constructs, and the ways people interact, compete, and form their identity.

Mobile game players span virtually every age. Kids play mobile games, their parents do too, market research shows. Industry research shows that adults over 35 are strong competitors in games, a clear indicator that gaming is not an activity restricted to the young. The cultural diversity of players is the foundation for an academic examination of mobile games that are a facet of daily media engagement, and not a diversion.

The intersection of technology, entertainment, and economics

Investigations from the Ohio Research Center, foreshadowing the convergence of tech, entertainment, and economics, are seeing the start of mobile gaming and the further expansion of the digital economy. The majority of mobile games today are freely played from the outset and are monetized through ads and in-game purchases. 

The Newzoo report projects 2025 mobile games revenue to be 103 billion dollars: more than half the revenue of the global gaming market, and overall gaming market revenue to be 189 billion dollars.

How does the digital economy design in-game purchases to change behavior or consumer spending? Economists theorize that by creating small, fragmented spending opportunities and pairing it to a falling time constraint (or time offer), eventually, the consumer is expected to collapse to their ideal spending. System design, perceived value to the consumer, and pacing of rewards are being studied in tech-influenced monetized digital ecosystems.

Other digital behavior/attention economies exemplify the mobile gaming digital economy. Streaming services, mobile apps – all digital services monetize. This is why mobile gaming is a model digital economy, and why its innovative monetization explodes, unlike any other industry in tech-driven economies.

Mobile gaming intersects with user prioritisation, shifting toward entertainment in gaming. Messaging, games, social media, and video streaming compete for users’ time. Consumer Entertainment Studies research shows that 47% of U.S adults use smartphones for entertainment in short stints as opposed to longer sessions.

Mobile games fit with this. Their design encourages brief repetitive use with gaming sessions that interrupt users’ daily scheduled tasks. Alerts and interface reward systems sustain this gaming style.