This talk at the University of Edinburgh outlines the opportunities and skills required for working in the Games industry as Data Analyst.

1. “Careers in Computer Games“
University of Edinburgh / 1st of February 2017
Thomas Hulvershorn
Operations and Analytics Manager
Outplay Entertainment

2. Working in Game Analytics

3. Typical Tasks for Analytics:
Determine the Difficulty in Level
Progression. Where do Players
get stuck, how often do they
attempt a level?

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDW5Bp90z0M
Dynamic Presentation of Level
Progression: Brighter Areas indicate
harder Levels.
Green indicates Levels where players
have passed and won the level.
Example: Dynamic Data Visualisation

5. Established 2011 in Dundee
Outplay Entertainment is the largest
independent Mobile Games Developer in the UK

6. Sample Group A Sample Group B Control Group
Project StakeholdersReal Time Analytics
ETL
Layer
Analysts
Tracker
Store Data
Analytics Events
Game
on
Store
Download Deploy new
VersionF2P
Data Feedback
Driven
Deployment
Game Life cycle
Player
Launch
Amazon
Cloud
Game SettingsOutplay Server
ModifySettings
SetupExperiments
Game
Settings
Producer
Feature Backlog
(Jira)
Targets
Designer
Game
in Vault
Product
Team
New Version
Sign off and Store
Submission
Game
Development
Client
Update

7. How to make sense of vast
amounts of Data?

8. Game Design influences Performance
• Two Factors
– FUN
– Difficulty
Game Analytics
• Collecting 8 Millions Data events per day
(already sampled)
• Data stored in AWS / Redshift
• Accessed with SQl
• Analysed with ‘R’

9. What skills are needed
to work in Analytics?

10. Inspired by http://drewconway.com/zia/2013/3/26/the-data-science-venn-diagram
Coder
 
Scientist
Designer

11. Typical Background for people working in Analytics*
>Examples
>MSc, BSc Mathematics and Statistics
>Ph.D. e.g. Geoscience
(and other with Background in Computing, Mathematics, Science)
>MSc, BSc Physics
>MSc International Business
>MSc Artificial Intelligence
>BSc Applied Computing
>…
*(not considering technical Analytics, e.g. Database Management…)

13. Statistical evaluation of Experiments

14. Skills and Preparation
• Learn a Scripting Language, e.g. “R” or Python
• Learn / Understand SQL
• Excellent knowledge of applied Statistics and
Visualisation
• Know the products of the company you’re
applying at
• Passion for Games!

15. > Outplay.com
> Twitter @DerHUL
> Further Reading
> ‘The Lean Startup’, Eric Ries
> ‘Data Analysis with Open Source Tools’, P. Janert
> ‘Data Analysis’, Phillip K. Janert
> ‘Impact Mapping’, Gojko Adzic
> ‘Freemium Economics’, Eric B. Seufert
> ‘Data Visualisation with D3.js Cookbook’, N.Q Zhu
> Coursera: Data Science, ‘R’

16. Thanks
Thomas.Hulvershorn@outplay.com
@DerHul