“Careers in Computer Games“University of Edinburgh / 1st of February 2017

Thomas HulvershornOperations and Analytics Manager

Outplay Entertainment

Working in Game Analytics

Typical Tasks for Analytics:

Determine the Difficulty in Level Progression. Where do Playersget stuck, how often do they

attempt a level?

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

Established 2011 in Dundee

Outplay Entertainment is the largest

independent Mobile Games Developer in the UK

Sample Group A Sample Group B Control Group

Project StakeholdersReal Time Analytics

ETL Layer

AnalystsTracker

Store Data

Analytics Events

Game on

Store

Download Deploy new VersionF2P

Data Feedback Driven

Deployment Game Life cycle

Player

Lau

nch

Amazon Cloud

Game SettingsOutplay Server

Mo

dif

y Se

ttin

gs

Set

up

Exp

erim

ents

Game Settings

Producer

Feature Backlog(Jira)

TargetsDesigner

Game in Vault

Product Team

New Version

Sign off and Store Submission

Game Development

ClientUpdate

How to make sense of vastamounts of Data?

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’

What skills are needed

to work in Analytics?

Inspired by http://drewconway.com/zia/2013/3/26/the-data-science-venn-diagram

Coder

Scientist

Designer

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…)

Statistical evaluation of Experiments

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!

> 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’

ThanksThomas.Hulvershorn@outplay.com

@DerHul