Mar 17, 07:16 AM
We’re happy to report that recently unveiled online gaming startup Gazillion Entertainment has an enterprise-wide license to use our own Aleph Metrics Suite in their games. If you’ve been following our blog, you already know that we’ve been working on Jumpgate Evolution and Slipgate Ironworks’ upcoming MMO, but now we can also confirm that Aleph is being used on LEGO Universe!
Gazillion also has a major partnership with Marvel Entertainment, and is working on a kid-oriented online world based on the new Marvel IP Super Hero Squad. You can read more about it at VentureBeat.
— Darius Kazemi
Jul 29, 03:32 AM
Joe Ludwig pointed me to an article on Andew Chen’s blog about developing metrics in the context of a startup.
While the article is mostly referring to metrics for web startups, I really like some of the points he makes about the political stance you have to take to adopt metrics at a small company. Some of his advice is universal no matter what kind of company you’re running.
He talks about developing metrics with a “layers of onion” type of approach, which is one that I always recommend our clients take. For example, if you’re developing an MMORPG, the first thing you want to collect metrics on is basic population data. During character creation, record name, race, class, maybe a basic character buildout, whatever is relevant for your game. Maybe throw in some basic advancement metrics (time-to-level, etc) and that is your first pass on metrics.
Once you’ve tackled that problem, add some metrics that tie into that: for example, now that you know what level everyone is, you can tie that in to PvP combat metrics to get a sense of whether there are certain character builds that easily defeat characters of an unacceptably higher level.
Actually, that ties into Chen’s characterization of “Operational reports versus Investigative reports.” Using his characterization, I was just discussing some Investigative reports: you’re wondering how well game system X really works and you’re putting in metrics to find out. Operational reports for a traditional subscription MMO might be churn-related, or a measure of content burn: how many hours of play does it take for players to exhaust all of our content? In a free-to-play MMO you might be more concerned with conversion rates and item sales.
On the other hand, in a heavily PvP-based game, a report on PvP balance very well ought to be considered Operational since that’s the crux of the entire game. If your PvP sucks, you lose money, end of story.
So perhaps the divide between Operational and Investigative is less clear than Chen draws it.
And while Chen may be right that to have completely ideal analytics you’d require about 20% of your engineering resources focused on analytics, it’s important to note that you can still get a TON of value from even a small amount of metrics.
Speaking in terms of politics inside a company, the layered onion approach is also important in terms of allocating engineering resources. If you put one engineer on part time to get a small amount of the right metrics, then people will see those reports and clamor for more, starting a snowball effect that leads to more metrics resources. Before you know it you’re buried in data, in a good way! (Contrariwise, if you put that engineer on a small amount of useless metrics, you can kiss your data goodbye. That will “prove” that metrics are a waste of time and you’ll never see resources put into metrics ever again.)
— Darius Kazemi
Aug 22, 10:42 AM
So, Wired magazine just posted an article called How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play. It’s about the metrics on Bungie’s upcoming Halo 3. I’ve actually had the privilege of seeing some of their metrics behind the scenes, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking to gameplay metrics folks both at Bungie and at Microsoft Labs. First things first: these guys are definitely doing more gameplay metrics than anybody else out there. And that’s really cool.
My take on it is this: not everyone in the game industry has access to the amount of money that Microsoft can spend on a project. Most game companies are struggling with their budgets just to make their games. At Orbus, we’re trying to make these kinds of metrics affordable to any company that wants them.
Just take a look at our Quake III heat maps from yesterday. They’re very similar to the heat maps in the Wired article. After integrating our metrics middleware into the game (which took about a day), just one programmer put those heat maps together in two days. Come to think of it, our heat maps are cooler, since they work natively inside the level editor :)
— Darius Kazemi
