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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Optimization of Online Games through Telemetry and Large-Scale Experimentation [SOGS Business]
Speaker(s): Erik Andersen
Company Name(s): University of Washington Center for Game Science
Track / Format: Social and Online Games Summit

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Overview:

This talk will focus on how to use telemetry, statistical analysis, A/B testing and multivariate testing to optimize player retention in online and social games. We will show how we used these methods to attract and retain 1.5 million players in three online games: Refraction, Hello Worlds, and Foldit. We will present data from 110,000 players showing that music and sound effects had no effect on player retention, that secondary objectives caused as many as 40% of players to quit prematurely, and that text tutorials were only effective in the most complex and least conventional game of the three.

GDC 2012

Erik Andersen

University of Washington Center for Game Science

free content

Social and Online Games Summit

Other