Business Intelligence Report
Panda Party (Sample)
Contents
Introduction
The GameAnalytics Footprint
The following report presents a series of analyses run on Panda
Party’s player base and their behaviour across the GameAnalytics
network. This offers a holistic view over Panda Party players’ in-game
behaviour, benchmarking it both against a general industry standard
and against Panda Party’s own players’ behaviour observed across our
network.
Games and Users
Variation in Top Games
KPI Benchmarking
Conclusions
Recommendations
Gamer Profiles
How many games do Panda Party’s users play?
What genres do Panda Party’s players prefer?
Conclusions
Recommendations
Loyal, Disloyal and Non-Spending Monetizer Profiles
Loyal and Disloyal Monetizers
How many of Panda Party’s players spend in other games?
The analysis and conclusions in this report are based on overlaying
the data set received from the client on top of the digital footprint
GameAnalytics collects from the users playing the 5000+ active games
in its network.
What game genres do Disloyal Monetizers prefer to spend in?
Non-Spending Monetizers
How much do Panda Party’s non-spenders spend in other games?
What game genres do Panda Party’s non-spenders play?
Conclusions
Recommendations
Whale Monetizer Profile
Who Are Panda Party’s whales?
What genres do Panda Party’s whales prefer to play?
What genres do Panda Party’s whales prefer to spend money in?
GameAnalytics’ substantial and rich user data set allows for
identifying Panda Party users playing multiple games in its network,
and for running an analysis that co mpares and contrasts specific
behaviour across these games. The conclusions derived from this
analysis will give insights into the most valuable users playing Panda
Party, and give actionable Recommendations of strategies to optimally
leverage their in-game behaviour and spending patterns.
Conclusions
Recommendations
Churned Player Profile
Who are Panda Party’s churners?
What genres do Panda Party’s churners play?
What countries are Panda Party’s churners from?
Moreover, the results will allow for a more comprehensive user
profile creation, which in turn may result in a different approach to
user acquisition campaigns, lucrative design decisions or a change in
portfolio strategy.
What genres do Panda Party’s churners spend money in?
Conclusions
Recommendations
Recommendations overview
Annex
Annex 1
2
The GameAnalytics
Footprint
Games and Users
GameAnalytics network snapshot as of April 2015.
GameAnalytics’ dataset is based on the tracked digital footprint of
250M monthly active users derived from 5131 active games, spread
across 15 genres.
The chart below shows the genre distribution of the 5K+ games
GameAnalytics tracks, based on their app store category submission,
and it indicates not only a wide variety of genres covered, but also a
balanced spread across these.
5131
30M
250M
Active Studios
Daily Active Users
Top 15 Genre Distribution of GA Games
25%
2050
Active Games
Monthly active users
20%
15%
10%
5%
Physics
Kids
Casino
Match 3
Quiz
Strategy
Puzzle
RPG
Action/Adventure
Racing
Shooter
Runner
Sport
Arcade
Simulation
0%
3
Report
Game
Panda Party
App Store
Categories
Data Sample
Metric
Action/
adventure
Racing
Strategy
Panda
Party
Action/Adventure,
Racing, Strategy
January - March 2015
Sessions
1
1
2
2
Avg. Session Length (s)
202.30
174.00
368.62
262.61
ARPPU ($)
13.79
17.40
17.93
10.37
Conversion Rate
4.43%
1.62%
1.59%
0.00%
ARPDAU ($)
0.13
0.13
0.16
0.01
Revenue per Transaction ($)
12.72
5.78
10.61
7.08
1 Day Retention
27%
22%
30%
35%
7 Day Retention
7%
4%
9%
13%
28 Day Retention
2%
1%
4%
4%
90 Day Retention
1%
1%
1%
1%
KPI Benchmarking
The following results are based on benchmarking Panda Party’s
players dataset against GameAnalytics digital footprint, and they
are presented broken down by Panda Party’s genre affiliation. The
table below presents a comprehensive analysis of 9 essential metrics
across the GameAnalytics network for the 3 genres: Action/Adventure,
Racing and Strategy.
Note: Genres are determined by the app store category submission
of each game, as well as a qualitative assessment made by
GameAnalytics.
For a clearer understanding, the table on the right uses colour codes
in order to highlight the metrics for which Panda Party performs
better (green), poorer (red) or equal (blue) to the genres benchmark
(based on the GameAnalytics data).
4
Conclusions
• Panda Party falls below the median benchmark for all revenue
related metrics.
• This is driven by low conversion - Panda Party is not converting
players into monetizers at the rate of games across Action/
Adventure, Racing and Strategy games.
• ARPPU is also low. Once Panda Party converts players into
spenders, those players do not spend as much money in Panda
Party as they do in other games of similar genre.
• Retention rates for the first month are higher than those of similar
games, but drop to be on par in the longer term (90 day).
• Panda Party users play for similar amounts of time as players of
similar genres, but they play more frequently than in other Action/
Adventure and Racing games.
• While Panda Party is deemed a strategy game, its more casual
style gives it a shorter session length than other strategy games.
Recommendations
• Focus development efforts on converting players into spenders.
• Players in similar games (Action/Adventure, Racing and Strategy)
are spending more money per transaction and on average (ARPPU)
than in Panda Party. Increasing the price of existing items, or
adding additional higher priced items into your shop may help to
increase these metrics.
• Work on increasing long-term retention by creating more game
levels. 90-day retention may be impacted by players completing
all content available.
• Consider cross promoting players who complete all content into
another game in your portfolio.
Gamer Profiles
The following results will give insights into the behaviour of Panda
Party’s players in the other games across the GameAnalytics’ network
they play. This will result in a better understanding of the players
personas, their genre affinity and the time they spend playing games.
This will in turn result in a more detailed player profile, based on
which strategies may be devised for user acquisition efforts: best
acquisition channels, genre and specific games targeting, marketing
message formulation.
• Analyze your in-game economy to understand if/when players run
out of gold. It may be that there is too much free gold rewarded
that is precluding players from spending money.
• Features that increase the session length may help conversion
by giving players more time to get through content and reach
paywalls in the game.
5
How many games do Panda Party’s users
play?
The chart below breaks down Panda Party’s players base by how
many games they play across the GameAnalytics network, and
compares it to all of the players in the GameAnalytics network.
Panda Party has slightly more of its players that are multi-game
players, with 22% playing more than 1 game compared to 18.8%.
Panda Party has a slightly lower percentage of dedicated gamers,
with 2.04% playing more than 4 games compared to 2.48% across the
network.
Number of Games Played per Player
100%
GA Network
Panda Party
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
1
2
3
4
5
6
+7
6
Genre
Panda Party Rank
GameAnalytics Network
Rank
Panda Party % of Players
GameAnalytics % of Players
Arcade
1
1
96.7
35.1
Hidden Object
2
20
2.9
0.1
Simulation
3
5
0.2
4.3
Action/Adventure
4
12
0.1
1.3
What genres do Panda Party’s players
prefer?
A close look at the genre distribution of the games Panda Party’s
users play will give a comprehensive understanding of these players’
gaming preferences.
Hidden Object and Action/Adventure genres stand out as preferred by
Panda Party players compared to the rest of GameAnalytics’ network.
These games rank highly among Panda Party players (2nd and 4th
respectively), but are lower for other players.
Arcade and Simulation are highly played by Panda Party players and
other players alike.
Of Panda Party’s players that we have identified to be playing more
than 1 game across the GameAnalytics network, the majority of them
prefer Arcade games (96.7%), followed by Hidden Object (2.9%) and
Simulation (0.2%) games.
For comparison, the chart above shows the network rank of genres
across GameAnalytics’ entire network of players.
7
Conclusions
• Panda Party players are casual, slightly skewed towards mid-core
gamers.
• Panda Party has slightly more users who play multiple games than
is the norm.
• Arcade, Hidden Object, Simulation and Action/Adventure are the
top genre types that Panda Party users play outside of Panda Party.
Recommendations
• Target casual and mid-core gamers with your user acquisition
efforts. Facebook (for casual gamers) and Chartboost (for mid-core
gamers) might be among the best channels to pursue.
• Direct deals in Chartboost with games that offer synchronous
multiplayer gameplay should also prove to be an effective
solution.
• Consider developing core features or metagame mechanics that
are specific to Hidden Object and Action/Adventure games within
Panda Party. For example, you could consider giving Panda Party
players a list of items to find/collect across Panda Party levels.
The collection of items could additionally contain and puzzle or
mystery, which is common in Action/Adventure titles.
• Developing new games that are explicitly Arcade, Hidden Object,
Simulation and/or Action/Adventure may be the best approach to
cross-promoting and retaining your existing players.
Loyal, Disloyal and NonSpending Monetizer
Profiles
The following analysis examines the spending patterns of Panda
Party’s players with the intent of revealing any apparent issues with
the game’s monetization mechanics. This will help with determining
which players have the potential to convert, and how to motivate
monetizers to spend higher amounts of money in Panda Party.
Loyal and Disloyal Monetizers
How many of Panda Party’s players spend in other games?
This question looks at Panda Party players’ spending behaviour in
Panda Party compared to their spending behaviour in other games
across the GameAnalytics network.
The data show that over the past 3 months 0.22% (755) of Panda
Party’s users have spent money in Panda Party. Of these monetizers,
731 players (96.82%) have only spent money in Panda Party. We
call these players “loyal monetizers”. The remaining monetizers are
deemed “disloyal monetizers”.
8
The table below shows, by percentiles, the amount of money spent
by Panda Party’s loyal and disloyal monetizers. The amount for the
spending pattern in other games was calculated as an average per
games played, to enable the comparison between the two patterns.
We’ve also included their total spend across other games.
0th
25th
50th
75th
0th
25th
50th
75th
90th
Disloyal Monetizer Transactions
Amounts in Panda Party
$1.99
$3.49
$4.99
$9.99
$19.65
Disloyal Monetizer Transaction
Amount in Other Games
$0.69
$2.13
$3.99
$4.28
$6.47
90th
Loyal Monetizers Spend in
Panda Party
$1.99
$1.99
$4.99
$9.99
$24.99
Disloyal Monetizers Spend in
Panda Party
$1.99
$4.99
$9.99
$23.94
$50.97
Disloyal Monetizers Total Spend
in Other Games
$0.69
$3.99
$14.93
$28.98
$158.66
Disloyal Monetizers Average
Spend in Other Games
$0.69
$3.99
$9.66
$21.96
$46.31
As shown above, Panda Party’s disloyal monetizers have actually
spent more in Panda Party over the past 3 months than loyal
monetizers ($9.99 versus $4.99 for typical monetizers). Disloyal
monetizers generally spend as much in Panda Party as they do on
average in other games ($9.99 versus $9.66.)
The table above shows the comparison between the average revenue
per transaction Panda Party’s disloyal monetizers generated in Panda
Party versus in the other games. This shows that transaction amounts
in Panda Party are higher than transactions made in other games by
these users.
What game genres do Disloyal Monetizers prefer to spend
in?
Genre
Panda Party
Rank
GameAnalytics
Network Rank
% of
Spenders
Arcade
1
1
50%
Simulation
3
5
50%
In total, disloyal monetizers have spent $14.93 in gaming, and Panda
Party has captured 67% of that spend.
9
By looking at what genres Panda Party’s disloyal monetizers prefer to
spend in, their preferences are split between Arcade and Simulation.
These are also very highly spent in genres across the GameAnalytics’
network. Interestingly, Panda Party’s disloyal monetizers do not spend
in Hidden Object or Action/Adventures games even though Panda
Party players do prefer those genres to others.
Non-Spending Monetizers
How much do Panda Party’s non-spenders spend in other
games?
There are an additional 260 Panda Party users (0.07%) that have made
a purchase in other games, but not in Panda Party. We call these
players “Non-Spending Monetizers”.
What game genres do Panda Party’s non-spenders play and
spend in?
The chart below shows the genre distribution of the games Panda
Party non-spenders play. Of these three, the only genre that these
monetizers spend money in is Arcade.
Genre
Panda Party
Rank
GameAnalytics
Network Rank
% of
Spenders
Arcade
1
1
98.48%
Hidden Object
2
30
1.07%
Simulation
3
5
0.45%
Conclusions
0th
25th
50th
75th
90th
Non-Spending Monetizers Average Spend in Other Games
$0.01
$0.69
$1.99
$4.99
$11.91
Non-Spending Monetizers Total
Spend in Other Games
• Panda Party’s monetizers are not likely to also be spending money
in other games.
$0.01
$0.69
$1.99
$4.99
$11.91
• While Panda Party is capturing the majority of their disloyal
monetizers gaming spend, there is an additional 33% of gaming
spend available.
This cohort has spent just $1.99 over the past 3 months outside of
Panda Party. This indicates that efforts put towards converting these
players would not necessarily be lucrative.
• There are an additional 215 players that spend money in other
games (namely Arcade and Hidden Object genres), but do not
spend money in Panda Party. However, given how much these
players spend in other games, efforts to convert them would not
10
be lucrative.
• Transaction amounts in Panda Party are higher than those made in
other games.
Whale Monetizer Profile
Recommendations
The following section offers an in depth analysis on Panda Party’s
monetizers pertaining to the 90th percentile in terms of revenue
generated. The cohort on which we ran the analysis to achieve the
results below are Panda Party’s whales. These insights will highlight
the spending and gaming behaviour of the most important players of
Panda Party, and can result in actions that will ensure these users are
retained on the long term, and also leveraged towards profiling for
ROI positive UA campaigns.
• With extremely loyal monetizers in Panda Party, it may be an
opportunity to increase the prices for Panda Party’s virtual goods,
or to add additional virtual goods with higher prices.
• Panda Party could also consider a dynamic pricing model that
determines prices proportionate to the willingness of the player
to spend. E.g. If you have seen a monetizer make a purchase for
$100, the next time you could present them with the $100 option
and a higher priced item.
Who Are Panda Party’s whales?
• Given Panda Party’s loyal monetizers, it does not make sense
to offer deep discounts on in-game items. Testing different
promotional rates in the range of 10% to 20% max could give
greater understanding into the price elasticity of these monetizers.
Of the total number of monetizers, we considered 87 players (11.5%)
as being whales. These whales spent greater than $50 over the last 3
months, which makes them part of the 90th percentile.
• Build games with genres to where you can cross promote these
players to potentially capture more of their gaming spend, namely
Arcade and Simulation.
What genres do Panda Party’s whales prefer to play?
Genre
Panda Party
Rank
GameAnalytics
Network Rank
% of
Spenders
Arcade
1
1
68.48%
Hidden Object
2
5
31.52%
11
Conclusions
The genre distribution in terms of the play affinity of Panda Party’s
whales that also play other games in the network is displayed in
the chart above. We still see Arcade as being the dominant genre,
however, the Panda Party’s whales’ second most played genre is
Hidden Object.
What genres do Panda Party’s whales prefer to spend
money in?
The chart below shows a genre distribution of Panda Party’s whales’
affinity for money spending in games.
• Whales play Arcade and Hidden Object games, preponderantly.
• Whales are also spending in other games, Panda Party has 97.64%
of their total gaming spend.
• The whales analysis results revealed Hidden Object as an interest
genre for whales.
• While 36.96% less Panda Party whales play Hidden Object games
than they do Arcade, these players have a 17.42% higher chance
of spending money in Hidden Object games, than they would in
Arcade.
Recommendations
Panda Party
Rank
GameAnalytics
Network Rank
% of
Spenders
Arcade
1
1
41.29%
• Leverage understanding of genre preferences, and target UA
campaigns to players interested in Arcade and Hidden Object
games.
Hidden Object
2
5
58.71%
• Additionally, add to portfolio of games, Hidden Object games.
Genre
Though the genre distribution of whales in terms of money spending
affinity follows the same pattern as they’re play genre preference, as
shown above, they will spend more on Hidden Object games rather
than on Arcade.
• As already capturing most of wallet, focus on getting more players
like these!
• Ensure you don’t lose whales by providing enough content.
Consider higher prices for whales, dynamic difficulty.
12
Churned Player Profile
The following section concentrates on analysing the users that have
churned from Panda Party. We considered churners to be players that
had been active at least once before 2015-03-01, but which didn’t
return to Panda Party on that month. The points that can be derived
from these results, revolve around considering the reasons for which
these players churned, how this can be prevented, and whether or not
they can be shifted into other games from the studio’s portfolio.
Based on the table above, Panda Party’s churners played slightly more
sessions in Panda Party than in games in the GameAnalytics network.
0.14% of them were monetizers, who spent an average of 12.08$ each
in the game compared to 6.83$ in other games, after churning. They
have also spent considerably more per transaction (and based on
Panda Party’s typical spending patterns find themselves in the 75%
percentile). This may indicate hitting a pay-wall that players found too
expensive.
What genres do Panda Party’s churners play?
Who are Panda Party’s churners
With the above considerations in mind, we found 180,584 (76% of
total number of Panda Party players over the last 3 months) players to
be churners.
The chart below indicates the genre distribution of the games the
churners played after leaving Panda Party.
Genre
PP Rank
GA Network
Rank
PP % of
Players
GA % of
Players
Arcade
1
1
48.7
35.1
Simulation
3
5
24.4
4.3
Hidden Object
2
20
13.7
0.1
Action/
Advenure
4
12
13.2
1.3
PROFILE COMPARISON:
Metric
Sessions
Avg. # of Transactions
Panda Party
6
3
Other Games in the
GA network
5
8
Avg. Revenue per
Transaction
$6.21
$1.42
ARPPU
$12.08
$6.83
13
The genres that appear to have been played by the churners are in
line with the genre affinity of Panda Party’s typical players, with a
small variation between Simulation and Hidden Object. This may
exclude the possibility that these players (the churners) abandoned
the game due to genre incompatibility.
Top 10
Churners
Countries
% of
Churners
% Panda
Player
% GA Players
US
72.36
47.62
59.66
SA
6.35
18.13
0.42
RO
5.36
13.24
1.25
TR
4.2
6.59
0.14
MX
3.32
1.23
0.28
GB
2.68
2.76
6.12
IL
1.83
2.77
0.24
NL
1.45
0.32
3.47
CA
0.99
1.63
5.96
BR
0.76
0.15
3.54
DE
0.72
2.06
3.39
What countries are Panda Party’s churners from?
The map below represents a view over the geographical location of
Panda Party’s churners.
Top 10 Countries of Churn
Users
60%
40%
20%
The majority of the users churned come from the US, where the
competition is extremely high and users are bombarded with game
ads - therefore, it may be that they have churned due to the high
competition on the US market. Considering shifting them to another
14
game in your portfolio. Being part of Tier 1 countries, these players
are more likely to spend in the game too, so cross promotion efforts
should be cost-effective.
• The churners seem to be the right players in terms of genre
affinity;
What genres do Panda Party’s churners spend money in?
• However, the majority come from the US, a Tier 1 country, where
competition is fierce, which may be the reason for churning.
The chart below presents the genre distribution of the games in which
Panda Party’s churners have spent money in.
Recommendations
Genre
PP Rank
GA Network
Rank
PP % of
Players
GA % of
Players
Arcade
1
1
99.02
35.1
Simulation
3
5
0.98
4.3
indicate that they left the game due to a pay-wall they’ve hit;
• Consider cross-promotion as a mean of retaining churners in your
portfolio network - as the majority are coming from the US, they
are likely to convert to paying;
• An analysis on these players’ in-game progression might indicate a
common point of churn, and reveal the reason for which they are
leaving the game.
The results presented above do not point to a disconnect between
genre affinity in terms of spending between Panda Party’s spenders
(both average and whales) and its churners. Considering this, the
aforementioned conclusion, regarding players churning due to Tier 1
market characteristics, remains as valid.
Conclusions
• Panda Party’s churners played slightly more sessions in Panda
Party then in other games in GA;
• 0.14% of the churners were monetizers in the 75%, which may
15
Summary of
Recommendations
Game Design
• Create more game levels to increase long-term retention, as 90day retention may be impacted by players completing all content
available - this will also prevent whales from churning;
• Consider developing core features or metagame mechanics that
are specific to Hidden Object and Action/Adventure games within
Panda Party. For example, you could consider giving Panda Party
players a list of items to find/collect across Panda Party levels. The
collection of items could additionally contain a puzzle or mystery,
which is common in Action/Adventure titles;
that is precluding players from spending money;
• Increase the price of existing items, or add additional higher
priced items into your shop to increase amount per transaction
and ARPPU - as players in similar games (Action/Adventure,
Racing and Strategy) are spending more money per transaction
and on average (ARPPU) than in Panda Party, but also considering
your extremely loyal monetizers;
• Consider a dynamic pricing model that determines prices
proportionate to the willingness of the player to spend. E.g. If you
have seen a monetizer make a purchase for $100, the next time
you could present them with the $100 option and a higher priced
item;
• Test promotional rates in the range of 10% to 20% max to better
understand the price elasticity of your monetizers;
• Consider higher prices for whales, dynamic difficulty.
• Introduce features that increase the session length, which may
help conversion by giving players more time to get through
content and reach paywalls in the game;
• Analyze the in-game progression of churners, to understand the
reason for leaving the game.
Monetization
• Focus development efforts on converting players into spenders;
• Analyze your in-game economy to understand if/when players run
out of gold. It may be that there is too much free gold rewarded
16
User Acquisition
• Target casual and mid-core gamers with your user acquisition
efforts. Facebook (for casual gamers) and Chartboost (for mid-core
gamers) might be among the best channels to pursue;
• Direct deals in Chartboost with games that offer synchronous
multiplayer gameplay should also prove to be an effective
solution;
• Target UA campaigns to players interested in Arcade and Hidden
Object games (leveraging whales genre preferences).
For more information contact
[email protected]
Allison Bilas, VP of Product
[email protected]
Camilla Schilbach, Head of Business Intelligence
[email protected]
• Portfolio Strategy
• Consider cross promoting players who complete all content into
another game in your portfolio;
• Consider cross promotion for players who are likely to churn, in
order to keep them in them in your network;
• Developing new games that are explicitly Arcade, Hidden Object,
Simulation and/or Action/Adventure may be the best approach to
cross-promoting and retaining your existing players;
• Build games with genres to where you can cross promote these
players to potentially capture more of their gaming spend, namely
Arcade and Simulation.
17