Project background:
Video games generate Terabytes of data from thousands of players who play the games simultaneously every day. Mobile and video gaming industry is faced with the challenge of making sense of this big-data in real time and uncover player insights like who is most likely to convert from a free to a paying player, what is the Life Time Value (LTV) of a player, who is a ‘churn’ candidate that should be retained etc. Precision Gaming enables game producers to maximize monetization, increase player loyalty and engagement, and improve marketing ROI through predictive and other complex analytics based on each player’s playing and purchase behavior.
This cloud-based solution for online and mobile gaming industry delivers personalized offers/messages in real-time based on each player’s playing and purchase behavior. Precision Gaming is offered as a custom development project for the gaming companies worldwide.
This solution is also highly applicable for companies in other consumer-facing industries that need to analyze Big Data - both streaming and historical - and translate the insight into personalized experiences in real-time (For e.g. Retail, Banking, Travel & Transportation, Consumer Product, High Tech, Telecom and Media).
My responsibilities
I worked closely with product owners and developers to get requirements, brainstormed solutions, proposed design options and created design for implementation. I also managed the timeline of this project from the design phase through the implementation phase to make sure each milestone was completed in time.
Design goal
In order to help SAP customers to understand the business model of Precision Gaming as well as how SAP technology is able to leverage gaming industry to a new level, we need to convert the abstract technology to an understandable visual language that everyone can easily understand and buy in.
Challenge
The real-time big data analysis is the core of the precision gaming product, how to visualize the abstract process and help our customers to easily understand the logic/power of this product is a big challenge.
Solution
Using big screen display to present how the SAP HANA Big Data analysis power can help gaming companies to identify more personalized offer to their customers, thus improving the performance and loyalty of the players, and leveraging the profit of the company in a result.
Process
When I was working on this project, I had scrum meeting with the product owner and the developers every day. I created a time sheet to manage the timeline of the project and checked with all the stakeholders for each milestone. I discussed with the team to understand the requirement and brainstormed with them to get the solutions. Based on the requirements, I proposed different design options, presented to the team, got feedback, updated the design and delivered the final design along with the specs. During the implementation phase, I sit with the developers to discuss the details of the design and balance the design and limitation of the implementation. During this end to end design process, I delivered the high quality design to meet the requirements of other stakeholders and also collaborated with developers to help the implementation as close to the design as possible.
Time management:
Design iterations:
Deliver the design to development team:
Review implementation:
Final design explanations:
1. Framework:
This screen has three display areas:
Left-- the Player, Luke123's statistics, and skill levels
Upper right-- Luke123's real-time screen
Bottom right-- Global Users' statistics
2. Playing:
Once Luke123 starts playing the game, 'Precision Gaming' starts collecting and analyzing both his and the global users' statistics. For example: Luke123’s playing behavior is analyzed and reported in terms of his attack skill, defense skill, targeting skill etc. in real time. Similarly for global users, every piece of information is collected, analyzed and compared in real time.
3. Get Killed:
This screen shows the moment that Luke123 is destroyed.
4. Receiving Personalized Offer:
Right after Luke123 gets killed in the game, 'Precision Gaming' identifies the critical issue which caused Luke123's failure based on his game-play; as a result, an Avatar (the blond hair girl) comes on screen and offers the exact equipment that Luke123 needs in a similar situation next time. This will significantly improve his chances of completing this challenge while improving his performance in this game.
Now game manufacturer can sell more pertinent power-ups that increase the chances of a sale rather than a generalized blanket deal. This dramatically increases the customer's engagement and takes his loyalty to the franchise to a much higher level.
An overview of SAP HANA's video gaming analytics
By Rajiv Nema, Director of Marketing
Outcome
The design was presented and showcased in multiple big events in Silicon Valley, such as SAP TechCrunch, SAP TechED, SAP Big Data Bus etc. The design helps SAP customers to easily understand how the HANA Big Data Analysis can help their business and thus attracting more customers from gaming industry to work with SAP to improve their businesses to a new level.
