Microsoft Azure PlayFab logo
    • Multiplayer
    • LiveOps
    • Data & Analytics
    • Add-ons
    • For Any Role

      • Engineer
      • Designer
      • Executive
      • Marketer
    • For Any Stage

      • Build
      • Improve
      • Grow
    • For Any Size

      • Solo
      • Indie
      • AAA
  • Runs on PlayFab
  • Pricing
    • Blog
    • Forums
    • Contact us
  • Sign up
  • Sign in
  • Ask a question
  • Spaces
    • PlayStream
    • Feature Requests
    • Add-on Marketplace
    • Bugs
    • API and SDK Questions
    • General Discussion
    • LiveOps
    • Topics
    • Questions
    • Articles
    • Ideas
    • Users
    • Badges
  • Home /
  • General Discussion /
avatar image
Question by fiveampsoftware · Jul 23, 2018 at 01:55 AM · documentation

PlayFab Retention Calculations (Is it rolling retention?)

Is Retention from the retention reports in Playfab calculated as rolling retention based off player installation time or are retention metrics based off a specific daily UTC reset/bucketing time.

Eg: Person installs 5 minutes before UTC time rolls over from Monday -> Tuesday, and that player played for more than 5 minutes. Are they counted as D1 retained? ...or is D1 retention calculated as a player logging events anytime between 24hrs after installation to 48hrs after installation.

checked out the docs and didn't wasn't sure by the wording: https://api.playfab.com/docs/tutorials/landing-analytics/analytics-metrics

more detail:

http://www.nielshoven.com/bad-bucketing-how-analytics-companies-are-getting-retention-wrong/

Comment

People who like this

0 Show 0
10 |1200 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
▼
  • Viewable by all users
  • Viewable by moderators
  • Viewable by moderators and the original poster
  • Advanced visibility
Viewable by all users

1 Reply

· Add your reply
  • Sort: 
avatar image
Best Answer

Answer by Brendan · Jul 24, 2018 at 01:17 AM

Well, the first thing I'd highlight is that for any non-trivial user base that's not limited to a small number of timezones, it's doubtful that the difference in retention between the two would be statistically significant. The theory is that the number of players that happen to log in (the measure of the start of a session, which is what's used for retention calculations) on both sides of the UTC 00:00 divide would be large enough, relative to the total user population, to significantly impact your retention numbers. That seems fairly unlikely, but we are working on a session auth update for later this year which will provide us with more flexibility around this sort of measurement. I'll file a backlog item with the data team to investigate that, once the new session system is online.

Comment
fiveampsoftware

People who like this

1 Show 1 · Share
10 |1200 characters needed characters left characters exceeded
▼
  • Viewable by all users
  • Viewable by moderators
  • Viewable by moderators and the original poster
  • Advanced visibility
Viewable by all users
avatar image Brendan ♦♦ · Jul 24, 2018 at 09:59 PM 1
Share

Actually, in thinking about this further, I would argue strongly against using a rolling, per-player window. As stated above, using a standard day (0 UTC, in our case) for all players means that you'll have a relatively small number of cases where play in one time window straddles two days.

But if you change that to a rolling window per-player, you're guaranteeing a high rate of these cases. By having the window for each 24 hour period starting exactly when the player first logs into your game, there's going to be a high correlation with their normal play times - which will include your per-player zero mark, but will extend before and after it by some indeterminate amount.

So in fact, using that model for retention would give you significantly worse data concerning anything beyond day one retention.

Your answer

Hint: You can notify a user about this post by typing @username

Up to 2 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 524.3 kB each and 1.0 MB total.

Navigation

Spaces
  • General Discussion
  • API and SDK Questions
  • Feature Requests
  • PlayStream
  • Bugs
  • Add-on Marketplace
  • LiveOps
  • Follow this Question

    Answers Answers and Comments

    3 People are following this question.

    avatar image avatar image avatar image

    Related Questions

    File storage and limits 1 Answer

    Multiplayer 2.0 Resources/Documentation/Tutorial 1 Answer

    Exit Code One 1 Answer

    I want to develop the game by Unity and configure the server using UWP. Which document should I refer to? 1 Answer

    Changing icon for Push Notification templates. 2 Answers

    PlayFab

    • Multiplayer
    • LiveOps
    • Data & Analytics
    • Runs on PlayFab
    • Pricing

    Solutions

    • For Any Role

      • Engineer
      • Designer
      • Executive
      • Marketer
    • For Any Stage

      • Build
      • Improve
      • Grow
    • For Any Size

      • Solo
      • Indie
      • AAA

    Engineers

    • Documentation
    • Quickstarts
    • API Reference
    • SDKs
    • Usage Limits

    Resources

    • Forums
    • Contact us
    • Blog
    • Service Health
    • Terms of Service
    • Attribution

    Follow us

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • YouTube
    • Sitemap
    • Contact Microsoft
    • Privacy & cookies
    • Terms of use
    • Trademarks
    • Safety & eco
    • About our ads
    • © Microsoft 2020
    • Anonymous
    • Sign in
    • Create
    • Ask a question
    • Create an article
    • Post an idea
    • Spaces
    • PlayStream
    • Feature Requests
    • Add-on Marketplace
    • Bugs
    • API and SDK Questions
    • General Discussion
    • LiveOps
    • Explore
    • Topics
    • Questions
    • Articles
    • Ideas
    • Users
    • Badges