Game Analytics: Maximizing the Value of Player Data

by Magy Seif El-Nasr (Editor), Anders Drachen (Editor), Alessandro Canossa (Editor)

Developing a successful game in today’s market is a challenging endeavor. Thousands of titles are published yearly, all competing for players’ time and attention. Game analytics has emerged in the past few years as one of the main resources for ensuring game quality, maximizing success, understanding player behavior and enhancing the quality of the player experience. It has led to a paradigm shift in the development and design strategies of digital games, bringing data-driven intelligence practices into the fray for informing decision making at operational, tactical and strategic levels. Game Analytics - Maximizing the Value of Player Data is the first book on the topic of game analytics; the process of discovering and communicating patterns in data towards evaluating and driving action, improving performance and solving problems in game development and game research. Written by over 50 international experts from industry and research, it covers a comprehensive range of topics across more than 30 chapters, providing an in-depth discussion of game analytics and its practical applications. Topics covered include monetization strategies, design of telemetry systems, analytics for iterative production, game data mining and big data in game development, spatial analytics, visualization and reporting of analysis, player behavior analysis, quantitative user testing and game user research. This state-of-the-art volume is an essential source of reference for game developers and researchers.  Key takeaways

Genres: Game Design, Games, Nonfiction

815 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2013

Reviews

[Igor Tkachenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to read. Messy. Stretched.
But it is still four starts because it is a good introduction in the computer game industry.

But very little about data analytics. There is almost nothing valuable in relation to data analytics at all.

[Muhammad Yakan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a pretty new field in analytics, some of the chapters based on interviews with experts and research papers. How to monetize game apps is one of my favorite contents. I also had a chance to have an online lecture with Prof. Magy; she is an inspiring researcher.

[Gene Ishchuk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit, I skipped lots of content here.
Some of it unreadable, some of it pretty useful but again, the editor has done a poor job trying to level up chunks written by people of different skillset and experience.
Not recommended.

800 pages is a pumped volume of basic stuff everyone knows about.
Yes, there are pieces of interesting things on a 'conception' level but the rest - it felt like an undergrad level with accidental leaks of smart words like Hadoop or heatmaps.
And the price, what currency is it?

I am glad I have got a used one.