Siyu Sun presented on applying data science in the gaming industry. Some key applications discussed include optimizing monetization through improving in-app purchases, ads, and subscriptions. Specific use cases covered predicting payers versus non-payers, ad trigger points, and subscription tier and pricing optimization. Challenges with A/B testing large changes over long durations were also noted. Reinforcement learning applications and the future of generative AI and text-based games were briefly discussed at the end.

1. Data Science:
enter the game

2. Siyu Sun
(She/Her)
Global Director Data
Science and Analytics
siyu.sun@gameloft.com
sunsiyu
Data Science
Marketing Analytics
+5 years in gaming industry: ex-Blizzard, Gameloft
Has always been in the data science domain but
across industries: FinTech, digital travelling
(Booking.com) etc.
Game Analytics

3. Agenda
1. Background Introduction
2. Categorizing DS Application in Gaming
3. Top Use Cases
4. Special Focus on Monetization
5. Help with a DS Puzzle
6. The future trends

4. MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS
WORLDWIDE ACROSS ALL
PLATFORMS
4.5 STARS
AVERAGE PLAYTIME PER USER
5 SESSIONS/DAY
27 MINS/DAY
GAMELOFT GAMES ARE
DOWNLOADED EVERY DAY
+80M +1.5 MILLION
AVERAGE GAMES
RATINGS ON APP MARKET
PLACES AT LAUNCH
GAMING ENTERTAINMENT
COMPANY, PUSHING THE
BOUNDARIES
275 GAMES
SINCE 2000
LEADER IN THE
DEVELOPMENT AND
PUBLISHING OF GAMES
Paris
Barcelona
Montréal
Toronto
Bucharest
Budapest
Sofia
Kharkov
Lviv
Saigon
Hanoi

5. A PASSION FOR GAMES
A RICH AND UNIQUE GAME
PORTFOLIO COVERING THE MOST
POPULAR GENRES
Asphalt 9
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Disney Speedstorm
Disney Magic Kingdoms
Minion Rush (Despicable Me 2)
etc.
OVER 200+ GAMES

6. +1
BILLION
DOWNLOADS
…AND GROWING!
FRANCHISE
BENCHMARK FOR MOBILEARCADE
RACING
ASPHALT 8: AIRBORNE AMONG
THE WORLD’S TOP 10
MOST DOWNLOADED MOBILE
GAMES OF ALL TIME
+1
BILLION
DOWNLOADS
…AND GROWING!
AMONG THE WORLD’S TOP 10
MOST DOWNLOADED MOBILE
GAMES OF ALL TIME
+200
MILLION
DOWNLOADS
…AND GROWING!
ALWAYS AIMING FOR THE BEST
INDUSTRY AND PLAYERS RECOGNIZE OUR ART AND CRAFT
+3
MILLION
DOWNLOADS
…AND GROWING!
#1 ON STEAM, GAME PASS AND
NINTENDO STORES AT LAUNCH
PART OF THE BEST GAMES OF 2022
FOR KOTAKU

7. FEATURE PHONES
+200 CARRIERS IN THE WORLD
MOBILE
WIDE RANGE OF BUSINESS MODELS
TRY & BUY
PREMIUM
FREE TO PLAY SUBSCRIPTIONS
WE WANT EVERYONE TO PLAY
GAMES FOR ALL PLATFORMS
CONSOLES & PC

8. ~42400
Jobs/day
+250 TB
of data
~1700
Jobs/hour
25 to 30
N. of threads
+300 GB
Increase/day
~1020
Heavy agg jobs
A snapshot of our data:

9. “ Provide usable data products based
on trustable and actionable data to
enable game and support teams to take
the best decisions and improve our
products.
DS&A Team Mission

10. Categorizing DS Application in Gaming
Game Analytics
Marketing Analytics
DS / ML / AI
Predictive Analysis
Prediction as
Product / System
AI for Gaming Dev
Business Verticals: Level of DS:
“Traditional”
Machine Learning
/ Deep Learning /
Reinforcement
Learning

11. Data Science Use Cases in Gaming

12. Optimize Monetization
F2P: Free-to-Play
How games generate revenue?
3 Commonly used Monetization
Methods in F2P Gaming:
1. In-App Purchase (IAP)
2. Ads
3. Subscription

13. IAP Optimization
Predict PAU vs NPAU
Analyze top conversion point, and predict
next conversion point
Which offer category? Any purchase
strategy?
Where is the entry point of in app promotion
pop-ups?
Dynamic pricing for different players with
different content
How DS can help?
Who, when, what, where, how much.
Why

14. Challenges of IAP Optimization
Predict PAU vs NPAU
Analyze top conversion point, and predict
next conversion point
Which offer category? Any purchase
strategy?
Where is the entry point of in app promotion
pop-ups?
Dynamic pricing for different players with
different content
How DS can help?
Who, when, what, where, how much.
Why
When to make the prediction?
Some players pay early, some pay very late.
What actions to take given the predicted result?

15. Ads Optimization
Predict PAU vs NPAU
Predict ads sensitive players
Analyze top ads trigger point (placement)
Which ad format?
Which ad content?
How frequent? capping, ads fatigue
How DS can help?
Who, when, what, where, how often.
Balance

16. Subscription Optimization
Battle Pass
Season Pass
Event Pass
Subscription-like services that comes with a
seasonality, and an obvious time-based or
event-based pattern and rhythm.
Subscription in F2P Gaming

17. Subscription Optimization
Battle Pass
Season Pass
Event Pass
Subscription-like services that comes with a
seasonality, and an obvious time-based or
event-based pattern and rhythm.
Subscription in F2P Gaming
A lot of design decisions:
- Different tiers of subscription, cater to different
level of needs
- Pricing vs Rewards
- Double optimization: monetization & engagement
- Hard to A/B test due to the lengthy duration

18. A/B Testing to prove the value
A/B Testing is the golden
standard to quantify the
value brought by DS
products (e.g. prediction as
segmentation, or predicted
actions)
And DS products do not
always beat our existing
baseline.

19. Beyond A/B Testing
What if we cannot A/B test?
(usually it’s because we lose
control of true randomization)
- Causal inference
- Synthetic control

20. Help with this puzzle
We want to predict churners. Among our current active players,
who will churn.
Our steps:
1. Define churn: consecutively inactive for X days
2. Define the ML problem – supervised learning
(binary classification)
3. Gather past dataset and feature engineering in-
game player behavior data
4. Train the model and perform prediction
5. Check the performance and top features

21. Help with this puzzle
We want to predict churners. Among our current active players,
who will churn.
We ended with 2 top features:
1. how many recent inactive days
2. crashed sessions
But… crashed sessions is negatively correlated with
churn score.
(aka, the higher the crashed sessions, the lower the
player is likely to churn), we asked ourselves why?

22. What about Reinforcement Learning in Game?
Cons?

23. In Summary
Segmentation Action
A/B Testing

24. The Future of
AI in Gaming
From traditional Machine Learning,
to AI and beyond.

25. ChatGPT + Generative AI (MidJourney)
The future of game development? Text-Based Adventure Game + Image Generation

26. THANK YOU
Questions / Ideas?