Industry Terms and Metrics

Chapter 5 seeks to demystify the jargon associated with social game design, and explain many of the critically important concepts behind user metric-gathering and analytics. The chapter begins by looking at indices which measure player population and the percentage of those users which “convert” to paying customers. Various mechanisms and terms for measuring monetization are explained next. The chapter then dissects popular methods for advertising and acquiring users, before describing in slightly more detail the core business model and the accounting behind most currently popular social games. The chapter features a case study in user metrics from Lolapps game Ravenwood Fair, then concludes with an interview with casual, social, and mobile game developer Everett Lee of OMGPop.