On decision-making in game development

What the talk is about

Vasily Sabirov, lead analyst at a game analytics service, explains how analytics can settle disputes between a marketer, a game designer and an analyst. He suggests choosing a set of metrics, building a map of how they affect each other (revenue depends on audience, ARPU and share of payers), and for every change comparing the actual result with a forecast of what would have happened without it, using trend, seasonality, time-series models or a control group. He stresses long-term risks in free-to-play economies: currency balance, payer segments, the consumer basket. Using promotions as an example, he advises against making them too regular or too long, accounting for demand elasticity, building bundles properly and measuring the post-promotion slump. Useful for producers, game designers, marketers and analysts working on free-to-play games.