Game Analytics

Part I. An Introduction to Game Analytics

1. Introduction
Magy Seif El-Nasr, Anders Drachen, Alessandro Canossa

2. Game Analytics – The Basics
Anders Drachen, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Alessandro Canossa

3. Benefits of Game Analytics: Stakeholders, Contexts and Domains
Alessandro Canossa, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Anders Drachen

4. Game Industry Metrics Terminology and Analytics Case Study
Timothy Victor Fields

5. Interview with Jim Baer and Daniel McCaffrey from Zynga
Magy Seif El-Nasr, Alessandro Canossa

Part II. Telemetry Collection and Tools

6. Telemetry and Analytics Best Practices and Lessons Learned
Sreelata Santhosh, Mark Vaden

7. Game Development Telemetry in Production
Georg Zoeller

8. Interview with Nicholas Francis and Thomas Hagen from Unity Technologies
Alessandro Canossa

9. Sampling for Game User Research
Anders Drachen, André Gagné, Magy Seif El-Nasr

10. WebTics: A Web Based Telemetry and Metrics System for Small and Medium Games
Simon McCallum, Jayson Mackie

11. Interview with Darius Kazemi
Magy Seif El-Nasr

Part III. Game Data Analysis

12. Game Data Mining
Anders Drachen, Christian Thurau, Julian Togelius, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Christian Bauckhage

13. Meaning in Gameplay: Filtering Variables, Defining Metrics, Extracting Features and Creating Models for Gameplay Analysis
Alessandro Canossa

14. Gameplay Metrics in Game User Research: Examples from the Trenches
Anders Drachen, Alessandro Canossa, Janus Rau Møller Sørensen

15. Interview with Aki Järvinen from Digital Chocolate
Alessandro Canossa

16. Better Game Experience Through Game Metrics: A Rally Videogame Case Study
Pietro Guardini, Paolo Maninetti

Part IV. Metrics Visualization

17. Spatial Game Analytics
Anders Drachen, Matthias Schubert

18. Visual Game Analytics
Ben Medler

19. Visual Analytics Tools – A Lens into Player’s Temporal Progression and Behavior
Magy Seif El-Nasr, André Gagné, Dinara Moura, Bardia Aghabeigi

20. Interview with Nicklas “Nifflas” Nygren
Alessandro Canossa

Part V. Mixed Methods for Game Evaluation

21. Contextualizing Data
Eric Hazan

22. Combining Back-End Telemetry Data with Established User Testing Protocols: A Love Story
Jordan Lynn

23. Game Metrics Through Questionnaires
Ben Weedon

24. Interview with Simon Møller from Kiloo
Alessandro Canossa

25. Visual Attention and Gaze Behavior in Games: An Object-Based Approach
Veronica Sundstedt, Matthias Bernhard, Efstathios Stavrakis, Erik Reinhard, Michael Wimmer

26. An Introduction to Physiological Player Metrics for Evaluating Games
Lennart E. Nacke

27. Improving Gameplay with Game Metrics and Player Metrics
Graham McAllister, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Jason Avent

Part VI. Analytics and Player Communities

28. Data Collection in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Methods, Analytic Obstacles, and Case Studies
Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nick Yee

29. Designer, Analyst, Tinker: How Game Analytics Will Contribute to Science
Edward Castronova, Travis L. Ross, Isaac Knowles

30. Interview with Ola Holmdahl and Ivan Garde from Junebud
Alessandro Canossa

Part VII. Metrics and Learning

31. Metrics in Simulations and Games for Learning
Jan L. Plass, Bruce D. Homer, Charles K. Kinzer, Yoo Kyung Chang, Jonathan Frye, Walter Kaczetow, Katherine Isbister, Ken Perlin

32. Conceptually Meaningful Metrics: Inferring Optimal Challenge and Mindset from Gameplay
Carrie Heeter, Yu-Hao Lee, Ben Medler, Brian Magerko

33. Interview with Simon Egenfeldt Nielsen from Serious Games Interactive
Alessandro Canossa

Part VIII. Metrics and Content Generation

34. Metrics for Better Puzzles
Cameron Browne

35. Erratum
Magy Seif El-Nasr, Anders Drachen, Alessandro Canossa

Keywords: Computer Science, User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction, Mathematical Applications in Computer Science, The Computer Industry