Data-driven Analysis Platform for Indie Mobile Game Publishing

Abstract

With the appearance of mobile game devices and third-party game distribution channels, such as App Store and Google Play, more and more independent (Indie) game studios are doing mobile game development and publishing themselves. However, research on using game analytics to help these indie game developers with game publishing is scarce. In practice, due to lack of experience, it is hard for most indie game developers to get correct data and analyze it professionally. In order to guide indie game developers with mobile game publishing, this paper extends the existing ARM funnel model and provides a new concept of mobile game publishing, which can be recognized as two inputs and one output. Then, a mobile game publishing analysis platform called the F2PAP is designed and developed based on the new concept. It can guide indie game developers with data collection, analysis, and visualization for game business evaluation and improve game publishing performance.