Than game statistics differs from the data plateshow

Now, working in a research company, I sometimes meet the developers who confidently declare that they do not need any audience research because they have the statistics. Behind them the data from hundreds of thousands or even millions of players and it gives them confidence. But is everything so simple? Quite ambiguous, because statistics show that players do, but does not answer the “why”questions.

In 2013 my biggest project World of Battles (MMO RTS) we received statistics about every significant action of the player (and there were hundreds of thousands), the behavior of the application and the server. Some statistics were available “live”, and the part appearing after the fact on the following day in the course of automatic data processing on the server.

The project was large and I, like other senior officials, collected and analyzed the data. This statistic showed us many of the strengths and weaknesses of the game. In the course of receiving answers based on the statistics we had a lot of new questions. In this article I will write about what I lacked to analyze the behavior of users of the game while working on World of Battles.

When a statistic?

Game stats will appear right after you have a working client and, if necessary, server. At first it will just be logs for debugging, but later you will need to think about and configure your statistics system, which will allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of your app. Because the program itself won't tell you what's wrong with her, as well as its users.

this figure shows what is known about the game before I started to study and analyze the data from the array of users

Start to collect game statistics, what it is?

performance Stats

the

server Statistics — data about the server, such as status or workload of the system

client Statistics — data about the client, for example, the performance drop of the application

community Statistics

Painting activity community — aggregated data the use of chat, forum, cut the posts and activity on social networks, information about the broadcasts and resources fans

users Statistics

user Metrics — strategic view of user activity. This DAU, MAU, ARP(P)U, FID, Retention Rate, Average Session time and many other parameters

game process

the

Behaviors — data on the number of games played (or levels), visiting certain screens, achievement levels and so on

Economy — information about the in-game economy, as the economy is Soft and Hard - currency

Balance — the game balance has many facets and statistics can only cover some of them, for example the balance of success in the games, the balance of the battle, fiscal balance, balance of rate of progress

make the processed data?
the

the
• Learn the key metrics are the life of the product
the
• to Learn about its weakest points
the
• to Build hypotheses on the optimization on the basis of the received data

this figure shows what You know about the game after reviewing and analyzing the data

For example, during work on World of Battles, due to statistics, we have learned that certain things are not bought players, but we did not know the exact reasons — either the price, or is the power of things, or their appearance. And without plateshow we would have wondered over the reasons for the low bestselling certain things.

Now let's try to look at the product through the eyes of users like to do?

What are the basic tools plateshow?

Video — this tool allows you to visualize the activity of the player in your game. A very important video of the first play session, she will show the behavior of the newcomers — most of your users.

In the project World of Battles game the video showed us that our first interface could be understandable only to developers and hardcore from the 90s and the fact that some important players screens do not open.

Questionnaires and interviews — these tools allow you to gather quantitative results and answers to the most burning questions of developers, such as the evaluation of complexity, graphics, music, balance, etc.
They also provide answers to the questions “Why?”. For example, why are the players not paid? Why stop playing? Will advise the game to their friends and what about her?

After the survey, the respondents, World of Battles, we learned that the speed of the battles in the game slow, and movement speed of units generally worthless. The players were tedious to wait for one unit kills another in combat, and especially as they move across the map. We're used to the game, just didn't notice it and no statistics didn't tell us about this problem.

Focus group — this tool allows in-depth and detailed study of interest to any developer questions ranging from relationship to existing mechanics and ending with plans for future updates. With good organization of the process from respondents can be obtained even subconscious information.

During the discussion of the suit World of Battles in a focus group, we learned why players choose certain elite groups, as they see the giants, and also what cards and why they seem more interesting than others.

There is another very important advantage of placesto over statistics and it consists in the fact that the statistics of the gameplay available only with their projects, or projects of the publisher. And playtest you can spend in any existing product and you can obviously learn some of the mechanics and elements of successful games are more popular and which less, good balance, and so on.

Result

The bottom line we can say that statistics allows you to see the problems and playtest to understand their causes, and subsequently to correctly fix it. Ie only using a combination of statistics and placeshow can see the full and clear picture of what is happening.

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru