ON TINY YET REAL HAPPINESS
IN MOBILE GAMES MARKET
DSAA 2016 SS ON GAME DATA SCIENCE
Presenter: PoHeng Chen
Date: 2016.10.18

Authors
PoHeng Chen
RA
YiPei Tu
RA
KuanTa Chen
PI
Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica
Taiwan

Outline
‣ Introduction
‣ Mobile Games Market
‣ Tiny Yet Real Happiness Phenomenon
‣ Mobile Games Design
‣ Data Collection
‣ Methodology
‣ Two Models
‣ User Contribution / Contribution Deviation Models
‣ Future Work

Mobile Games Market - App Store
# Country App Store (USD, 1 million)
1 USA $2,325
2 Japan $1,746
3 China $816
4 UK $411
5 Australia $286
* App Annie, 2013.09 - 2014.08

Mobile Games Market - Google Play
# Country Google Play (USD, 1 million)
1 Japan $2,002
2 USA $965
3 South Korea $932
4 Germany $176
5 Taiwan $153
* App Annie, 2013.09 - 2014.08

Mobile Games Market - Both Markets
# Country Per-person Spending (USD)
1 Japan $125.2
2 Hong Kong $64.2
3 Singapore $47.92
4 South Korea $42.68
5 Australia $39.35
8 Taiwan $29.71
* App Annie, 2013.09 - 2014.08

Why Asian countries spend so much on gaming?

Tiny Yet Real Happiness (TYRH)
▸ From
▸ ``Afternoon at Langerhan’s Island’’ by Haruki Murakami
▸ Meaning
▸ The small, transient moments of bliss felt during mundane
activities
▸ ``After a tough and enduring marathon, have a bottle of
cold-refreshing beer’’

Tiny Yet Real Happiness Phenomenon
▸ Due to social problems
▸ Unbalanced salary structure
▸ Unfriendly working environment
▸ High living levels of stress
▸ People (especially younger generation) may lose their
ambition to actively develop their careers, and instead to
cherish small, ordinary moment of happiness.

Why is the TYRH phenomenon prominent
in the mobile games?

The Design of Mobile Games
▸ Fit in with the life style of TYRH phenomenon
▸ Low entrance cost: $0.99, $1.99, $3.99 items
▸ High cost-performance ratio: instant happiness, right time
▸ Fragmented design: short playing time, play on the way to
office

Hypothesis
Social Structure
TYRH
Spending
More On
Mobile
GamingMobile Game
Design

Data Collection - Spending Behaviour on Mobile Games
▸ App Annie
▸ Time: 2012 - 2014
▸ Platforms: App Store & Google Play
▸ # of Countries: 50

Data Collection - Country Characteristics (229)
▸ Economic and Working Condition Indices
▸ GDP, export rate, Gini index, unemployment rate…
▸ Socio-demographics and Cultural Indices
▸ work attitude, education, satisfaction, world religions…
▸ Technology Indices
▸ internet development, internet penetration, smartphone
usage rate…

What causes the spending difference
between countries?
Question 1

Model 1: User Contribution Model
▸ Multiple linear regression model
▸ Y: Average User Contribution: users’ mobile gaming
spending on App Store and Google Play
▸ X: All Country Characteristics data without WVS
AUC =
gross revenue
total users
total users = population⇥
smartphone usage rate⇥
market share

Variable and Model Selections
▸ check Variance Inflation Factors to remove interaction and
collinearity problems
▸ do stepwise regression for model selection
▸ check scatter plots
▸ do data transformation
▸ check normality, linearity
▸ repeat …

Summary 1

Use PCA to deal with sign flip problem
Wagesperhour(z-score)
Life Satisfaction (z-score)

High Wages And Satisfied
High Wages But Unsatisfied

K-means Clustering (RMSE) into 4 groups
PC1
PC2

HWAS HWBU

Education Index Gini Index Unemployment Rate

Conclusion 1
▸ While high wages and high life satisfaction is positively
associated with per-user spending on mobile games, high
wages but low life satisfaction has stronger weight.
▸ Higher scores on Gini index and lower unemployment are
associated with higher per-user spending on mobile
games.
▸ These serve as preliminary evidence that people in tough
living and working environments are likely to seek
entertainment from mobile games.

Why do diligent countries spend
disproportionally more?
Question 2

Model 2: Contribution Deviation Model
▸ Y: Contribution Deviation: a country’s actual spending on
mobile games market divided by its predicted spendings
where the subscript as stands for the App Store and
gp stands for Google Play.
▸ X: All Country Characteristics data, including WVS
contribution deviation =
yas + ygp
ˆyas + ˆygp
,

Summary 2
Life Satisfaction
Attitude to Competition
Disposable Salary /
Smartphone Usage Rate

Gini Index Work Hours per Week Unemployment Rate

HSHS HSLS

WVS.099
(Competition Attitude)
WVS.023
(Life Satisfaction)

Conclusion 2
▸ The predictors measuring the TYRH phenomenon become
more significant in Model 2: high Gini index, low
unemployment rate, and low life satisfaction.
▸ Longer work hours appears in Model 2, demonstrating
positive relationship with response variable Y.
▸ Confirm that TYRH phenomenon plays an important role in
influencing mobile games market.

Contribution
▸ The 1st paper investigating and linking TYRH
phenomenon to mobile games
▸ Confirm that higher levels of economic and education are
associated with increased user spending on mobile games
▸ While high levels of life satisfaction are associated with
increases in user spending, low life satisfaction is also
associated with increases in such spending.
▸ Long work hours, higher Gini index, lower unemployment
rates, and lower life satisfaction are associated with higher
user spending on mobile games.

Future Work
▸ Investigate the interaction between game play and
spending behaviour by including more behavioural data
to explain how games are played as well as how they are
paid for
▸ Genre-specific models: explain model game spending in
different types of games, such as RPG, action, puzzle…
▸ Ultimate goal: understand more about our societies and
world, and identify ways to improve them.

Thank you for your attention!