Thanks to the online nature of many of today’s games, there’s a wealth of player analytics available to developers. This data is highly valuable as it can be used to make informed decisions about regular updates including bug patches and free or paid-for downloadable content. Updates that can in turn increase sales and make sure that existing players are kept happy and engaged with the game. 

But how do you make sure that you’re making the most of this data and interpreting it correctly? That was the subject of this week’s Tentacle Zone event titled “Data-Driven Design”. 

Our speaker – Jan Vaněček – joined us all the way from Czechia where he works as Design Director at mobile studio Geewa. Jan has a long background in both mobile and console / PC development so we were excited to hear what he had to say.

After introducing the concept of data driven design, Jan discussed the thinking and best practices behind gathering data. Firstly, you should gather as much data as possible. Fresh/new data is clearly the most important but it’s also necessary to keep older data in order to compare the two and make better decisions. To make things more manageable you may want to consider keeping less detailed data for anything older than a month.

Another vital part of the data driven design process is analytics. There’s no point in gathering vast quantities of information if you aren’t able to break it down into manageable chunks that are actually useful. Depending on the size of your team you may be able to create an analytics system internally. If not, there are a number of third party systems that will do the job for you. 

Thanks to Jan for his time and a fabulous talk. Hopefully, you enjoyed this tiny snippet of its content. If you’d like to attend virtual talks like Jan’s then we have the answer – join us at the Tentacle Zone! We have office space available in central London – both short and long term – for any industry folks who are interested. 

Take a look at our workspace page for all the benefits that TZ membership brings including: free parking space, all the tea and coffee you can drink and networking opportunities with fellow devs. If you have questions or need further details then get in touch and we’ll get back to you straight away.