Foundational Online Gaming Analytics
Foundational analytics are the first step in growing your understanding of the game's performance. They are often deceptively simple measures that require subtle business rules and logic to be applied to transactional datasets. The core "login/logout" transactional data can yield an array of insights if properly processed and joined with other game datasets. Global Decision customizes game reporting based on client need. However, we find that the vast majority of clients (including MMORPG clients) share certain foundational needs as follows:
- Concurrent players by minute, hour, day-of-week, day, and geographic source location (GeoLoc)
- New players by day, GeoLoc, and source, if marketing referrals are tracked (recommended)
- Total sessions and minutes played, dimensionalized by time (month, week, day, hour), GeoLoc, or registration-based data (age, gender, other requested demographics)
- Correction of login/logout data to account for disconnects and relogins within a short time of a logout
- Revenue earned by time dimension, GeoLoc, and payment type (VISA, MC, Paypal, Discover, gift credit)
- Conversion of virtual currency into in-game goods
Intermediate online gaming analytics build a deeper understanding of player behavior over time. Whereas foundational gaming analytics are activity based (logins, purchases, etc.), intermediate gaming analytics are player-based and cohort-based (groups of players). Global Decision's Gaming Intelligence(tm) software and servers crunch disparate datasets, such as login/logout, purchases, in-game activity, and registration data to distill down key aspects of each type of data into a concise summary of each player gaming experience. Once a player's full history is created in normalized format, it can be used in both intermediate and advanced gaming analytics. Commonly requested intermediate analytics are as follows:
- Play curves over time: tracking duration, frequency, and intensity of gameplay by player from first login
- Cohort analysis: selecting a subset of users who all began play around the same time (such as 1 Mar 2011 - 3 Mar 2011) and looking at fallout rates over time. Often useful by age, GeoLoc, and play freqency/duration
- Churn analysis: clearly defining churn in free-to-play environments. Understanding cohort churn curves and mapping churn to game-based events, such as major changes, enhancements, and game moderator-organized campaigns
- Tracking and understanding player demographic shifts over time
- A/B message and offer testing
Advanced online gaming analytics invoke the use of complex statistical algorithms and predictive models to provide maximum insight from a given dataset. These powerful procedures allow game developers to reduce churn, monetize more users, detect fraud, and enhance gameplay. The following list details common advanced online gaming analytical techniques.
- Predicting Churn: at some point, every game player logs in for the last time. In free-to-play games, churn can only be detected well after-the-fact and it's critical to predict which players are more likely to churn. Global Decision's advanced Gaming Intelligence(tm) SaaS (software as a service) calculates the probability of churn for each of your current players. Our team then works with your marketing and operations experts to craft solutions to minimize controllable churn.
- Increasing Monetization and Upsell / Increasing ARPU and ARPPU: the lifeblood of online gaming is the ability to generate revenue from a constantly-changing player base. Our advanced modeling methods allow targeted offers to be placed to specific clusters of players. Better offers create higher response rates and increase overall game revenue, while also increasing player satisfaction with the offers.
- Player Segmentation: one size does not fit all, especially in online MMORPGs. Online players come from vastly different social and financial backgrounds and have different wants and needs from the gaming experience. Gaming Intelligence(tm) constructs segmentation based on player information and in-game behaviors -- allowing marketing and retention efforts to be targeted to specific player segments.
- Fraud Detection: from bots to gold harvesting, online fraud directly reduces developer revenue. Global Decision's software scans in-game actions as well as login information to highlight suspicious activity.
- Social Mapping and Analytics: because gaming is a social experience, there is a natural linkage between groups of players. Global Decision uses advanced graph theory and network mathematics to identify linked clusters of players. Social Mapping and Segmentation studies can be used to determine which groups are more likely to refer others to the game, thus increasing both the virality of the game along with overall revenue.
