Casual gaming metrics applied to social gaming

Who am I?
Andrew Mayer
17 Years of game production:
Producer/Designer
Creative Director at Cartoon Network Online
Casual Games for Playfirst
www.mediashifters.com

Who am I?
Andrew Mayer
Social Gaming and User Experience Consultant
Working with Social, Casual, and Core game companies
Development Strategies
Monetization
Game Design
Community Integration
www.mediashifters.com

PlayFirst was one of the first to integrate metrics into Casual.
Developed strategies for metrics integration.
Analyzed findings to determined implementation.
Integrated feedback across a variety of titles.
Casual Metrics

Measuring Casual Games

Most Casual Games are built around a common Structure
Large “areas” contain a number of individual levels.
Complete all levels to move to the next area.
New game dynamics are introduced in areas.
Story elements are revealed in-between levels.

Common Casual Play Modes
Adventure A single linear play experience wrapped in some kind of story arc.
Arcade Timed play for high score.
Challenge Try to get the highest score possible, or beat a series of puzzles.

Big Decisions Are made early
You’re making some of the most expensive and hard to change decisions about the game before you’ve even started coding it.
Genre, Play Dynamic, Interface, Assets, etc.

Big Decisions Are made early
Casual games are often built around existing demographics
Mostly based on popular genres.
These are classic “sales metrics” decisions.
Clones and sequels are common
Both in gameplay and genre.

It’s all about CONVERSION
At some point between 30 minutes to an hour the shutter comes down
Free play ends.
Users must pay from $10 to $20 and purchase the game if the want to continue.
Conversion rates are low
3-5% is a smash hit.

It’s all about CONVERSION
Powerful Portals dominate the points of purchase.
Yahoo, BigFish, Shockwave, etc.
They also own the DRM Wrapper
Conversion rates are low
3-5% is a smash hit.

So, the main question is:
How do you get your audience to pay for your product when the free part is over?
Especially when the cost to play something else is free.

Defining metrics for Casual

What is (or isn’t) the player doing?
How far did the user get before they ran out of time?
If the game is supposed to be addictive why isn’t the user purchasing the game?

Did the user even finish the trial?
What were they doing when they bailed?
Often times there was a specific level where people decided to give up or go pro.
that’s not a bad thing if people converted significantly on a certain level.
Is there a obvious problem to be found?
Most often yes .

The Main Conditions
How long did they play for?
And what were they doing when they stopped?
Did they come back again?
How long did it take them to come back?
Did they play to the end and not buy?
Where were they when the shutter came down?
Was there anything in particular that they loved or hated?
Players tended to bail in clumps.

Change is harder in Casual
Changing assets, interface, or gameplay was often expensive.
Changes had to be propagated throughout the game.
Rolling out revisions was difficult.
Not only does the product need to be revised, but it needs to be propagated.
It is possible to delay a launch, but it makes the Portal unhappy.
Big rollouts needed a front page launch.

What we could change: THE RAMP
How difficult does the game becomes, and how quickly?
How and when do you introduce new play dynamics?
Are the story elements helping move the player along?

What we could change: THE RAMP
Levels were always built using a dedicated tool
Or by editing a simple (human readable) attributes file.

The Balancing act: Difficulty goes both ways
It’s obvious when levels are too hard but sometimes a game is too easy
Players need to understand where the game is going to go.
But at the same time they can’t get frustrated.
At some point you need to demand they play strategically rather than tactically.

Lessons for Facebook Developers

Focus on metrics that surround the activities you're looking to promote.
The single most important thing to capture is what the player is doing when they stopped playing your game.
What was the first thing did when they came back?
Use your metrics to target when the users made the decisions you actively want them to make.

Social’s biggest advantage is flexibility
Changes automatically impact all users going forward.
Which is awesome.
The audience is dynamic and innately viral
You can launch and relaunch.
You have more than one method of monetization
Choose a model that matches the gameplay
And/or choose gamplay that matches your model.

Track their movement
If the audience never sees something, that’s a big problem.
They aren’t innately curious.
So make sure they’re even looking at the stuff that’s not on the main page.

Try competing solutions
Player satisfaction isn’t always easy to gauge.
What seems obvious may not be.
It’s not too hard, it’s too easy!
You may have more than one audience.
And you may have to pick one of them to reach the next level of success.

Don’t build Haystacks
Be careful of tracking too much.
Tracking every keystroke leads to servers filled with unanalyzed data.
Pick data points that relate to your current initiative.
Create your baseline to measure against .

Beyond the Money
It was easy to think that everything was impacting conversion.
But sometimes you need to solve incremental problems to uncover the real issue.
Set the expectations the user is bringing into the experience, and work from there.
Make sure you’re giving the player a genuinely valuable experience.

Thank you. Column: www.insidesocialgames.com Email: andrew@mediashifters.com Twitter: mediashifters www.Mediashifters.com

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Casual gaming metrics applied to social gaming

by MediaShifters on Mar 25, 2009

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Casual gaming metrics applied to social gaming — Presentation Transcript