Analytics In HTML5 Games

How to use the power of Google Analytics to help make your games not suck!

Transcript

1. ANALYTICS IN HTML5 GAMES BY JESSE FREEMAN Get the slides at http://bit.ly/analyze-games
2. JESSE FREEMAN WINDOWS 8 GAME EVANGELIST, MICROSOFT @jessefreeman http://jessefreeman.com jessefreeman
3. Your game is a business AND NO BUSINESS WANTS TO SUCK!
4. LET’S DIVE IN
11. YOU LOVE YOUR GAME!
13. PLAYTESTING
14. FEEDBACK • People said they loved the game • Most didn’t stick with it • Stopped before the 1st boss battle • Some said it was too repetitive • No one watched the instructions • Didn’t get how to use the store • No one held down the fire button
15. When you can’t watch people play your game GOOGLE ANALYTICS IS THERE TO HELP
16. WHAT TO TRACK • How many people start/finish a game • What levels do they reach • What do people buy • When do they buy it • Where is the drop-off
17. ADDING ANALYTICS
18. Create a GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT It goes without saying you will need a Google account for this but good news is that Google Analytics is free (as long as you share all of your site’s data with them).
19. GOOGLE ANALYTICS QUICK START http://bit.ly/gajs-docs
20. EMBED CODE <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script>
21. 3 MAIN APIS • Set Account • Track Page • Track Event
22. SET ACCOUNT _gaq.push(['_setAccount', account]);
23. TRACK PAGE _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', url]);
24. TRACK EVENT _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', category, action, label, value]);
25. IMPACT TRACKING PLUGIN http://bit.ly/17Ei5p1
26. How to READ ANALYTICS DATA
27. The most common things we track are GAME SCREEN VIEWS
28. What is your game’s LONG TAIL In statistics, a long tail of some distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having a large number of occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution.
29. IDENTIFYING PATTERNS
30. Check out how updating the game IMPACTS THE LONG TAIL
31. USING EVENTS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS
32. BREAKING DOWN EACH EVENT
33. WHAT DOES IT TELL US? • 19,373 people started a game • 7,516 finished the game • 634 hit the quit button ONLY 38.79% ACTUALLY FINISH
34. WHERE IS THE DROP-OFF?
35. UNDERSTANDING PLAYER FLOW
36. By analyzing the level events, we can start to IDENTIFY PROBLEM AREAS
37. After every five levels THERE IS A BOSS BATTLE
38. Looks like SOMETHING IS BROKEN
39. WE KNOW THIS FROM THE DATA We know this by ANALYZING THE LEVEL DATA
40. The data validates that BOSS BATTLES ARE BROKEN
41. Using purchase data TO BALANCE THE STORE
42. When people buy is just as important as WHAT IS BEING BOUGHT
43. What else CAN WE LEARN?
44. HOW IS YOUR GAME FOUND
45. NEW PLAYERS VS RETURNING
46. COUNTRY AND TERRITORY
47. MOST POPULAR RESOLUTION
48. MOST POPULAR BROWSER
49. MOST POPULAR OS
50. OVER 89% ARE MOBILE
51. HTML5 GAMING FTW!
52. In the end ANALYTICS IN YOUR GAME IS THE GREATEST THING SINCE
53. The end THANKS FOR WATCHING! Shameless plug to buy my new book and learn how to publish your HTML5 games on Windows 8 http://bit.ly/html5win8 Special thanks to Stacey Mulcahy (@bitchwhocodes) for helping out on this.