AWS Game Analytics - GDC 2014

AWS Gaming Solutions | GDC 2014

Game Analytics with AWS Or, How to learn what your players love so they will love your game Nate Wiger @nateware | Principal Gaming Solutions Architect


Mobile Game Landscape

•  Free To Play •  In-App Purchases •  Long-Tail •  Cross-Platform •  Go Global •  User Retention = Revenue


Projected Mobile App Revenue

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Ads IAP Paid

Source: Gartner


Winning at Free to Play

•  Phase 1: Collect Data •  Phase 2: Analyze •  Phase 3: Profit


Analyze What?

Emotions •  Enjoying game •  Engaged •  Like/dislike new content •  Stuck on a level •  Bored •  Abandonment

Behaviors •  Hours played day/week •  Number of sessions/day •  Level progression •  Friend invites/referrals •  Response to mobile push •  Money spent/week


Example: Level Progression (One Metric)

0

2

4

6

8

10

L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 L10

Tries / Level

# of Tries


Example: Level Progression (Two Metrics)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

0

2

4

6

8

10

L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 L10

Tries / Level

% Highest Level # of Tries


Key Takeaways

•  Multiple data sources •  Correlate variables •  Deltas vs absolutes •  Settle on terminology (game vs level) •  Time matters


Events & Metrics

•  Event = Moment in Time –  Login/quit –  Game start/end –  Level up –  In-app purchase

•  Metrics = What to Measure –  KISS –  Numbers –  Booleans –  Strings (Enums)

•  Always Include (ALWAYS) –  User –  Action –  Session (context-dependent) –  Timestamp in ISO8601

2014-‐03-‐16T16:28:26


Off The Shelf Analytics

•  Easy To Integrate •  Pre-Baked Reports •  Rate Limits •  Retention Windows •  Data Lock-In


Ok, A Real Business Plan

Ingest Store Process Analyze


Ok, A Real Business Plan

Ingest • HTTP PUT • Kafka • Kinesis • Scribe

Store • S3 • DynamoDB • HDFS • Redshift

Process • EMR (Hadoop) • Spark • Storm

Analyze • Tableau • Pentaho •  Jaspersoft


•  Write Events File on Device •  Periodically Upload to S3 •  Process into Redshift •  Point GUI Tool to Redshift

Start Simple

2014-‐01-‐24,nateware,e4df,login 2014-‐01-‐24,nateware,e4df,gamestart 2014-‐01-‐24,nateware,e4df,gameend 2014-‐01-‐25,nateware,a88c,login 2014-‐01-‐25,nateware,a88c,friendlist 2014-‐01-‐25,nateware,a88c,gamestart

Profit!


Redshift at a Glance

10 GigE (HPC)

Ingestion Backup Restore

SQL Clients/BI Tools

128GB RAM

16TB disk

16 cores

Amazon S3/DynamoDB

JDBC/ODBC

128GB RAM

16TB disk

16 cores Compute Node

128GB RAM

16TB disk


128GB RAM

16TB disk


Leader Node

•  Leader Node –  SQL endpoint –  Stores metadata –  Coordinates query execution

•  Compute Nodes –  Columnar table storage –  Load, backup, restore via Amazon S3 –  Parallel load from Amazon DynamoDB

•  Single node version available


Tableau + Redshift


Plumbing

①  Create S3 bucket ("mygame-analytics-events") ②  Request a security token for your mobile app:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/STS/latest/UsingSTS/Welcome.html

③  Upload data from your users' devices ④  Run a scheduled copy to Redshift ⑤  Setup Tableau to access Redshift ⑥  Go to the Beach


Loading Redshift from S3

copy events from 's3://mygame-‐analytics-‐events' credentials 'aws_access_key_id=<access-‐key-‐id>; aws_secret_access_key=<secret-‐access-‐key>' delimiter=',';

Scheduled Redshift Load using Data Pipeline: http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1143507459230804


•  Also Collect Server Logs •  Periodically Upload to S3 •  Stuff into Redshift •  External Analytics Data Too

More Data Sources

EC2

External Analytics


Logrotate to S3

/var/log/apache2/*.log { sharedscripts postrotate sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl graceful s3cmd sync /var/log/*.gz s3://mygame-‐logs/ endscript }

Blog Entry on Log Rotation: http://www.dowdandassociates.com/blog/content/howto-rotate-logs-to-s3/ And/or, Use ELB Access Logs: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ElasticLoadBalancing/latest/DeveloperGuide/access-log-collection.html


•  Different File Formats •  Device vs Apache vs CDN •  Cleanup with EMR Job •  Output to Clean Bucket •  Load into Redshift

Dealing With Messy Data

EC2


Redshift vs Elastic MapReduce

Redshift •  Columnar DB •  Familiar SQL •  Structured Data •  Batch Load •  Faster to Query •  Long-term Storage

Elastic MapReduce •  Hadoop •  Hive/Pig are SQL-like •  Unstructured Data •  Streaming Loop •  Scales > PB's •  Transient


•  Integrate Game DB •  Load Directly into Redshift •  Redshift does Intelligent Merge •  Tracks Hash Keys, Columns

Direct From DynamoDB

EC2


•  Integrate Game DB •  Load Directly into Redshift •  Redshift does Intelligent Merge •  Tracks Hash Keys, Columns •  Or Stream into EMR

Direct From DynamoDB

EC2


Loading Redshift from DynamoDB

copy games from 'dynamodb://games' credentials 'aws_access_key_id=<access-‐key-‐id>; aws_secret_access_key=<secret-‐access-‐key>';

copy events from 's3://mygame-‐analytics-‐events' credentials 'aws_access_key_id=<access-‐key-‐id>; aws_secret_access_key=<secret-‐access-‐key>' delimiter=',';


Funnel Cake


Back To Basics

2014-‐01-‐24,nateware,e4df,login 2014-‐01-‐24,nateware,e4df,gamestart 2014-‐01-‐24,nateware,e4df,gameend 2014-‐01-‐25,nateware,a88c,login 2014-‐01-‐25,nateware,a88c,friendlist 2014-‐01-‐25,nateware,a88c,gamestart


Measure Retention: Repeated Plays

create view events_by_user_by_month as select user_id, date_trunc('month', event_date) as month_active, count(*) as total_events from events group by user_id, month_active;


First-Pass Retention – Too Noisy

0 5

10 15 20 25 30 35 40

# Play Sessions / Month

nateware Lazyd0g AK187 3strikes


Cohorts & Cambria

•  Enables calculating relative metrics •  Group users by a common attribute

–  Month game installed –  Demographics

•  Run analysis by cohort –  Join with metrics

•  Use Redshift as it's SQL –  Example of where SQL is a good fit


Creating Cohorts with Redshift

create view cohort_by_first_event_date as select user_id, date_trunc('month', min(event_date)) as first_month from events group by user_id;

http://snowplowanalytics.com/analytics/customer-analytics/cohort-analysis.html


Retention by Cohort – Join Events with Cohort

0

5

10

15

20

25

Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7

# Sessions / Week

2013-11 2013-12 2014-01 2014-02 2014-03 2014-04


Moar Cohorts

•  Define multiple cohorts –  By activity, time, demographics –  As many as you like

•  Change cohort depending on analysis •  Join same metrics with different cohorts

–  Retention by date –  Retention by demographic –  Retention by average plays/month quartile


Example Event Stream

2014-‐03-‐17T09:52:08-‐07:00,nateware,e4b5,login 2014-‐03-‐17T09:52:54-‐07:00,nateware,e4b5,gamestart 2014-‐03-‐17T09:53:15-‐07:00,nateware,e4b5,levelup 2014-‐03-‐17T09:54:06-‐07:00,nateware,e4b5,gameend 2014-‐03-‐17T09:54:23-‐07:00,nateware,30a4,gamestart 2014-‐03-‐17T09:55:14-‐07:00,nateware,30a4,gameend 2014-‐03-‐17T09:55:41-‐07:00,nateware,30a4,gamestart 2014-‐03-‐17T09:57:12-‐07:00,nateware,6ebd,levelup 2014-‐03-‐17T09:58:50-‐07:00,nateware,6ebd,levelup 2014-‐03-‐17T09:59:52-‐07:00,nateware,6ebd,gameend


Cohorts by Type of Activity

create view cohort_by_first_play_date as select user_id, date_trunc('month', min(event_date)) as first_month from events where action = 'gamestart' group by user_id;


Post-Match Heatmaps


Real-Time Analytics

Batch •  What game modes do

people like best? •  How many people have

downloaded DLC pack 2? •  Where do most people

die on map 4? •  How many daily players

are there on average?

Real-Time •  What game modes are

people playing now? •  Are more or less people

downloading DLC today? •  Are people dying in the

same places? Different? •  How many people are

playing today? Variance?


Why Real-Time Analytics?

30x in 24 hours What if you ran a promo?


Real-Time Tools

Spark •  High-Performance

Hadoop Alternative •  Berkeley.edu •  Compatible with HiveQL •  100x faster than Hadoop •  Runs on EMR

Kinesis •  Amazon fully-managed

streaming data layer •  Similar to Kafka •  Streams contain Shards •  Each Shard ingests data

up to 1MB/sec, 1000 TPS •  Data stored for 24 hours


•  Always Batch Due to S3

Back To Basics [Dubstep Remix]

EC2


•  Stream Data With Kinesis •  Multiple Writers and Readers •  Still Output to Redshift

Need Data Faster!

EC2


•  Stream Data With Kinesis •  Multiple Writers and Readers •  Still Output to Redshift •  Stream to Spark on EMR •  Storm via Kinesis Spout •  Custom EC2 Workers

Lots of Ins and Outs

EC2

EC2


Data Sources

App.4

[Machine Learning]

AW

S En

dpoint

App.1

[Aggregate & De-‐Duplicate]

Data Sources

Data Sources

Data Sources

App.2

[Metric Extrac=on]

S3

DynamoDB

Redshift

App.3 [Sliding Window Analysis]

Data Sources

Availability Zone

Shard 1 Shard 2 Shard N

Availability Zone

Availability Zone

Introducing Amazon Kinesis Service for Real-Time Big Data Ingestion


Putting Data into Kinesis

•  Producers use PUT to send data to a Stream

•  PutRecord {Data, PartitionKey, StreamName}

•  Partition Key distributes PUTs across Shards

•  Unique Sequence # returned on PUT call

•  Documentation:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/kinesis/latest/dev/

introduction.html

Producer

Shard 1

Shard 2

Shard 3

Shard n

Shard 4

Producer

Producer

Producer

Producer

Producer

Producer

Producer

Producer

Kinesis


Writing to a Kinesis Stream POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: kinesis.<region>.<domain> x-‐amz-‐Date: <Date> Authorization: AWS4-‐HMAC-‐SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-‐type;date;host;user-‐agent;x-‐amz-‐date;x-‐amz-‐target;x-‐amzn-‐requestid, Signature=<Signature> User-‐Agent: <UserAgentString> Content-‐Type: application/x-‐amz-‐json-‐1.1 Content-‐Length: <PayloadSizeBytes> Connection: Keep-‐Alive X-‐Amz-‐Target: Kinesis_20131202.PutRecord { "StreamName": "exampleStreamName", "Data": "XzxkYXRhPl8x", "PartitionKey": "partitionKey" }


Kinesis + Spark

http://aws.amazon.com/articles/4926593393724923


Death in Real-Time

PUT "kills" {"game_id":"e4b5","map":"Boston","killer":38,"victim":39,"coord":"274,591,48"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"e4b5","map":"Boston","killer":13,"victim":27,"coord":"101,206,35"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"e4b5","map":"Boston","killer":38,"victim":39,"coord":"165,609,17"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"e4b5","map":"Boston","killer":6,"victim":29,"coord":"120,422,26"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"30a4","map":"Los Angeles","killer":34,"victim":18,"coord":"163,677,18"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"30a4","map":"Los Angeles","killer":20,"victim":37,"coord":"71,473,20"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"30a4","map":"Los Angeles","killer":21,"victim":19,"coord":"332,381,17"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"30a4","map":"Los Angeles","killer":0,"victim":10,"coord":"14,108,25"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"6ebd","map":"Seattle","killer":32,"victim":18,"coord":"13,685,32"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"6ebd","map":"Seattle","killer":7,"victim":14,"coord":"16,233,16"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"6ebd","map":"Seattle","killer":27,"victim":19,"coord":"16,498,29"} PUT "kills" {"game_id":"6ebd","map":"Seattle","killer":1,"victim":38,"coord":"138,732,21"}


Real-Time Heatmaps


But A Bow On It

•  Collect data from the start •  Store it even if you can't process it (yet) •  Start simple – S3 + Redshift •  Add data sources – process with EMR •  Real-time – Kinesis + Spark •  Tons of untapped potential for gaming


Fallback Plan

Cheers – Nate Wiger @nateware

AWS Game Analytics - GDC 2014

Technology

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