A/B Testing | Rapidly adapting to player trends is the key to running successful LiveOps campaigns
Casual gaming is at an all-time high. With an increasingly overwhelming choice of new F2P releases available on stores every day, it’s hard to know where the next big hit will come from. We know first hand that one key ingredient to running successful live games is the ability to adapt gameplay dynamically to meet evolving player trends, to keep engagement high.
Traditionally, game developers have built the tools they need to enable them to carry out game optimisation during soft launch themselves. However, in today’s competitive landscape, it’s more important than ever to get to market early and then be capable of rapidly testing and iterating when optimizing your game. Building your own tools will slow you down and reduce your competitiveness.
An alternative to building your own tools internally is to use a Live Game Management platform like ChilliConnect, which incorporates Game Services and Live Ops capability into one convenient platform, giving you all the tools you need “off the shelf” to run your game as a service.
One of the most popular features in the ChilliConnect LiveOps toolkit is the A/B Testing tool. In ChilliConnect the Testing tool allows you to run experiments on your game to establish which features, or configurations of your game are most effective. This can include game mechanics, in-game assets, economy items, marketing assets and much more!
The capability of the A/B Testing tool is vast and can be created to target specific segments of players based on country, platform, device type and device model. You can even define your own custom segments.
In our latest LiveOps series we cover all of the different capabilities within the A/B Testing tool using typical day-to-day examples.
Overview
Now that you have established an A/B Test in your game you need to be able to interpret the results to determine which direction to take in your next iteration.
In our example we set up a basic A/B Test with three main test groups: a control group that had no changes, a group that received extra daily rewards and a group that received less daily rewards.
One of the main benefits of the A/B Testing tool in ChilliConnect is the ability to capture core KPIs for your tests straight out of the box, making it easy to track how the changes between each test group affect these core KPIs.
KPI Reporting
Another great way to run A/B Tests in ChilliConnect is through Segmentation. ChilliConnect allows you to run A/B Tests using a wide range of segmentation criteria such as: location, device type, platform, device model, install date, previous login, first purchase date, last purchase date, conversion, total USD spend and purchased store item.
Player Segmentation
As well as the core segmentation properties, you can also segment players based on custom criteria, specific to your game using Player Properties.
Watch out for future blog posts spotlighting Cloud Code and the Catalog.
Related Developer Documentation
A/B Testing
Segment Criteria
A/B Testing Metrics Capture