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Presentation at IEEE Game Innovation Conference - 23 Dec 2010http://ice-gic.ieee-cesoc.org/2010/index.php
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Game Analytics:A Practitioner’s Perspective
2nd IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games Innovation Conference
23 December 2010
Game Analytics is crucial to the success
of any online game
Peter Burton
• Civil Engineering first degree• MBA• Worked mainly in:– Retail – Banking and Insurance Industries– Call centre consultancy– Mobile Telcos– Online advertising– Most recently applying lessons learnt from being
a “white coated” media accountant to the online gaming industry
Outline
• Outblaze• Adserving and Game Analytics (GA)• Learning from other industries• A crash course in GA jargon• Some analysis tools• Summary
• Privately held company founded in Hong Kong in 1998 with staff in Hong Kong, US, UK, Korea, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia
• Originally a pioneer in white label messaging, managing 40+m active mailboxes per month. Outblaze sold its messaging business to IBM in 2009
• New focus is: Entertainment and Media– Video Games– Social, Community and Online Multiplayer Games
iPhone Apps
AnimatedTV shows
Virtual Reality
Products
DS & Wii
GamesPublishingPC
GamesIn APAC
Facebook Apps
Ben10
Hello Kitty
Flash Games
Online Games
Community Web SitesHello Kitty
Online
Adserving
Data RULES
Game companies are NO different from
Airlines, CC, Mobile Telcosor Supermarkets
The data collected aboutuser activity provides
differential competitive advantage
It’s about making sense from unstructured data
It’s about knowing what and how to use that data
It’s about multi-disciplinary collaboration
Data is the ENGINE that helps you:
Improve ROI
Make better decisions
Provide a continuous feedback loop for your game designers, engineers, marketers
game economists, …
Sometimes pinpoint unforeseen issues!
Some proxies for learningAirlines: like CX
Upgrades linked to your direct Value to the airline.CRM.
Aircraft provisioning.Yield Management.
Demand based pricing.
Some proxies for learningSupermarkets: like TESCO
Where to place the biscuits?Edwina Dunn & Clive Humby of DunnHumby.
Rolling Ball Analysis.
GA is Not:anymore about gut feel about guessing
It would appear Hopkins that your gut feel was only indigestion
nor
It’s a guess. I never said it was an educated guess.
GA helps REMOVE gut feel and guess workfrom the decision making process.
My KEY Audience at Outblaze is our:
• Ka Ching team• Engineers• Retail mall teams• Customer Service
teams
• Game developers• Marketers• Game economist• Pricing specialist
multi-disciplinary collaborationis KEY
The Jargon of GA
GAME TELEMETRYthe RAW data that is collected
from online games
GAME TELEMETRY
Telemetry is driven by event logs:name value pairs
(which identify events)
PLUS a unique session ID
GAME TELEMETRY
Build the event logs PLUS unique session IDs into the game
at the game design stage
GAME TELEMETRY
event logs PLUS unique session IDs
should NOT be written backto the Game dB!
GA means:
• analysing large volumes of in game data feeds to help us find, get & keep players
• understanding player user behaviour so that we can continually improve our games
• playing with the data to tease out trends and insights via what if scenarios
• providing a near real time feedback loop for our designers, engineers and the game economists…
GA is about:
• making money using FACTS rather than gut feel or guesswork!
• understanding what satisfies players and making them come back, again and again and again (retention)
• understanding what drives the money, what works and what doesn’t work
• making better games that generate better levels of return
GA is a mix of old school statistics combined with
the latest in web engine metrics
GA typically usesmulti variable analysis:
Players | Levels | Quests | Profiles |Dollars
Crash course in basic GA metrics
• Active Users (DAU, WAU, MAU) key measure DAU/MAU
• ARPU (Average Revenue per User … over time)
• Churn or attrition• Cohorts• Engagement• Entry event
• Exit event• Funnels• K factor (virality)• Lifetime value• Re-engagement• Retention• Session analysis• User Acquisition Cost
Player insightsWhat they buy? | How they buy? | Why they buy?
Connecting the dotsWho matters most? The 2% to 5%
Data SourcesGame logs | Mall | Payment gateway | Player profile
Driving engagement
Gam
e D
esig
ner F
eedb
ack
Loop
Visualisation ImportantYour audience typically fall
into 2 user categories:
Your Numerate Audience(prefer a table of numbers)
Your Visual Audience (the majority who prefer a picture
and pre-digested insights)
TOOLS
If you do use Excel you’ll need Excel 2010 – 64 bit with MAX RAM
(plus the PowerPivot add in)
Excel is not generally man enough!It’s great for proto-typing
How to burn out an i7 laptop12G of RAM maxed out!All 12 i7 cores maxed out!
The culprit; some excel magic which helps to calc uniques by day and by week and by year:=IF(SUMPRODUCT(($A$2:$A500,000=A500,000)*($S$2:$S500000=S500,000))>1,0,1)
Col A is the user-id, Col S is the day flag.
The output of the above is a count of the unique user-ids for a given day.
For proto-typing, I now use a desktop i7 with 12 cores, 24G of RAM with 8 fans!
It’s a MONSTER gaming machine without a superadooper graphics card!
What we use…
a data warehousing and data visualisation tool to
automate data feeds and provide a suite of standardised reports… plus the tools to allow
us to “dive” into the raw data and slice and dice it
Summary – 6 keys
• GA is crucial for any game. It will help you:– find, get and keep players – focuses effort on ROI (2%-5%)– provide a near real-time feedback loop for game
designers, engineers, marketers and game economists…
– to better understand player behaviour and open the way for continuous game improvements
Summary – 6 keys
• TELEMETRY is key.– Build it in at game design stage– Event flags (name value pairs) need to be combined with
a unique session ID – DO NOT write Telemetry back to the dB!
• Visualisation• MD collaboration / communication• Employ smart grads• Learn from others within and outside of
your industry
Thank You