作者：Catherine Mylinh

Jogonaut是家社交游戏公司，他们的第一款游戏《OJO AGENT》旨在瞄准中间核心玩家，主要是21-39岁之间的男性。在《OJO AGENT》中，玩家扮演体育经纪人，负责说服及签约真正的运动员。游戏采用HTML5技术，既是供玩家享受社交体育游戏的互动平台，也是若干全球知名品牌的营销平台。

我们日前有幸采访了Jogonaut创始人及CEO Barry Carpe，谈论数据导向设计的重要性，及他如何通过分析持续向玩家呈现最佳用户体验。此外，他还分享了若干宝贵的游戏营销和开发建议。

为什么分析工作如此重要？

通过分析，我们得以知晓作品中的什么内容能够顺利运作，什么内容有失水准。利用Kontagent提供的数据，我们能够快速发现新的留存和创收机会，同时追踪玩法趋势，替用户完善整体体验。

Kontagent kScope OJO Agent from kaleidoscope.kontagent.com

作为游戏工作室，什么是你们的主要商业目标？

在Jogonaut，我们的主要商业目标是基于用户漏斗图监管和完善我们的内容，开发出不仅能够提高留存率和创收水平，而且能够基于用户趋势做出调整，提供更令人满意、更有趣体验的游戏作品。

Kontagent在协助我们实现这一目标方面发挥重要作用——其数据追踪的深入性让我们得以将收益翻一番，吸引知名品牌，成为可行的营销平台。

jogonaut color logo from kaleidoscope.kontagent.com

就目前及未来来看，你们主要着眼于哪些具体数据？

我们通过Kontagent kSuite把握玩家的活跃漏斗图。例如，我们查看有多少玩家起初就通过预期方式同游戏进行互动，安装成本（CPI），留存率，日活跃用户（DAU），月活跃用户（MAU），付费用户的平均收益（ARPPU）及游戏时间。

把握所有这些参数意味着，我们能够持续完善游戏玩法和娱乐价值，同时减少创收方面的投入。

此外，我们还能够轻松追踪和优化用户获取成本（游戏邦注：主要基于资源、用户分布及地理位置）；因此，我们还能够针对具体的活动内容绘制投资曲线，以衡量用户的终身价值。这让我们得以获悉哪些是最佳用户，然后我们就可以将营销资本集中瞄准他们。

你们如何确保目标用户群体能够发现你们的作品？

我们当前的营销计划包括同玩家进行社交互动、邮件推广、忠实玩家俱乐部及付费广告。此外，我们还和若干全国性品牌商讨独特的合作营销机会。

通过Facebook同玩家进行互动完全不费吹灰之力。我们首先采取的举措是，建立企业页面，在此我们能够同玩家沟通，收集有关游戏的反馈信息。Facebook页面还让我们得以向玩家发送促销内容，这能够有效提高用户留存率。

研究表明，邮件推广依然是获取在线用户最有效的方式，所以我们整理出愿意接收促销内容和战略建议的用户列表。除邮件和社交营销外，我们还开展忠诚计划，这里游戏的杰出玩家（游戏邦注：基于投入和成就）会收到特殊的忠诚道具及来自我们管理人员的个人感谢信。

在获取这些用户方面，你们是否学到什么经验？

供其他游戏公司参考的一点经验是：在决定促销内容时，确保内容的高效性非常重要。你多半希望自己分发的是能够帮助游戏玩家的奖品及折扣道具。这能够显著提高你的点击率及邮件阅读率。

和多数社交游戏公司一样，我们也投放付费广告，旨在囊括更多新用户。我们投放的大多都是Facebook广告，尽管我们有尝试各种各样的用户获取渠道，以期瞄准最适合、最具粘性的用户。

我们目前正就这些促销活动进行A/B测试，Kontagent在协助我们判断哪些活动表现最佳，能够带来最具价值的用户方面起到关键性作用。

ojoagent facebook game from kaleidoscope.kontagent.com

你们具体利用什么广告活动、应用植入广告及交叉推广方式？

我们的主要侧重点在于Facebook广告。话虽如此，我们也利用其它不同渠道，包括在备受关注的游戏网站和博客刊登横幅广告。

但对于有推出Facebook作品的游戏公司而言，Facebook广告堪称完美搭档。用户看到广告时，只消轻轻点击，就能够进入游戏当中。另一优点是，Facebook让你在锁定用户时能够有高度的针对性。最近报告表明，社交游戏公司的点击成本远低于品牌公司，因为他们有效瞄准目标用户——这要归功于Kontagent提供的数据。

所以你促使用户点击广告内容——棒极了。下步举措？留存率参数？你们是否基于这些数据调整游戏内容？

没错。我们的Agenda任务机制会给玩家设定稳定的节奏。基于我们通过Agenda看到的参数，我们得以做出细微调整，提高留存率、创收水平，最终是娱乐价值。

此外，在BETA阶段，我们发现游戏第1天的留存率相当高，但第7天则出现急剧下滑。为提高这些数据，进行正式发行工作，我们允许玩家同其好友展开互动。我们发现，这一社交互动不仅提高留存率，还帮我们建立一个很棒的社区。

我们未来定能够有效提高游戏的社交互动和病毒式传播渠道，在《OJO AGENT》中融入更多的竞争性元素，植入现实世界的活动内容。

没有数据，我们就无法获悉什么内容吸引玩家。通过数据，我们坚信自己能够创造出有效推动长期留存率和收益的核心功能。

除外提高游戏留存率外，你们在更新和调整游戏方面还着眼于哪些其他参数？

留存率对我们而言非常重要，但我们还特别留心游戏时间、日均投资、ARPPU及DAU。现在我们同时利用SpruceMedia及Kontagent平台，在一个面板上，我们得以获悉用户获取渠道的留存率水平，还有其他的重要参数。

OJO AGENT玩家在关卡1-8呈递减趋势 from kaleidoscope.kontagent.com

此外，我们还持续查看我们的用户活跃漏斗图。在开始游戏前，所有《OJO AGENT》玩家都会受到简短指南的引导。我们持续进行检验，旨在确保指南阶段的用户数量不会出现急剧下滑。同样，我们也通过持续检验，确保完成指南的玩家采取能够带来较高第1天及第7天留存率的预期操作。

在Kontagent，我们坚信将所有数据汇聚到便于阅读的面板（游戏邦注：这面向整个公司）中能够促使用户以锁定步骤进行操作——相同数据，相同目标。和我们谈谈你们接触kSuite面板的感受。

这完全没错。可视化数据能够帮我们快速辨别趋势，发现可行和不可行的内容。这让我们能够投入更少时间挖掘相关数据，让我们能够更高效地利用时间，开发出有创意的游戏元素。

这涉及机会成本——Kontagent无疑给团队成员省下众多时间和资源，从营销、用户获取方面到游戏开发。

An example of Kontagent-kSuite dashboard from kaleidoscope.kontagent.com

对于其他游戏开发者，你有没有什么建议？

分析工作是我们游戏开发过程中的基石，对于所取得的结果，我们感到非常满意。

称Kontagent让我们得以清楚把握用户行为，进而有效提高我们的用户获取、留存率及创收水平算是颇为含蓄了。

我们强烈建议所有开发者找出自己的KPI，通过Kontagent kSuite之类的软件持续追踪运作情况。他们能够基于获取来源、分布情况和地理位置就玩家进行分类，进而找出最引人注目的玩家类型。最重要的是，把握相关数据后，开发者必须基于此优化玩法。这是他们能够在此免费模式领域生存的唯一方式。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Using Data-Driven Game Design to Acquire High-Value Players

By Catherine Mylinh

Jogonaut is a social gaming company. Its debut title, OJO AGENT, is aimed at mid-core gamers who are predominantly male ages 21 to 39. In OJO AGENT, players act as sports agents who must pitch and sign real athletes as clients. The game is built using HTML5 and serves as both an interactive platform for players to enjoy a social sports game and a marketing platform for some of the world’s biggest brands.

We spoke with Jogonaut Founder and CEO Barry Carpe on the importance of data-driven design, and how he’s using analytics to continually provide the best user experience to his players. He also shared some great game marketing and development tips.

Why are analytics important?

Analytics provide insight into what is working well and what is under-performing in any product. Using the data Kontagent provides us, we’re able to quickly identify new retention and monetization opportunities, as well as track game-play trends to improve the overall experience for our users.

What are your primary business objectives as a game studio?

At Jogonaut, our primary business objective has been to curate and refine our content based on player funnels and develop a game that not only drives retention and monetization, but also adapts based on user trends to deliver a more satisfying, entertaining experience.

Kontagent has been instrumental in helping us achieve this goal—the depth of their statistical tracking has allowed us to double our revenue and attract noteworthy brands to our viability as a marketing platform.

What specific insights are you looking to gain—now and in the future?

We use Kontagent kSuite to gain insight on our player activation funnels. For example, we look at how many people take the first desired steps to get them engaged with the game, cost per install (CPI), retention rates, daily active users (DAU), monthly active users (MAU), average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) and session times.

Having insight to all of these metrics means we’re constantly able to improve game play and entertainment value for our users, as well as tighten monetization efforts.

Furthermore, we are able to easily track and optimize user acquisition spend based on source, demographic and geography; therefore, we’re also able to build spending curves for each of our campaign segments to gauge the approximate lifetime value of a user. This helps us to determine who the best players are, and then we can focus our marketing dollars toward them.

How are you ensuring the right players find your game?

Our current marketing plan includes social engagement with players, email promotions, a player loyalty club and paid advertisements. Additionally, we’re in talks with several national brands discussing unique co-marketing opportunities.

Engaging our players on Facebook is a no-brainer. One of the first things we did was set up a business page where we could communicate with players and gather feedback about the game. The Facebook page also allows us to send players promotions that help our retention rates.

Research shows that email marketing is still the most effective way to reach an online audience, so we have built up a healthy list of players who opt-in to receive promotions and strategy tips. In addition to email and social marketing, we also have a loyalty program in place where top players in our game (based on spend and achievements) can receive special loyalty items and personal thank-you letters from our staff members.

Any lessons learned so far in acquiring these users?

One note to other gaming companies: When deciding on promotions it’s important to make them impactful. You’ll want to give away bonuses and discounted items that really help a player in the game. This will ensure your click or email-open rates remain high. (Read more on email marketing tips.)

Like most social gaming companies, we run paid ads to help reach new players. Most of the ads we run are Facebook ads though we’re experimenting with a variety of different acquisition channels to target the best, most engaged players.

We’re A/B testing these promotions now, and Kontagent is crucial in helping us determine which campaigns are performing the best, and bringing in the most high-value players. (We’ll be sharing the results in a later post.)

Specifically, what kind of ad campaigns, in-app ads, cross-promotions are you using?

Our main focus—no surprise—is running Facebook ads. That being said, we are diversifying a bit by including banner ads on highly targeted gaming sites and blogs.

Facebook ads are such a perfect fit for any company with a Facebook game though. Your audience is just one click away from playing your game when they see the ad. Another advantage is Facebook allows you to get hyper-specific when targeting users. A recent report suggests social gaming companies are receiving lower cost-per-click rates than brands because we are able to target so well—our own data shows this to be true, thanks to the data Kontagent provides us!

So you’re getting users to click on ads—great. What’s next? What about retention metrics? Are you making changes to your game based on those?

Definitely. In particular, our Agenda mission system is designed to set a steady pace for our users, and based on the metrics we’ve seen with the Agenda, we’ve been able to make subtle tweaks and adjustments to improve retention, monetization and ultimately, entertainment value.

Also, during our BETA phase we noticed that our Day-1 retention rate was quite high, but saw a significant drop-off on Day-7. To help improve these numbers for the official launch, we introduced the ability for players to interact with their friends. Not only are we seeing good signs that this social interaction is increasing retention, the feature is helping us build a great community.

Looking into the future, we see tremendous opportunities in increasing the avenues for social interaction and virality, competition and integration with real world events within OJO AGENT.

Without data, we might not have the insights into what appeals to players. With data, we firmly believe we have the insights to create core features that will drive long-term retention and revenue.

And, once you’ve tuned the game to increase retention rates, what are some other metrics you pay attention in order to iterate and fine-tune your game?

Retention is vitally important to us, but we’re also closely monitoring session time, daily spend, ARPPU and DAU. Now that we are using SpruceMedia in conjunction with Kontagent, from one dashboard we’re able to see our retention rates from user acquisition channels alongside these other important metrics.

Additionally, we’re always monitoring our activation funnels. All OJO AGENT players are guided through a brief tutorial (Level 1 in the image above) before they begin playing the game. We’re constantly checking to make sure there is minimal drop-off during this tutorial. And again, we’re also always checking to make sure the players who complete the tutorial are taking the first series of desired actions that lead to high Day-1 and Day-7 retention rates.

At Kontagent, we firmly believe that the ability to bubble up all the data into an easy-to-read dashboard that is accessible to the entire organization helps our customers all work in lock-step—same data, same goals. Tell us your experience with the kSuite dashboard.

That’s absolutely true. The data visualizations really help us to quickly recognize trends, and identify what’s working and what isn’t. This enables us to spend much less time digging for relevant data and insights, and allows us to instead use that time more efficiently to develop the creative aspects of our games.

It’s about opportunity costs—Kontagent definitely saves time and resources for everyone on our team, from marketing and user acquisition to game development.

Any tips/advice for other game developers?

Analytics are the cornerstone of our product development process and we couldn’t be happier with the results we’re seeing.

To say that Kontagent enables us to understand user behavior so we can optimally increase user acquisition, retention and monetization is an understatement.

We would highly suggest all game developers identify their KPIs and track performance over time using software such as Kontagent kSuite. They can group players by acquisition source, demographic and geo-location to identify the most attractive types of players. Then, most importantly, after they have that data, developers must optimize game play based on it. That’s the only way they’ll be able to survive in this free-to-play world.（Source：kaleidoscope.kontagent）