Abstract
The advent of online gaming has made it possible for almost every game device to send information across a network. The evolution of consumer tastes has forced the variety and quality of marketplace offerings to expand. Market competition and the consumer expectation that games can be constantly improved through the issue of online patches have forced game developers to stop thinking of their games as ever truly finished. Instead, mobile, console, PC, and social games are all expected to monitor user behavior, and report information back to the game creators. The developers responsible for monitoring and improving games are then able to use the information the client software sends to determine the sorts of improvements they should make to the game. These improvements are rolled out as patches or updates to the client software, or changes to the runtime code or content on the game servers. The key to creating a successful automatic feedback loop between the customer and the game’s creator relies on measuring how the user interacts with the game. This information is collected via instrumentation in the software, which sends telemetry data back to a server. These specific bits of information are commonly referred to as “game metrics.”
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Additional information
About the Author
Timothy Victor Fields is a veteran producer, game designer, team leader, and business developer, who has been building games professionally since 1994. He has been involved in one way or another with several of the top franchises of the last few decades, such as Need for Speed, Halo, Call of Duty, Brute Force, SSX and others. In addition to making games and helping companies and teams find partners, Tim is active in the game development and financial community as a consultant, writer, and speaker. He has published two books in game development and production: Social Game Design and Monetization (Focal Press, 2011), and Distributed Game Development (Focal Press, 2009). He is a member of the IGDA, a SIGGRAPH speaker, and regular guest speaker at Texas A&M University and the University of Texas.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fields, T.V. (2013). Game Industry Metrics Terminology and Analytics Case Study. In: Seif El-Nasr, M., Drachen, A., Canossa, A. (eds) Game Analytics. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4769-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4769-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-4768-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-4769-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)