![Finding Hit Games Guide
2
6
So really, what’s
their secret?
While each top-performing publishing team has its own secret sauce
(be it their relationships with developers, network, or UA tools), some
common technology solutions underpin their strategy and decision-
making process.
Data is, of course, a critical part for Publishers when making those
crucial decisions around picking winning titles. But analyzing tens or
hundreds of prototypes at one time can prove challenging. Especially if
you’re still growing and have only so many hands on deck.
To help you put data to the best use (and help you make better decisions
faster than ever before), we created this guide, giving real-life steps and
examples successful Publishers and Studios take to find hit after hit.
From these examples, you’ll learn how to:
• Increase your prototype flow by letting indie developers submit games
for publishing and integrate the right evaluation tools. All self-service.
• Easily identify top-performing games in your portfolio.
• Fine-tune promising prototypes into chart-topping hits.
• Explore player data for LTV growth & untapped opportunities
This, and more, can all be achieved through one simple data stack. Read
on to learn how.
“How does [super successful publisher]
evaluate many hundreds of games each
month? We want to do the same thing!”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/gameanalytics-guide-finding-hit-games-250215025938-dc4ba475/85/GameAnalytics-Guide-Finding-Hit-Games-pdf-2-320.jpg)
GameAnalytics-Guide-Finding-Hit-Games.pdf
- 1. Finding Hit Games Guide 1 Four steps publishers take to find hit games How successful publishers evaluate hundreds of games per month to find the next hit game. About DataSuite
- 2. Finding Hit Games Guide 2 6 So really, what’s their secret? While each top-performing publishing team has its own secret sauce (be it their relationships with developers, network, or UA tools), some common technology solutions underpin their strategy and decision- making process. Data is, of course, a critical part for Publishers when making those crucial decisions around picking winning titles. But analyzing tens or hundreds of prototypes at one time can prove challenging. Especially if you’re still growing and have only so many hands on deck. To help you put data to the best use (and help you make better decisions faster than ever before), we created this guide, giving real-life steps and examples successful Publishers and Studios take to find hit after hit. From these examples, you’ll learn how to: • Increase your prototype flow by letting indie developers submit games for publishing and integrate the right evaluation tools. All self-service. • Easily identify top-performing games in your portfolio. • Fine-tune promising prototypes into chart-topping hits. • Explore player data for LTV growth & untapped opportunities This, and more, can all be achieved through one simple data stack. Read on to learn how. “How does [super successful publisher] evaluate many hundreds of games each month? We want to do the same thing!”
- 3. Finding Hit Games Guide 3 Ideally, you’d open your laptop every day and immediately see key metrics such as retention D1, D7, and Playtime for a bunch of games submitted yesterday. Not only do the big players already do this, but it’s also easy to set up. Here’s how you can do it: • Create a simple form on your website where devs can register their details (name, email, studio, etc.) • Use these details to create a new studio or game for the developer in your GameAnalytics organization. • Return the game key and secret key to the developer to use during their GameAnalytics SDK integration. They get more prototypes to evaluate All it takes is one form and one API integration. Our Organizations API lets you add, edit, or remove objects from your account, such as users, games, studios, etc. It helps automate all the fiddly account management for new studios. Meaning your team can skip manual user creation (and the back and forth of emailing keys) and take time to review the numbers as they come in. The Organizations API is now in limited access, and we’re working on providing a public version. If you’d like to access it, let us know. Step one
- 4. Finding Hit Games Guide 4 Checking stats game-by-game is simple for the first 10-20 titles. But how can you easily compare the performance of games when you have dozens in your account? Thankfully, it’s simple to programmatically query KPIs for all titles in your organization (and build custom views of your portfolio). Perfect for making quick decisions. Here are some popular custom views built with our Metrics API: • Top games by retention D1 in key territories (e.g., US, China, top European countries). • Top games by overall retention D7. • Installs per game yesterday. • Average impressions per session, per game. • Top games by playtime. They identify top performing prototypes at-a-glance You can make these views a part of your internal Business Intelligence dashboards, so the entire team can easily spot promising prototypes without having to click through chart after chart (or spend time working with spreadsheets). It takes seconds to set up our Metrics API, and it already uses familiar metrics and dimensions from GameAnalytics. So integration is quick and simple. You can find out more information about the Metrics API (and what it can do) on our site here. Step two Game Installs RD1 RD7 Impressions / Sessions Apple Roll 576 38.50% 9.00% 9.8 Snail Racing 834 42.00% 11.40% 11.0 Exploding Kangeroos 1345 47.60% 16.50% 14.0 Noonle Knots 629 32.10 5.00% 9.0 Cookie Empire 773 38.20 7.10% 10.1 Floaty Otter 1860 44.00% 12.30% 13.5
- 5. Finding Hit Games Guide 5 Once the developer or Publisher has picked a prototype for soft launch, it’s usually closely worked on by a publishing manager or producer, who collaborates with the dev team to improve core metrics and increase player LTV. A/B testing is crucial at this stage as you can use it to identify which game design elements you can tweak to increase retention, playtime, or virality. Some examples of design elements that Publishers and Studios usually test out are: • The design of the main character, such as color, level of detail, etc. This could be a stick figure, ball, rope, or anything else. • The speed of in-game movement. • The amount of points or other in-game currency awarded. • The number or placement of ads shown. They optimize soft-launched games to a tee You can try out all of these different use cases (and more) with our GameOps Suite. Once you have a winner, you can propagate the change to all users via our Remote Configs (another nifty feature in our platform). Step three
- 6. Finding Hit Games Guide 6 Let’s say a game has successfully passed soft launch (with flying colors). It’s now time to make the most of it and get that gem to the top of the charts. To do this (and as efficiently as possible), it’s essential to make the most of your existing audience and continue to perform ongoing optimization. Some actions we see publishers take at this stage are: • Cross-promote to relevant users from the existing portfolio, selected by their interests. • In-depth first-time-UX analysis & level analysis to further increase retention. • Closely monitor new game builds for errors or other changes which may affect LTV. • Launch the game in additional geos and optimize specifically for players in those territories. They increase player LTV for live games For some advanced use cases, direct access to player data is essential. Both the creation of relevant audiences and in-depth behavior analysis requires the ability to query data directly and zoom in on specific cohorts. This is so we can identify insights that may not be immediately apparent in regular dashboards. To bring these use cases to life, we created the Player Warehouse. This data warehousing service can be immediately deployed and used to create advanced reporting views, create audience segments, or feed your player data into machine learning models. Step four
- 7. Finding Hit Games Guide 7 Voodoo uses the GameAnalytics Metrics API to easily track and analyze KPIs across thousands of soft launch titles. With the Metrics API we make all of their partner data quickly available in their own internal systems, so they can shortlist the most promising new titles from hundreds of different games pitched to them each month. They’ll usually evaluate by reviewing core success indicators, such as D1 and D7 retention. How Voodoo identifies hundreds of hit titles with GameAnalytics Read case study
- 8. Finding Hit Games Guide 8 Aside from accessing all of your gameplay data with Raw Export, that’s pretty much it. It’s not only possible, but quite straightforward to build a world- class publishing setup in as little as a few days or weeks (depending on your team’s current load). If you want complete flexibility when it comes to your data processing, then we suggest using our Raw Export service, where we deliver GameAnalytics data to you daily in its purest JSON form (usually directly into your own self- managed S3 bucket). Get started with your own data warehouse Step four Learn about Raw Export