GamesAnalytics has announced that they will start working with Edinburgh Napier University. The data mining and monetization company will work on a new Social Network Analysis project supported by the Scottish Funding Council.
“Within online social games, viral growth is extremely important,” said Mark Robinson, Chief Operating Officer at GamesAnalytics. “For a social game to succeed, it needs its players to be extremely active in terms of inviting friends, notifying them of recent in-game events, or providing them with game-related gifts. These social players may not be spending any actual money in the game, but they are extremely valuable in terms of their ability to bring in other players and provide cohesion to an online social group. The industry has often talked about the importance of nurturing the big spending Whales , but it is actually these highly social players who are the lifeblood of any social game.”
“By using Social Network Analysis we can map virtual social networks and rank players in terms of their social influence. Building positive interactions between players, especially highly influential players, results in a dramatically positive effect on the success of an online game,” added Robinson. “In order to really understand the gaming experience and increase player loyalty, satisfaction and ultimately revenue, the games industry needs to move away from low resolution global game metrics to highly detailed individual player focused methodologies, such as Social Network Analysis.”
“Social Network Analysis looks at how people people fit in social networks and how individuals influence social groups. While it’s been used in the past for such esoteric things like contraception as a means for family planning and health reasons in rural Bangladeshi communities, this time the methodology will be applied to virtual worlds through the study of social networks within Facebook and other online games.”
“To our knowledge, Social Network Analysis has rarely been used to understand virtual, rather than real world, social interaction,” adds Professor Robert Raeside (PhD), Professor in Applied Statistics at Edinburgh Napier University. “This is a very important development as more and more interaction takes place online it is crucial to understand how this differs from interaction in the real world. This has ramifications beyond the gaming world and will be important in understanding the impact of virtual interaction in all areas of society.”
“At Edinburgh Napier we are keen to promote the transfer of knowledge between academia and business,” added Raeside. “We are extremely excited to be working with GamesAnalytics on this project. The academic input will be to develop analytical capacity by the application of statistical methods and methods of data visualization which will involve collaboration between statistics researchers in the Employment Research Institute and researchers in the Institute of Informatics and Digital Information at Edinburgh Napier University.”
