The Fish Tank Model for Mobile Game Publishing Business Performance Evaluation

Business intelligence has been applied in the area of game development research for many years. However, few systematic research efforts are focusing on the game publishing side, especially for the mobile game publishing business. We aim to identify and remedy the shortcomings of the existing ARM funnel model for free-to-play mobile game analytics by introducing a new model, the Fish Tank Model, which combines the analysis of players’ behavior with in-game system data to drive the whole process of mobile game publishing. Based on the new model, we also bring and create relevant metrics for effectively measuring the business performance of mobile game publishing. Our main contributions are a survey of business intelligence used in game research and an analysis to reveal the insufficiency of an existing model for game publishing. Finally, we discuss business requirements for mobile game publishing and propose a brand-new model which better suits the free-to-play mobile game publishing business performance evaluation