tiny yet real happiness in mobile games market - dsaa 2016 game data science
TRANSCRIPT
ON TINY YET REAL HAPPINESS IN MOBILE GAMES MARKET
DSAA 2016 SS ON GAME DATA SCIENCE
Presenter: PoHeng Chen Date: 2016.10.18
Authors
PoHeng Chen RA
YiPei Tu RA
KuanTa Chen PI
Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica
Taiwan
Outline
‣ Introduction ‣ Mobile Games Market ‣ Tiny Yet Real Happiness Phenomenon ‣ Mobile Games Design
‣ Data Collection ‣ Methodology ‣ Two Models ‣ User Contribution / Contribution Deviation Models
‣ Future Work
Mobile Games Market - App Store
# Country App Store (USD, 1 million)
1 USA $2,325
2 Japan $1,746
3 China $816
4 UK $411
5 Australia $286* App Annie, 2013.09 - 2014.08
Mobile Games Market - Google Play
# Country Google Play (USD, 1 million)
1 Japan $2,002
2 USA $965
3 South Korea $932
4 Germany $176
5 Taiwan $153* App Annie, 2013.09 - 2014.08
Mobile Games Market - Both Markets
# Country Per-person Spending (USD)
1 Japan $125.2
2 Hong Kong $64.2
3 Singapore $47.92
4 South Korea $42.68
5 Australia $39.35
8 Taiwan $29.71* App Annie, 2013.09 - 2014.08
Tiny Yet Real Happiness (TYRH)
▸ From
▸ ``Afternoon at Langerhan’s Island’’ by Haruki Murakami
▸ Meaning
▸ The small, transient moments of bliss felt during mundane activities
▸ ``After a tough and enduring marathon, have a bottle of cold-refreshing beer’’
Tiny Yet Real Happiness Phenomenon
▸ Due to social problems ▸ Unbalanced salary structure ▸ Unfriendly working environment ▸ High living levels of stress
▸ People (especially younger generation) may lose their ambition to actively develop their careers, and instead to cherish small, ordinary moment of happiness.
The Design of Mobile Games
▸ Fit in with the life style of TYRH phenomenon
▸ Low entrance cost: $0.99, $1.99, $3.99 items
▸ High cost-performance ratio: instant happiness, right time
▸ Fragmented design: short playing time, play on the way to office
Data Collection - Spending Behaviour on Mobile Games
▸ App Annie
▸ Time: 2012 - 2014
▸ Platforms: App Store & Google Play
▸ # of Countries: 50
Data Collection - Country Characteristics (229)
▸ Economic and Working Condition Indices
▸ GDP, export rate, Gini index, unemployment rate…
▸ Socio-demographics and Cultural Indices
▸ work attitude, education, satisfaction, world religions…
▸ Technology Indices
▸ internet development, internet penetration, smartphone usage rate…
Model 1: User Contribution Model
▸ Multiple linear regression model
▸ Y: Average User Contribution: users’ mobile gaming spending on App Store and Google Play
▸ X: All Country Characteristics data without WVS
AUC =
gross revenue
total users
total users = population⇥smartphone usage rate⇥market share
Variable and Model Selections
▸ check Variance Inflation Factors to remove interaction and collinearity problems
▸ do stepwise regression for model selection
▸ check scatter plots
▸ do data transformation
▸ check normality, linearity
▸ repeat …
Conclusion 1
▸ While high wages and high life satisfaction is positively associated with per-user spending on mobile games, high wages but low life satisfaction has stronger weight.
▸ Higher scores on Gini index and lower unemployment are associated with higher per-user spending on mobile games.
▸ These serve as preliminary evidence that people in tough living and working environments are likely to seek entertainment from mobile games.
Model 2: Contribution Deviation Model
▸ Y: Contribution Deviation: a country’s actual spending on mobile games market divided by its predicted spendings
where the subscript as stands for the App Store and gp stands for Google Play.
▸ X: All Country Characteristics data, including WVS
contribution deviation =
yas + ygpyas + ygp
,
Conclusion 2
▸ The predictors measuring the TYRH phenomenon become more significant in Model 2: high Gini index, low unemployment rate, and low life satisfaction.
▸ Longer work hours appears in Model 2, demonstrating positive relationship with response variable Y.
▸ Confirm that TYRH phenomenon plays an important role in influencing mobile games market.
Contribution
▸ The 1st paper investigating and linking TYRH phenomenon to mobile games
▸ Confirm that higher levels of economic and education are associated with increased user spending on mobile games
▸ While high levels of life satisfaction are associated with increases in user spending, low life satisfaction is also associated with increases in such spending.
▸ Long work hours, higher Gini index, lower unemployment rates, and lower life satisfaction are associated with higher user spending on mobile games.
Future Work
▸ Investigate the interaction between game play and spending behaviour by including more behavioural data to explain how games are played as well as how they are paid for
▸ Genre-specific models: explain model game spending in different types of games, such as RPG, action, puzzle…
▸ Ultimate goal: understand more about our societies and world, and identify ways to improve them.