GAME DESIGN // ANALYTICS | BETA THE STUDIO LINE
While analytics service and tech providers proliferate as social and online gaming continues to infatuate consumers, there are still numerous studios coming up with their own solutions to extracting meaning from the data their games generate. One such studio is Playdemic, creator of
Facebook title Gourmet Ranch, which has crafted an elaborate proprietary analytics system. And their motivation for doing so? “Fundamental to our system is a fail-safe method for transferring data from our games to the central analytics servers which we developed in-house,” explains Matt Begley, data analyst at the studio. “The lack of such a system was one of our main issues with the third-party analytics platforms: building it into our own system from the start ensured that we’d always have complete confidence in the accuracy of the data that we hold.” The freedom from dependency from another company will certainly appeal to many independently minded studios, but creating an analytics system is no easy task, and many would do well to recruit an expert into their team if they wish to establish their own solution.
Playdemic created its own propietary analytics tech for its Facebook title Gourmet Ranch to ensure the data it received was completely accurate
efficient by gaining awareness of what people do or don’t do in your games – the less talked about approach.” There’s a sense across much of the online, social and mobile gaming space that too often much of a game is never seen by a player, especially considering many turn their backs on a given game strikingly early. “This means you invested money and
effort into something that hardly anybody saw,” explains Lavoie. “Good analytics allows you to see how far your players got, and maybe discover why they lost interest when they did. These insights would allow you to make informed decisions on software updates and/or offer considerations for your next project.”
Good analytics allows you to see
the progress of the studio, whereas the importance of analytics to individual games teams and their managers is to provide a much more granular level of detail – whether that be design, monetisation, retention or acquisition focused.
MONEY TALKS And at analytics’ core? Most agree it’s about making money. For the vast majority in games development, bills need paying, so whatever their creative pretentions, the fruits of their labour need to bring in cash, which is where analytics can help most. “Of course, the core or base driver of analytics is financial,” states a frank Christian Lavoie, creative director at analytics and development outfit SetGo. “Either you are trying to understand your players to better entice them with virtual goods – the more well-known approach – or you could just make future development more financially
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how far your players got, and maybe discover why they lost interest when they did.
Christian Lavoie, SetGo
CREATIVE THINKING In that context, analytics sounds like a worthy part of the development process. But can developers creating and updating games as dictated by numbers balance their obedience to data with true, liberated creativity? Or does analytics, as some suggest, stifle creativity? “I actually think it’s the opposite,” says
Catherine Mylinh, head of content marketing at Kontagent, which recently launched the kSuite DataMine as an add-on to the popular kSuite analytics platform. “Analytics forces a game developer to be more creative because they have to work within the confines of data.
“But, I understand the cynicism. Games
developers need to monetise their players in order to keep producing new games and features. That’s why it’s so important to understand the value of your design decisions and marketing campaigns. So yes, there is an element of making money – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it stifles creativity.” In fact, for some in the business of gathering data, the process of creativity and moneymaking are not so separate. “They are not mutually exclusive,” insists
Chris Wright, CEO and co-founder of data measurement specialist GameAnalytics. “The way to be successful is to build environments that maximise user enjoyment. That requires plenty of creativity. Analytics helps developers understand not all players are the same; they have their own competencies, like different features and have unique motivations.” According to Wright, the bond between
creative, analytics and moneymaking is quite simple. Players spend money on good games; ones that bristle with creativity. “The single most predictive metric for someone spending money is that amount of time they spend playing the game,” he says. “If you don’t have a game that someone wants to play, they won’t spend any money, it’s as simple as that.” Another take on the matter of developing
by numbers is that devs would do well to embrace the need to make money. After all; there is nothing wrong with doing exactly that. “There should be no shame in wanting a business to grow and do better,” suggests Peter Farago, VP of marketing for mobile analytics specialist Flurry. “Once a company has a hit mobile game, they get the opportunity to try to make more of these. It’s special and rare in hit-driven business. And we don’t see analytics taking away from creativity. Rather, they allow game designers to understand how well their creations engage, retain and monetise users.”
Top-to-bottom: Lee Heir of Playmetrix, Mark Robinson from GamesAnalytics, Matt Begley of Playdemic, and Flurry’s Peter Farago
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