Presentation at IEEE Game Innovation Conference - 23 Dec 2010 http://ice-gic.ieee-cesoc.org/2010/index.php

1. Game Analytics:A Practitioner’s Perspective 2nd IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games Innovation Conference23 December 2010

2. Game Analytics is crucial to the successof any online game

3. 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 beinga “white coated” media accountant to the online gaming industry

4. Outline Outblaze Adserving and Game Analytics (GA) Learning from other industries A crash course in GA jargon Some analysis tools Summary

5. 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. Outblazesold its messaging business to IBM in 2009 New focus is: Entertainment and Media Video Games Social, Community and Online Multiplayer Games

6. Online Games Community Web Sites Hello Kitty Online Flash Games Ben10 DS & WiiGames AnimatedTV shows PublishingPC Games In APAC Virtual Reality Products iPhone Apps Hello Kitty Facebook Apps

7. Adserving

8. Data RULES

9. Game companies are NO different fromAirlines, CC, Mobile Telcosor Supermarkets The data collected aboutuser activity providesdifferential competitive advantage

10. 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

11. 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!

12. Some proxies for learningAirlines: like CX Upgrades linked to your direct Value to the airline.CRM.Aircraft provisioning. Yield Management.Demand based pricing.

13. Some proxies for learningSupermarkets: like TESCO Where to place the biscuits?Edwina Dunn & Clive Humby of DunnHumby.Rolling Ball Analysis.

14. GA is Not: anymore about gut feel about guessing nor It would appear Hopkins that your gut feel was only indigestion It’s a guess. I never said it was an educated guess. GA helps REMOVE gut feel and guess workfrom the decision making process.

15. My KEY Audience at Outblaze is our: KaChing team Engineers Retail mall teams Customer Service teams Game developers Marketers Game economist Pricing specialist multi-disciplinary collaborationis KEY

16. The Jargon of GA

17. GAME TELEMETRYthe RAW data that is collected from online games

18. GAME TELEMETRYTelemetry is driven by event logs:name value pairs(which identify events)PLUS a unique session ID

19. GAME TELEMETRYBuild the event logsPLUSunique session IDs into the game at the game design stage

20. GAME TELEMETRYevent logsPLUSunique session IDsshould NOTbe written backto the Game dB!

21. 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…

22. 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

23. GA is a mix of old school statistics combined with the latest in web engine metrics

24. GA typically usesmulti variable analysis:Players | Levels | Quests | Profiles |Dollars

25. 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

26. Data SourcesGame logs | Mall | Payment gateway | Player profile Player insightsWhat they buy? | How they buy? | Why they buy? Game Designer Feedback Loop Connecting the dotsWho matters most? The 2% to 5% Driving engagement

27. 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 pictureand pre-digested insights)

28. 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

29. How to burn out an i7 laptop 12G of RAM maxed out! All 12 i7 cores maxed out!The culprit; some excel magic which helps to calcuniquesby 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 superadoopergraphics card!

30. 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

37. 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

38. 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

39. Thank You