I think that, in times of economic hardship, people tend to tighten their belts and retreat to things that are safe, familiar, and comforting to them. There is also often trading from expensive entertainment (e.g. lavish vacations, theme parks, theater going) to cheaper forms of entertainment (camping, hiking, video games, local attractions, etc.). Similar trends follow in video games - instead of buying Madden or Call of Duty every year, in times of economic hardship you'll see players skipping a year and buying the game the year after. Instead of getting the collector's edition, they'll buy the standard edition.

Free to play lifestyle games get the most out of economic recessions. They have low cost to buy in, but they also have lots of content and plenty of retention mechanics for those who stay to play. They'll typically see a drop in revenue because people have less money to spend, but they'll still see players playing and engaging. In fact, they may even see an uptick in player count because of lapsed players returning to a mostly-inexpensive form of entertainment to replace more expensive options.

Whenever we have economic hard times, players will focus on the entertainment efficiency of their money. They'll compare number of hours of gameplay averaged against the cost of the game, they'll look more towards "good deals", and they'll stick to things they know and trust rather than try new unknown games that might not be winners. Lifestyle games tend to have lots of content, be fairly inexpensive to pick up post-launch, and comforting to lapsed players. These factors make lifestyle games very compelling during economic hard times.

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