In terms of value, a player who buys the game but doesn't play it much is slightly less valuable to the publisher than a player who plays a lot.

The most valuable players are the evangelists, the hard core players who will engage with the community, make content about the game, and serve as volunteer brand ambassadors to the community at large. These are our cosplayers, fan artists, bloggers, youtubers, fan fic authors, and so on. These people not only play the game, but also help encourage others to play the game as well. These players go to conventions and events. This cohort typically comprises less than 1% of all players.

Most regular players fall in the second group, the engaged players. These are players who will play the game regularly, maybe they'll read the patch notes as they drop or engage with new content that appears. Some of them will buy merch. They're the ones who play regularly and keep coming back. They're the primary consumers of the post-launch content. We usually see around 20-40% of players fall into this category.

A good 60-70% or so of players will buy a premium game and quit before finishing it, let alone engaging with post-launch content. We value these players for their contribution, but they don't really factor too much into our post-launch content plans since they have clearly fallen off of the game. We primarily think about how we can convert more of these players to engaged players in future game releases, as well as what these players did engage with in the game and how we might lean more into that. You probably fall into this category.

At the very bottom of this list are the gamers who haven't played the game and comment on social media. We consider how we might sell a future game to them, but they have basically zero effect on our plans for content and very little for sequels because they have no investment in the game other than talking about it.

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