As part of an on-going project on exploring player behavior via the Steam platform (see e.g. here and here) we decided to run a quick correlation analysis across games on Steam, focusing on sales (game ownership) and a two different aggregate review/ranking scores. In addition, we wanted to explore if review scores correlated with the actual amount of time people spend playing games on Steam.
5 billion hours of play. 6 million players. 3000 games on Steam. 1 distribution model that explains how time spent playing games on Steam rises and falls – as a function of time. This has powerful implications: if playtime follows a specific distribution, we can predict it. This post was written by Anders Drachen, Rafet…
In this fourth and last post in the cluster analysis series, we provide a couple of examples showing how cluster analysis operates in practice on player data, as well as how to present the results of cluster analysis, in order to make them actionable. Grab a cup of coffee and sit down in a comfy…
In the previous post of this series we introduced the theoretical foundations of cluster analysis and the various categories of algorithms. In this post we take a specific look at the challenges associated with running a cluster analysis on behavioral telemetry from games. Clustering behavioral data from games does not involve any unique challenges: the…
[This post was written in collaboration with Christian Bauckhage and Rafet Sifa.] Clustering is imminently useful for finding patterns in gameplay data. In this second post in the clustering series, we briefly outline several classes of algorithms and discuss the types of contexts they are useful in. Cluster algorithms can be categorized based on how the…
In this – somewhat wordy – post, we introduce the foundations of cluster analysis, and discuss its application in finding patterns in the behaviors of players, and developing profiles of how people play your game. Recent years have seen a deluge of behavioral data from players hitting the game industry. The reasons for the data…
In the past few years university-based researchers have published a substantial amount of explorative work on MMORPG economies – the most complex virtual economic system that exists in games. In this post we take a quick look at some of the interesting research papers from the hallowed halls of academia and beyond. Virtual economies are…
One of the most important challenges in game analytics is to take the power of quantitative analysis and place it into the hands of everyone, not just trained analysts. In this post we describe the process of developing a method for generating behavioral profiles of player, and visualize how they over time migrate between these…
When scientists want to understand the specifics of genetics, they usually avoid studying humans, as it takes 30 years to reach a new generation. Instead they focus on fruit flies, which are born, mature and die on the same day. This allows for studying the causes and effects of changes occurring from one generation to…
From the GA blog, a new post on player progression analysis in Tomb Raider: Play style and progression are two important keywords in game analytics, as all methods for optimizing design and monetizations strategies revolve around them. When building games, we design with a specific operational space for the players in mind, so finding out how…
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