Nowadays, the number of mobile games available to download from Google Play store or Apple store is tremendous. It means that there is a big and strong competition on the market, which pushes Gaming companies to make smarter and innovative decisions. By using big data in the Mobile Gaming Industry you can extract hidden patterns and discover new correlations.

• How does one come up with “smarter decisions”?
• How to understand which features of the game are good?
• Tip on how to measure what is convincing users to play and pay and what’s discouraging?
• If users don’t understand how to make some game moves or are stuck on a particular level of the game, how can this information be passed to your developers in a clear and comprehensive way?
• How can gameplay time be properly measured if the app is running in the background?

Answers to these questions are hidden in huge amounts of collected data about your users and gamers. Some deeper data analysis can perform much more sophisticated queries on demand.

Big data in mobile gaming: Analytics KPI’s

To properly measure the success of your game you need to know how many users are active monthly. How many users have you acquired during the last month? Or even how much time your users spend playing your game? Calculated KPIs such as MAU (Monthly Acquired Users), DAU (Daily Active Users), ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) can help answer those questions and understand the performance and reasons of your mobile app success.

The more players have your application, the bigger is the probability that those users will upgrade to paid accounts and start spending money or recommend your app to friends. Above all, there are other KPIs which can give a possibility to understand gamers` behavior and how they interact during the game.

Therefore, games could be improved and updated by using extracted insights from users` behavior hidden in collected big data gaming sets. As a result, user experience can be improved due to data science in the Gaming Industry.

Track customer retention and LTV

It is important to retain as many acquired customers as possible in the mobile gaming industry. Companies can’t let their players leave. Using big data mobile gaming sets, it is possible to identify those users who will bring revenue. Here is where customer churn and LTV analysis come into the game. The customer retention report will give you an opportunity to understand how long each particular user remains your client.

Furthermore, using machine learning we can predict which customers are likely to leave based on the historical data points.

Customer LTV (lifetime value) analysis gives a clear understanding of how users spent money in the past during the gameplay. With the help of big data consulting services, data science in the gaming industry and machine learning consulting, you can understand how much newly acquired users will spend in the future while playing your game. Data science in the gaming industry will help you to monetize them, concentrate only on potential buyers, and reduce marketing and advertising costs. Thanks to data science in the gaming industry, it is now possible to create an extraordinary gaming community, attracting more and more users.

Big data in mobile gaming: Measuring user engagement

Gaming companies measure users` engagement with above mentioned KPI’s and by retention, churn, and interaction analysis. In most cases, mobile games have a few levels of difficulty and different players with various demographics and cohorts.

With the help of self-service BI tools and data science in the gaming industry, companies can better understand and track user behavior during different game levels and make sure that a particular level is not too difficult for them. When insights on gameplay and interactions are extracted, game developers should update particular levels so that users are not stuck anywhere and are moving forward through the game.

Therefore, with big data gaming analytics driving developers’ decisions, they can take up more effective actions leading to success.

Personalized in-game marketing

Personalized in-game marketing increases user engagement even while attracting new ones. Using data science in the gaming industry, companies can create meaningful marketing messages. You should know which gamers are responsive to advertising and which are not. It is important that your ad is received properly.

In addition, according to VentureBeat “Segmentation isn’t enough anymore. 76% of digital nomads expect to see a personalized website screen on just about every brand site they visit. [1]

Business Intelligence (BI) in mobile gaming (Tableau, Looker, and Google Data Studio)

There are plenty of business intelligence services available on the market. All tools have similar functionalities and give an opportunity to end-users to analyze collected data without having programming knowledge. However, in the gaming industry, most companies chose Tableau, Looker, or Google Data Studio (GDS) because of their compatibility with big data mobile sets, data lake architectures, and data warehouses.

All this to say that a visualization tool and data modeling layer depends on the current infrastructure. For example, if you are planning to build an analytical layer on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) you will definitely need to consider Google Data Studio as a visualization tool. On the other hand, if the functionalities of GDS will not be enough, we recommend considering Tableau because of its wide range of functionalities and compatibility with cloud platforms.

Mobile Gaming Industry Statistics and Trends 2020-2021

• The mobile gaming industry has become one of the most efficient in the world in 2020 (with a turnover of $ 77.2 billion). [2]
• Mobile games constitute about 21% of all Android app downloads and 25% of all iOS app downloads. It is expected that the percentage of all app downloads will increase in 2021 over the previous year as many investors and developers will release outstanding games.
• One of the trends among mobile game developers in 2021 will be game monetization through in-game advertising. According to Statistics, 74% of US mobile gamers would watch in-game ads if they get an in-app bonus in return. [2]

3 Current Gaming Trends

To stay competitive, you need to keep up with trends. As we said earlier, the mobile gaming industry is booming now. Therefore, it is important to remember that using data science in the mobile gaming industry requires an artificial intelligence-based solution that processes huge amounts of incoming data in the best way.

So, let’s take a closer look at 3 trends that will drive the mobile gaming industry over the next couple of years.

1. Games for all generations

Today, you can play on any device, play with friends in the neighborhood or with your grandparents. Moreover, you can watch the game in real time. The possibilities are unlimited.
According to a Deloitte study conducted before to COVID-19, the average U.S. consumer had 12 paid media and entertainment subscriptions. When it comes to age diversity, millennials averaged 17 subscriptions, Gen Z 14, and Gen X 13. In addition, the average age for a video game player is 35 to 44 years old. [3]

2. 5G is changing gamer’s experience

Key benefits of 5G for mobile gaming:

• Reduces the amount of time necessary to transfer a dataset between two points.
• Increased capabilities for a more immersive multiplayer experience.
• Improved streaming opportunities for live service games, often known as cloud gaming.

According to Newzoo, by 2022, the global cloud gaming market will grow to 124.7 million users. They also reported that almost four out of ten (43%) active smartphones will be 5G ready by 2023. [4]

3. Mobile games will become much more social in the future

A good example of this trend is Among Us, which was first released in 2018. The game encourages people to work together on a variety of tasks, while one or two people secretly try to prevent the team from winning.

Another example of how mobile games become much more social is Travis Scott’s Fortnite concert series which attracted 27.7 million gamers and was viewed over 45 million times. [5]

Key Takeaways

• Data science in the gaming industry has become an integral part of the development, design, operation of games and many other stages of their functioning.
• Mobile gaming companies with a good big data mobile gaming strategy can grow faster, acquire more users, and improve their games and applications.
• Insights from big data in the mobile gaming industry are very important to design a successful game and then help to improve user engagement.
• There is no doubt that Data Science in the gaming industry has become the most effective tool for companies to stay competitive.

Achieving implementation success is much easier with an experienced partner that understands the industry challenges and knows how to overcome them. In addition, read our recently published Case Study on how AI and analytics can help mobile game developers. Feel free to ask us about data science in gaming industry and other data engineering services.

References

[1]Venturebeat.com. Scalefast raises $6 million to offload ecommerce from game companies. URL:
https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/21/scalefast-raises-6-million-to-offload-ecommerce-from-game-companies/. Accessed Aug 4, 2021.
[2]Businessofapps.com. Mobile gaming industry statistics and trends for 2021. URL:
https://www.businessofapps.com/insights/mobile-gaming-industry-statistics-and-trends-for-2021/. Accessed Aug 4, 2021.
[3] Clevertap.com.Top Six Mobile Gaming Trends That Matter in 2021 and Beyond. URL: https://clevertap.com/blog/mobile-gaming-trends/. Accessed Aug 5, 2021.
[4] Newzoo.com.The Incoming Storm: Cloud Gaming Is Positioned to Change the Games Business as Newzoo Releases Global Cloud Gaming Report. URL: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/the-incoming-storm-cloud-gaming-is-positioned-to-change-the-games-business-as-newzoo-releases-global-cloud-gaming-report/. Accessed Aug 5, 2021.
[5] Reuters.com. Travis Scott’s Fortnite concert series draws 27.7M unique views. URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/esports-fortnite-travis-scott-astronomic/travis-scotts-fortnite-concert-series-draws-27-7m-unique-views-idUSFLM2PGVN5. Accessed Aug 5, 2021.

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