WebTics: A Web Based Telemetry and Metrics System for Small and Medium Games

Abstract

The advent of online gaming has made it possible for almost every game device to send information across a network. The evolution of consumer tastes has forced the variety and quality of marketplace offerings to expand. Market competition and the consumer expectation that games can be constantly improved through the issue of online patches have forced game developers to stop thinking of their games as ever truly finished. Instead, mobile, console, PC, and social games are all expected to monitor user behavior, and report information back to the game creators. The developers responsible for monitoring and improving games are then able to use the information the client software sends to determine the sorts of improvements they should make to the game. These improvements are rolled out as patches or updates to the client software, or changes to the runtime code or content on the game servers. The key to creating a successful automatic feedback loop between the customer and the game’s creator relies on measuring how the user interacts with the game. This information is collected via instrumentation in the software, which sends telemetry data back to a server. These specific bits of information are commonly referred to as “game metrics.”