Developing a successful game in todays market is a challenging endeavor. Thousands of titles are published yearly, all competing for players time and attention. Game analytics has emerged in the past few years as one of the main resources for ensuring game quality, maximizing success, understanding player behavior and enhancing the quality of the player experience. It has led to a paradigm shift in the development and design strategies of digital games, bringing data-driven intelligence practices into the fray for informing decision making at operational, tactical and strategic levels. Game Analytics - Maximizing the Value of Player Data is the first book on the topic of game analytics; the process of discovering and communicating patterns in data towards evaluating and driving action, improving performance and solving problems in game development and game research. Written by over 50 international experts from industry and research, it covers a comprehensive range of topics across more than 30 chapters, providing an in-depth discussion of game analytics and its practical applications. Topics covered include monetization strategies, design of telemetry systems, analytics for iterative production, game data mining and big data in game development, spatial analytics, visualization and reporting of analysis, player behavior analysis, quantitative user testing and game user research. This state-of-the-art volume is an essential source of reference for game developers and researchers. Key takeaways include: Thorough introduction to game analytics; covering analytics applied to data on players, processes and performance throughout the game lifecycle.In-depth coverage and advice on setting up analytics systems and developing good practices for integrating analytics in game-development and -management.Contributions by leading researchers and experienced professionals from the industry, including Ubisoft, Sony, EA, Bioware, Square Enix, THQ, Volition, and PlayableGames. Interviews with experienced industry professionals on how they use analytics to create hit games.
Cited By
Wallner G and Lankes M The Ludic Potentials of Player Data Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, (209-211)- Javvaji N, Harteveld C and Seif El-Nasr M Understanding Player Patterns by Combining Knowledge-Based Data Abstraction with Interactive Visualization Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, (254-266)
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- Kepplinger D, Wallner G, Kriglstein S and Lankes M See, Feel, Move Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (1-14)
- Halabi N, Wallner G and Mirza-Babaei P Assessing the Impact of Visual Design on the Interpretation of Aggregated Playtesting Data Visualization Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, (639-650)
- Paranthaman P and Cooper S ARAPID: Towards Integrating Crowdsourced Playtesting into the Game Development Environment Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, (121-133)
- Lux M, Halvorsen P, Dang-Nguyen D, Stensland H, Kesavulu M, Potthast M and Riegler M Summarizing E-sports matches and tournaments Proceedings of the 11th ACM Workshop on Immersive Mixed and Virtual Environment Systems, (13-18)
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Index Terms
- Game Analytics: Maximizing the Value of Player Data
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John M. Artz
This is an astonishingly good book. It contains 800 pages of edited papers grouped into 34 chapters, focused on the data collected and analyzed by video game vendors for the purpose of improving video game player experience. In short, as the title suggests, it is about game analytics. It offers a delightfully rich variety of topics and perspectives without a corresponding variation in chapter quality. It is all good stuff. In essence, game analytics is about the collection of remote user data (telemetry), analysis of the data (metrics and analytics), and presentation of the results (visualization). This data is used to help improve the design of games and, hence, the game experience for players. If that were all the book was about, it would still be a wonderful book. The chapters are well written and well referenced with abundant high-quality graphics. But game analytics is an instance of (and I would say a model for) business intelligence and customer relationship management, and it is in reaching for that larger significance that the book really stands out. It is a book for techies, number crunchers, and deeper thinkers alike. How far does that significance go__?__ Consider the wonderful chapter by Edward Castronova et al., which explores "How Game Analytics Will Contribute to Science." In this chapter, we get a glimpse of the larger picture. There is an emerging belief that video games can provide a simulation environment for social science research [1]. So this is not just about getting a video game player to spend a little more time or money. It is about learning something about people both as individuals and as members of social units. Again, if the book stopped there, it would still be an extraordinary text. But it does not stop there. One of the problems with academic writing is that it must abstract the essence of the phenomenon it is documenting. This is not a criticism, as it would be impossible to get through papers if it did not. But when one reads an academic paper and then tries to implement the ideas in his or her own organization, the disconnect becomes apparent. So, along with the range of excellent technical papers on game analytics, the editors have included several interviews with people from video game companies who have been responsible for implementing or using game analytics. These interviews round out the book with the messy "on the ground" experiences that academic papers often ignore. This book will definitely be of interest to anyone involved in game analytics. It may very well become the standard desk reference for the discipline for the foreseeable future. However, it will also be of interest to those involved in more general areas of business intelligence and customer relationship management, because it provides an excellent model for these activities. It would especially be of interest to anyone attempting to start an analytics department, whether for game analytics or for business intelligence in general. And finally, due to the far-reaching implications of game analytics, it is probably also worth a peek from philosophers of science and social science. Online Computing Reviews Service
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