3 Main Trends in Game Analytics in 2017

How will the market of analytical systems for mobile and web games look like in 2017? Here's our vision of the main trends to keep an eye on in 2017.

Predictive analytics

No one is surprised with the term “machine learning” anymore, but we would not say that the market of analytical systems uses this tool (infinitely powerful, in fact) to its full potential. There is a plenty of room to grow.

In particular, we think that ML will be used more often to predict the churn of users. The task sounds simple enough: it is necessary to predict whether the user is going to leave the project. But in reality it is much more difficult: at first there is very little data on the user to predict anything, and when the data is accumulated, it may be too late. And we must find a balance how to get the maximum accuracy of the forecast for the minimum time.

Here could come the aid of all the power of machine learning. Accurate prediction allows us to contact the user and to minimize the risk of his churn. Moreover, the reasons of churn may be different: some users did not like the graphics, some users just did not understand how to use the project, and some users got stuck and did not know how to move further. And the task is not only to spot the potential churn, but also to understand its causes, to take action required to retain a specific user.

At devtodev, we are currently working on applying the machine learning methods for predicting the churn of users. The results are already good and will soon be available for everybody.

Personalization

It's one thing  to calculate metrics for all users at once, and quite another — to estimate the probabilities for each individual user. We see that we received a thousand users, but we forget that every one from this thousand sees our project in his own sight and asks his own questions. Every user is unique, and the task of analytical systems is to recognize this uniqueness and tell the client about it.

In 2016 the Users report came out in devtodev, which allows to track separately for each user what events with what parameters he has fired and also send him a personal push-notification. In the future, we plan to further develop this module.

Reduction of the entry threshold

There are a lot of projects that are still at a level where they do not need analytics at all or it is reduced to two metrics: audience and revenue. And all that is a bit more complicated seems to be a sort of rocket science.

And this is a problem. That's why I think that one of the trends in the development of the analytical systems is simplifying the understanding of analytics. Yes, the analytics itself will become deeper and more serious, but what is more important, it should be understandable for the user.

Analytics is not a miracle, and it’s impossible to bring up the dead project with it’s help. On the other hand, if the project has at least some potential, then analytics can be a tool that will help to reveal it. And I would like all our potential customers to understand this. And so I think that simplifying the understanding of analytics is the most important trend in the development of this market.

In general, I think those are the main trands that we're witnessing nowadays in app and game analytics.

This post was first published at devtodev's Medium blog: Another great post about Trends in App Analytics in 2017.