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A Survey on Game Analytics in Massive Multiplayer Online Games

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SBC { Proceedings of SBGames 2018 | ISSN: 2179-2259 Computing Track { Full Papers A Survey on Game Analytics in Massive Multiplayer Online Games Lucas V. Fernandes, Carla D. Castanho, Ricardo P. Jacobi Computer Science Department University of Brasilia, UnB Brasilia, Brazil Email: lucas [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract—Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMOG or human experience. The need for quantitative evaluation to MMO games) can gather hundreds, thousands or even millions support the decision making process in the game industry is of players. They build persistent world games where social gaining more and more attention [3]. The use of analytics relationships are established to improve the performance of the users and their online, centralized and persistent nature to better understand game development and user experience facilitates the collection and analysis of user data. Since is a consequence of that trend and is being adopted not only keeping players engagement is very important to the MMOG by the industry, but also by researchers as a more general business model, the adoption of Game Analytics to better investigation tool. understand the player experience became widespread among Game Analytics (GA) and Massive Multi-player Online game developers and researchers. This paper makes a survey of articles published over the last fourteen years that apply Game games (MMOG) are not new themes. Analytics has been Analytics techniques on Massive Multiplayer Online Games. widely used to support Business Intelligence. The goal of The objective is to outline the recent research conducted in this Analytics is to detect patterns in data that can be used area: the type of MMOG that is the object of research; the in decision making processes. The evolution of computing most common game metrics adopted; the game telemetry used platforms and the rise of big data opened a lot of oppor- in the research. For this, 31 papers were selected from IEEE and ACM Digital Libraries and analyzed. Such selection was tunities to apply Analytics in several areas. Its application done by searching the keywords Massive Multiplayer Games to games, in the beginning, was hindered by the difficulty on both libraries and Game Analytics on the ACM library. in obtaining a large amount of user data. The development Many tendencies were found upon selecting and analyzing each of networked games or simply games that communicate paper. Such as World of Warcraft being the most researched through the Internet circumvented that limitation. On the game, while RPG was the most researched sub-genre. Other observations include that the improvement of the game was the other side, MMOG had an extraordinary development in last aim of about one-third of the sample and the most common decade, boosted by the technological advances in computer data source was the Game Log from each game. processing and communications. Since their business model Keywords-Game Analytics, MMOG, Massive Multiplayer is based on player subscriptions, keeping an engaged user Online, Video Game base is fundamental for the game success. Game Analytics, in this context, is explored to better understand the game performance and define new directions for its evolution. I. INTRODUCTION This work is a survey of publications that relate both Video games have evolved from single screen games to fields, aiming to identify relevant research problems, the vast virtual worlds where thousands of players can interact kind of games where GA was applied and provide insights and play together or games with an emotional story where of new research directions. The articles presented here were players can relate to characters. Much of this evolution come collected by researching on ACM Digital Library [4] and from the advances in computer, communication and display IEEE Xplore Digital Library [5]. technology, which provided powerfull resources to game The paper sections are organized as follows. The second developers. section discuss the motivation of this work. Section III Amidst the plethora of video game genres, some may defines the main concepts investigated. An overview of the stand out for their popularity. For instance, Massive Mul- main games studied in the papers is shown in Section IV. tiplayer Online games became so popular that they gathered Section V presents the application areas of the papers. An a player base of millions players for just one game, World analysis of the overall state of research made with Game of Warcraft [1]. This user base was reduced in 50% in Analytics in Massive Multiplayer Online games is presented the following years [2], but at the same time another large in Section VI. Section VI closes the article with some final MMOG titles were launched. considerations. It is very difficult to predict the amount of success a game can achieve. The development of a new game involves several domains, and deals with subjective aspects of the XVII SBGames { Foz do Igua¸cu{ PR { Brazil, October 29th { November 1st, 2018 372 SBC { Proceedings of SBGames 2018 | ISSN: 2179-2259 Computing Track { Full Papers II. MOTIVATION To exclude games not commonly associated with the MMOG is a game genre that kept a sustained data base MMO genre, a large number of players must consist of more of millions of subscribers for several years. It comprises than a hundred. But that is not to say that games with fewer players from several countries in a multi-million dollars than a hundred players can’t be considered a MMO game. business. For instance, Activision Blizzard reported 5.5 mil- The number was chosen because of the Battle Royale genre, lion subscribers to their Massive Multiplayer Online Role- that features a large number of players, usually a hundred, in Playing Game World of Warcraft, in 2015. At the same time, a single instance and such games are not considered MMOG around 5 million players were playing their other Massive for the general public. Multiplayer Online game, Destiny, and Final Fantasy XIV B. Game Analytics from Square Enix supposedly had over 600 thousands active players in May 2018 [6]. Analytics is the process of discovery, interpretation and On the other hand, MMO is characterized by online communication of relevant patterns in data. When such access over the Internet where players actions are recorded concepts are applied in the video game industry, it defines in a persistent virtual world. This rich availability of user Game Analytics. Game Analytics is the employment of data makes MMO a good candidate to the application of data analysis techniques to assist game development [3]. Game Analytics. It provides an opportunity not only for the Much of its analysis come from data obtained from game- Industry itself but also for the academic research, since it is user interactions. Results from the analysis may be used very difficult to obtain such a mass of data for analysis. in all phases of game development: Conception, Design, For those reasons, an investigation about the publication Programming, Testing and Releasing [7]. of works that apply Game Analytics to MMO is proposed. Game Analytics may be used in a variety of ways. The main questions that arise are: (1) What kind of games Listed below are some ways games can be improved by are subject of GA and (2) What kind of data is more the application of such techniques. Balancing games with player versus player modes, by important in this analysis ? • analyzing those competitions and trying to identify if III. DIMENSIONS there exists aspects that give unfair advantages. Researches compiled in this investigation exclusively ad- Discovering which game area can be improved upon to • dress Game Analytics techniques applied to Massive Mul- increase player base. tiplayer Online games or the analysis and implementation Predicting player behavior to increased Artificial Intel- • of what resulted from its application. In this section, the ligence effectiveness. definition of the Massive Multiplayer Online genre and Predicting Income Revenue when games have a pay to • Game Analytics are further explored in order to provide a play plan. better understanding of what criteria was used to gather the Better understanding of player’s motivation for playing • articles compiled in this work. It may also be applied to understand human behavior as a A. Massive Multiplayer Online whole, not only inside the digital world. A Massive Multiplayer Online Game is a game that IV. GAMES requires internet connection played with large quantity of This section presents the games which are subject of the players, with numbers varying from hundreds to thousands, 31 compiled articles in this survey. Some games are briefly or even millions, usually in the same server. Interactions described, while others are more detailed, according to their among players either to cooperate, compete or simply to relevance in this survey. commute at a large scale around the world are a common factor among MMOs. Such games are mostly made for A. World of Warcraft Personal Computers (PC), but there are multiples MMOs Since Activision Blizzard stopped reporting their numbers made for video game consoles and even mobile devices, of subscribers [2], there is no definitive way to tell how such as smartphones. MMOs can have a variety of different many active players are engaged with World of Warcraft subgenres depending on gameplay: Role Playing Game, Real (WoW). Even though, by tracking the numbers of sub- Time Strategy, Simulation, Social, First-Person Shooter and scribers to one of the most famous social news Web sites, many others. An exact definition of MMOG was not found Reddit, one can compare each MMO community to get a in the literature. For the purpose of clarifying what will be rough estimate to their popularity in relation to other games. considered MMOG in this paper, the following criteria must By using this metric, World of Warcraft reamins as the be met: most popular MMO game, with more than 700 hundred Must contain some sort of interaction between players subscribers [8].
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