Players

 

New Players is the total number of newPlayer events per day. newPlayer events are normally sent when the game is first installed by the player. This is the amount of new players that are entering the game each day. If the Daily Active Users is flat you can assume that this is also the number of players you are losing on a daily basis.

You can see that the installs varies greatly over a period, the peaks generally will coincide with weekends but also acquisition and promotion campaigns will show as peaks of new players.

Events Distribution shows the distrubution of events to understand how different events relate to each other. In the example above, the most common events are missionStarted and missionComplete events. This game is heavily focused on progression through missions.

Total Events is the total number of events being generated by all players on a daily basis. It provides an overall measure of interaction with the game.

This is also the basic stat that is driving the cost of Measure and is therefore an easy way of seeing the amount of data that is being collected.

Events per Unique Player are the average number of events per unique user on a daily basis. A high number of Events per Unique can show strong engagement with the game.

Generally, the number of events is related to the type of game, simple games can have less than 50 events per DAU where a complex MMO can have over 500. The number of events will also vary depending on session length which is why the graph spikes at weekends as players play longer and generate on average more events.

If the game is more engaging this average should increase and it is a good indication of engagement of the game as a relative metric.

Player By Age is the banded ages of the daily active users. The age profile allows you to assess if the game is engaging to its core demographic. It also allows you to assess how well the game will monetize based on the split between adult and child age bands.

This is a layered area chart so in the example above the 50-64 age group is the largest group of players, closely followed by the 40-49 and then the 25-29. This points to a game that appeals to an older user base such as a board game.

Players By Gender is the split of male and female daily active users. The split of players into gender helps us understand the profile of the playing base and allows us to assess if the game is engaging to its core demographic.
 

Player By Country shows the average number of visitors per day from the selected country over the time period chosen in the dashboard filter. As with age and gender, understanding where the players are originating from will help to focus the gameplay and also validate or disprove theories on who will play the game. There are major differences in games that appeal across the world and finding out that the game is popular in a certain location can be invaluable in helping to determine the direction of the game.

Items & Missions

The items and missions dashboard provides information on what items are being bought in game, how many items that have been bought since the game started and which mission are most popular to players.

 

Items Bought per Day is the number of virtual goods purchased on a daily basis. The total number will be a factor of the number of players, type of game and range of items. This metric is relative, as players play longer and become more engaged the number of items bought will increase. It is also related to the length of session which is why again there are the peaks at weekends.

Top Ten Items is the most popular virtual goods bought over the date range based on their quantity. This chart gives the % of each of the top ten items being bought, by hovering over the slice you can also see the actual number of items this % relates to. This will tell you the most popular items, to see the full list you will need to use the analysis tool.

 

Top Ten Missions is the most popular missions by player volume over the date range.

This will generally show you the difficulty curve of missions and should generally follow the order of missions as they are made available to players, at least in the early phase of the game.

Difficulty and Frustration numbers should be less than 100%. Difficulty is the ratio of Completes over Fails and Frustration is the ratio of Starts over Aborts.

Difficulty defines how many attempts players take to complete the mission. If the number is greater than 100% then players are completing more missions than they fail, if it is below 100% then they are failing more. Ideally, the number should be around 100% as a balance of difficulty. If the number is less than 50%, the game is too hard. The closer to zero the harder the game is to progress.

Frustration is expected to be a much higher number; aborts should be ideally less than 10% of the number of starts.

Social

Social Events is the percentage of social events compared to the total number of events. Social events include invites, gifting and messaging. This gives a good indication of the social activity of the game.

Social Players is the percentage of daily active players that send at least one social event during a day. This gives a good indication of the social player base in a game.

Invites Sent is the number of invite messages that are sent on a daily basis.
Invites Accepted is the number of invite messages that are accepted on a daily basis. Although Invites Sent shows the number of attempts to recruit friends to play the game, a better measure of the effectiveness of this source of acquisition is Invites Accepted. These are players that have accepted the invite from their friends and are now engaging with the game.
Percentage Invites Accepted is the percentage of invites sent that are subsequently accepted on a daily basis. This gives a good indication of how effective the virality is in the game.
K-Factor measures the impact of friend invites on acquisition. If the K-Factor is greater than one, this means that more invites are being accepted than there are active users i.e. players are inviting more than one friend into the game. It is more normal for the K-Factor to be less than one where a proportion of active playing base invite friends into the game.