A/B testing
A/B testing feature allows publishers and game studios to check different logics in their games and decide what works best for their game.
It's supported since 2.0.29 version of SDK
How it works
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The game publisher sets the experiment in Game of Whales. He defines:
- which players will take part in the experiment
- how many behaviors will be checked. Depending on this the number of groups is chosen. It's a good way to keep one group without any changes in behavior.
- how many experiment participants should be included in each group (in %).
- what behavior should be applied to the player from the appropriate group. The rules can be defined via the group's payload.
- The game publisher starts the experiment
- GOW matches the game players to the experiment and distributes them between groups.
- If a player is matched to the experiment, GOW sends the data about the experiment, the experiment group and the group payload to the game side through GOW SDK or REST API.
- The appropriate behavior is applied to the player on the game side.
- The confirmation that all settings were set is sent from the game to GOW.
- GOW collects the player statistics in the context of the experiment and the group until the experiment will be completed. The statistic is presented in the experiment report. The results for each group are compared with the results for Group A.
- When the experiment is completed, GOW SDK sends a special callback about it. After that, the behavior changes can be canceled on the game side.
Each experiment can be in one of the following steps:
- Draft - an experiment doesn't influence the game logic. It's available for changing.
- Active - a working state. The players are matched to the experiment, the data about the experiment is returned to the game side, the statistics are collected.
- Done - the experiment no longer affects the game logic. Its results are presented in the report.
There are no limits to the number of active experiments in the game. But each player can take part only in one experiment at the same time. After the current experiment is done, the player is able to be included in another.
More details about GOW SDK or REST API implementation can be found here:
It's forbidden to have a few active experiments with the same experiment key in one game at the same time.