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M. Seif El-Nasr et al.
While analytics practices play a role across all aspects of a company, the
introduction of analytics in game development has, to a signi fi cant extent, been
driven by the need to gain better knowledge about the users – the players. This
need has been emphasized with the rapid emergence of social online games and
the Free-to-Play business model which, heavily inspired by web- and mobile
analytics, relies on analysis of comprehensive user behavior data to drive reve-
nue. Outside of the online game sector, users have become steadily more deeply
integrated into the development process thanks to widespread adoption of user
research methods. Where testing used to be all about browbeating friends and
colleagues into fi nding bugs, user testing and research today relies on sophisti-
cated methods to provide feedback directly on the design.
Operating in the background of these effects is the steady increase in the size of
the target audience for games, as well as its increasing diversi fi cation. This has
brought an opportunity for the industry to innovate on different forms of play allowing
different types of interactions and contexts, and the accommodation of different
types of users of all ages, intellectual abilities, and motivations. Now, more than
ever, it is necessary for designers to develop an understanding of the users and the
experiences they obtain from interacting with games. This has marked the birth of
Games User Research (GUR) – a still emerging fi eld but an important area of invest-
ment and development for the game industry, and one of the primary drivers in
establishing analytics as a key resource in game development.
Game analytics is, thus, becoming an increasingly important area of business
intelligence for the industry. Quantitative data obtained via telemetry, market
reports, QA systems, benchmark tests, and numerous other sources all feed into
business intelligence management, informing decision-making. Measures of pro-
cesses, performance and not the least user behaviors collected and analyzed over the
complete life cycle of a game – from cradle to grave – provides stakeholders with
detailed information on every aspect of their business. From detailed feedback on
design, snapshots of player experience, production performance and the state of the
market. Focusing on user-focused analytics, there are multiple uses in the develop-
ment pipeline, including the tracking and elimination of software bugs, user prefer-
ences, design issues, behavior anomalies, and monetization data, to mention a few.
1.2 About This Book
This book is about game analytics . It is meant for anybody to pick up – novice or
expert, professional or researcher. The book has content for everyone interested in
game analytics.
The book covers a wide range of topics under the game analytics umbrella, but
has a running focus on the users . Not only is ‘user-oriented analytics’ one of the
main drivers in the development of game analytics, but users are, after all, the
people games are made for. Additionally, the contributions in this book – written by
experts in their respective domains – focus on telemetry as a data source for analytics.