Gaming Analytics Summit 2014: Day 1 Highlights
Highlights from the presentations by Gaming Analytics experts from Activision, Valve, Microsoft and Broken Bulb Studios on Day 1 of Gaming Analytics Summit 2014.

To help its readers succeed in their Analytics pursuits, KDnuggets provides concise summaries from selected talks at the summit. These concise, takeaway-oriented summaries are designed for both – people who attended the summit but would like to re-visit the key talks for a deeper understanding and people who could not attend the summit. As you go through it, for any session that you find interesting, check KDnuggets as we would soon publish exclusive interviews with some of these speakers.
Here are highlights from selected talks on day 1 (Thu, May 1):

The problem is that it:
- Ruins integrity of leaderboards and competitions
- One of the top reasons players cite for why they quit playing multi-player
- Over 40% more likely to drop out of match early when boosters present
His solution approach included designing around the problems (such as constraints design, too smart players) and building an analytic service to detect boosting. Talking about analytics application, he mentioned it should employ many analytics models, be decision centric and capable of running at scale. Boosting detection service is similar to fraud detection systems. It is basically a classification problem which can be solved through semi-supervised learning on training data and anomaly detection. The major objective of modeling is to reduce false-positives.
After trying a lot of approaches, the gradient boosting machine (GBM) aka boosted trees was found to be the most optimal choice. Modeling wasn’t the most difficult part; it was Scaling, involving database optimization, query queue with query weights and jobs running in parallel even for same model. The results of boosting detection service provide data to studios to facilitate decision-making.

Talking about decision-making at Valve, he mentioned the following key aspects:
- No formal management structure
- Decision-making is a meritocracy
- All data is available to every employee
- We just want to make the best decisions possible
- We don’t want to rely on ‘instinct’ -> it is fallible
He also noted that the decision making process is explicit, data-driven, theory-driven, iterative and based on measurable outcomes. He mentioned that it is important to define the questions first and thereafter think of designing the data schema. Next, he described Operational Game Stats (OGS), a platform used for recording gameplay metrics such as kills, deaths, hero selection, in-game purchases, bullet trajectories, etc. Organizational schemas are defined for each game and data is sent at relevant intervals. He concluded his talk with case studies where the insights obtained from an iterative loop of hypothesis and feedback were used to change game design, delivering significantly better user experience.

Next, he discussed intelligence in scaling-capacity planning and elastic utilization of services. Discussing about elastic services and fluctuating capacity, he mentioned that uneven service utilization during holidays, title releases, and special events needs to be predicted and planned in advance. Data is also used to protect the service from bad actors. One of the challenges was to deal with 2.5 million gamertag complaints received in past 12 months. A “trust score” was defined for “good” gamers (based on age, past activity, level achieved, frequency, social factor, etc.), in order to automate the correct identification of when the “offensive” tag for any gamer is legitimate.
He emphasized that “an engaged community is an asset” - community ambassadors utilize the service more frequently, more broadly and understand the entire service offering more completely than other customers.

With over 2 million monthly players, Broken Bulb has earned considerable success without any funding, simply through high-quality games and strong metrics. He outlined the following suggestions:
- Be less desperate (if your game has quality, you will get users eventually)
- Opt-in works a lot better than opt-out (a powerful choice)
- Deliver enhanced experience through social connections (while assuring them of no bad activities – for example: “we will never post on your behalf”)
- Everyone’s a closet bragger (people want to brag only to those they love)
He concluded the talk saying “Social is for Engagement not Acquisition” i.e. people come from word of mouth and not from mere social posting.
Highlights from selected talks on day 2 (Fri, May 2)
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