Monetizing Player Data using Game Analytics

Introduction

One of the primary objectives of game analytics is to improve revenue. In any analytics dashboard, we can get a considerably massive amount of player’s data. Prioritizing these metrics from the perception of improving revenue is important.

The following are some of the key metrics to track in order to increase your game’s earnings:

Increasing the DAU (Daily Active Users):

Any game would require a lot of players to even start earning revenue. Monitoring the number of users playing the game on a regular basis is the foremost thing.

If the number of active users are on the lower side, you would definitely want to improve the numbers.

Less active users indicates that the players do not find anything attractive to actively engage in the game on a regular basis.

Since this is one of the most important key performance indicators, improving this has to be the priority.

One of the ways to improve the number of active users is to reward them for daily & weekly logins.

Daily rewards & Weekly rewards would potentially make the players open the gameoften to check out the surprise your game brings in them.

These rewards could be in the form of surprise gifts, game coins & rare items which would unlock high level upgrades or unlock new playable areas in the game.

Improving Average Revenue per Daily Active User (ARPDAU):

Earning revenue through your daily active user is another important thing. Tracking this metric will help you know how much  your revenue is through your active users.

Over a certain period of time, tracking this metric will lead to important decision making such as updates, additional features, game events.

Another way to improve the revenue through active users is to offer them rare items for some actual money.

Rare items are those which would give users slightest edge over the other players who don’t spend real money for buying items.

Improve gaming experience, drive conversions and boost player retention with our Game Analytics Services

Read Our Blog

Since active users are regularly playing the game and would want to be a dominant player in the game, they are more likely to buy these rare items.

Boosting Player Retention Rate & Reducing Churn:

Player Retention & Churn are exactly opposite to each other. One has to give attention to both metrics since one would automatically have an effect on the other metric.

Player retention is nothing but retaining your already existing players to actively engage with your game.

It is rather easier to make more revenue with your existing players than to look for a new player.

So it is necessary to check how the changes in your game affect the player’s retention rate.

Churn is simply the reverse of Retention. It is the rate at which the players stop playing the game.

This metric could also be considered as an indicator for a game’s success. If you lose more players, it would heavily dent the revenue model.

Monitoring Player Behavior:

Player Behavior is nothing but the actions being carried out by the players during the entire session of the gameplay.

It is important to track the time taken by players to complete a level, interest shown by them to check special rewards, making in-app purchases etc..,

You can also compare it with your personal expectation of how a player would engage and see the result for yourself.

This could prove to be a key in important changes in the game. For example if more players are clearing certain levels in the game, then it is likely that the players won’t find the game to be a challenging.

This could result in players losing interest in playing the game. Balancing the game difficulty could potentially improve their interest towards the game. It should neither be too easy nor too difficult.

Improving Player Lifetime Value:

This is one of the key but difficult metrics to track and improve. Lifetime value is determined by the revenue earned from each player.

Leverge your Biggest Asset Data

Inquire Now

This could give an overall idea about the return of investment for the developers. Players with more lifetime value need to be recognized and often rewarded in the game.

Determining the lifetime value would greatly help in optimizing the overall revenue of the game.

Game Analytics across Platforms

One of the concerns about Game Analytics is the analysis across multiple platforms. Different platforms would need different set of metrics.

Prioritizing the metrics with respect to the platform is also very important. There are various platforms such as Consoles, PC, Mobiles and AR/VR.

One would need to identify as to what must be prioritized in such cases.

Mobile Games:

For mobile games, at first you need to figure out the metrics which matters the most. Apart from the general Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as number of downloads, registrations etc.., you will need to track some metrics which indicates user behavior.

The following are some of the important metrics for mobile games,

App Open RateSession LengthSession IntervalDaily Active Users
Monthly Active UsersChurn RateLifetime ValueRetention Rate

This data can be used to track the player’s engagement with the game. Which also includes on what ways they engage with your game.

This can be done across mobile platforms such as android & iOS as well.

Improve gaming experience, drive conversions and boost player retention with our Game Analytics Services

Read Our Blog

Console Games:

Even though mobile games have taken a big chunk out of Console & PC Games’ dominance in the gaming industry, Console games are now a fray above the PCs in the gaming industry according to Newzoo’s Report.

So, it is very important to keep players engaged to your game to sustain longer in the market. A key factor which would determine the longevity of the console games are player retention rate.

Now, what is a player retention rate? It is really simple. You develop a game and players play your game.

If the players receive your game well, they will keep returning to play the game. As long as they keep returning to play your game, your game will be in the fray.

If the retention rate is lower, then there is a good chance that the game will fade out of the market.

Another important factor is Churn Rate. Churn rate is nothing but the rate at which the players stop playing the game.

Lesser churn rate means more players are actively playing the game. Churn rate can also be determined by tracking app crashes, users drop off, session length, average revenue per user and more.

Potentially poor upgrades, outdated content & much easier gameplay are also the factors which result in increasing churn rate.

If the churn rate is high, you can be sure that the game needs serious upgrades.

VR Games:

Recent advancements have paved way for Virtual Reality to be a game changer in the gaming industry.

VR platform is spread across various genres such as entertainment, education, healthcare etc.., But Game Development has helped big time in popularizing VR.

For VR games, analytics are quite important to reach wider audience. Some unique key metrics used in VR Game Analytics are,

  • Heat Map – It is the form of visualized data in the VR area, where it will show the time spent by the player in a particular area and it would be marked in red color. The more time they spent, the redder the area will be. It could also be called “hotspot” where users spend more time.
  • Performance – The performance metrics here are specific to VR. Since VR would make players to feel like they are in an entirely new universe, it is important to keep them entertained rather giving them sickness. For example if the VR gameplay is not realistic, users are more likely to get motion sickness. You would be required to make a smooth, non-choppy gameplay to keep the game more effective and playable.
  • Hardware – It is important to keep in mind that there are a number of high-end VR systems available in the market such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive & also the reasonably affordable Playstation VR, Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear devices. It is necessary to make the game effective across the hardware devices, so that it will be compatible with majority devices and audience expansion would be wider.

Leverge your Biggest Asset Data

Inquire Now

Game Analytics Tools

These metrics can be analyzed using the tools& languages such as,


And these analyzed data can be enhanced visually with the help of,

The Importance of Game Analytics!

What is Game Analytics?

Since games are made with a purpose of serving people with entertainment, it is important to keep in mind that user experience is one of the factors which could define the success of any game. 

Game Analytics is a method in which the data collected from various gamers are used to improve the game which would result in retaining the existing gamers thus improving the longevity of the game.

To put it simply, it is a way of understanding the behavior of gamers with the help of Analytics.

Those data could be anything which is related to the activities being carried out by the players for the entire time they spend during the course of a gameplay.

These data which are used for analytics are called “Metrics”

Evolution of Game Analytics

However, Game Analytics is not a new thing. You can date it back to 1999 when you talk about the first game which got benefitted with the help of Analytics – EverQuest. However, the method used was a bit different.

Improve gaming experience, drive conversions and boost player retention with our Game Analytics Services

Read Our Blog

They used to store data in the form of Log files locally to analyze the user’s behavior. Initially games like EverQuest used this type of recorded data to track player’s behavior. Since then, the landscape of the Game Analytics kept changing completely.

Since 2009, it started gaining more importance among the gaming studios. It became so inevitable that it made Georg Zoeller of Bioware build a system for collecting the metrics during development itself.

Shortly after that studios like EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc.., have actively started collecting Game Metrics.

Why Game Analytics?

As the need for improvement grows, Game Analytics plays a clinical role in letting the designer know what area needs to be improved.

Since the games are only going to get bigger and better, it is important to keep improving your game to retain the gamers & compete at a higher level in the gaming industry for a long time.

Even though the revenue and gameplay experience plays as a critical success factor, analytics serves as a key accelerator to stay long standing in this competitive gaming world.

How to use Game Analytics?

It is quite simple. You develop a game and players will play your game. The player’s behaviors are monitored and collected in the form of metrics so that you can analyze the data and find out what your players feel about your game.

Based on the opinion you get out of the analysis, you would make changes to your game. Collection of data and analytics of data are two different processes.

The below flow could explain how this works,

Now, getting these metrics might sound like something which would take a herculean effort.

Thankfully, it’s not the case these days. There are quite a good number of open source analytics services which would help you in gathering these metrics.

These open source analytics services will help you gather the data with a simple integration of the Game and the Service through API.

Game Analytics using Metrics

Since the metrics could be anything, it is important to prioritize the metrics. For example, if you need to improve revenue you need to prioritize the metrics which could improve the game. Some basic metrics are,

  • Time spent during a single session of Gameplay
  • Time taken for players to complete levels
  • Wins and Losses of players
  • Number of Active users per day
  • Average revenue per Active user

These are some of the common metrics which needs to be tracked to figure out if the game is going well with the players.

These metrics are common across platforms such as Playstation, Xbox, iOS, Android etc..,

Leverge your Biggest Asset Data

Inquire Now

How Game Analytics helps in Maximizing Revenue

With any analytics dashboard, you may find yourself becoming besieged with vital information. Prioritizing the metrics is the key to improve revenue.

Metric tends to change over the time. It is important to keep the game updated with necessary improvements through which the game could be expected to fetch remarkable success thus resulting in maximum revenue.