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

Why Asian countries spend so much on gaming?

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.

Why is the TYRH phenomenon prominent

in the mobile games?

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

Hypothesis

Social Structure

TYRH

Spending More On Mobile GamingMobile Game

Design

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…

What causes the spending difference

between countries?

Question 1

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 …

Summary 1

Use PCA to deal with sign flip problemW

ages

per

hou

r (z-

scor

e)

Life Satisfaction (z-score)

High Wages And Satisfied

High Wages But Unsatisfied

K-means Clustering (RMSE) into 4 groups

PC1

PC2

HWAS HWBU

Education Index Gini Index Unemployment Rate

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.

Why do diligent countries spend

disproportionally more?

Question 2

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

,

Summary 2

Life SatisfactionAttitude to Competition

Disposable Salary / Smartphone Usage Rate

Gini Index Work Hours per Week Unemployment Rate

HSHS HSLS

WVS.099 (Competition Attitude)

WVS.023 (Life Satisfaction)

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.

Thank you for your attention!