1. Darling Family “Maker” Project
MICHELLE, Product Management
GLENN, Infrastructure
CHLOE, User Experience
Big Data
Case Study: Online Video Games

2. Case Study:
YOURCraft Online Video Game
 Very popular MMOG (massively multiplayer online game.)
 Wide appeal: Kids aged 5+ to Adults.
 “Indie” game: not commercial, similar to OpenSource software.
 Distributed: Thousands of YOURCraft servers throughout the world.
 Educational: builds logical, analytical, spatial reasoning, math, problem-solving skills.
 Crowd-sourced: Users build worlds using blocks similar to“virtual Legos”.
Examples: Cities, Sports, Harry Potter, Disneyland & more!

3. Challenges
 GRIEFING – bad player behavior. Mixed-age,
unmonitored play leads to bad language, block
destruction & online bullying.
 BIG DATA VOLUME & VARIETY – One
busy server = 100GB/month  1.17TB /year of
saved maps, weblogs, player messages, game
metadata.
Key Trends:
Online “Virtual World” Games
Strategies
 STICKINESS - Increase user time
spent in the game through:
 CUSTOWNERS – Ability to build fun,
engaging, immersive worlds builds
customer loyalty & ownership.
 DATA MYNING – Game personalization
based on user data (age, hours played,
location.)
 FREEMIUM - Give away game for
free, then charge for premium services.

4. Case Study Problem Highlights
GOAL: Set up YOURCraft server to ensure safe, engaging &
educational experience for family, friends & classmates.
Requirements:
 Analytics: Monitor player behavior to block griefing, encourage building, improve game
features, find monetization option$ (so we can pay the bills!)
 Skill Level: Must be easy enough for teenager, 8yo and busy mom.
 Fault-Tolerant: Can’t afford to lose user data such as world maps.
 High Availability: Provide 24x7 access to games.
 Low Startup Costs: $0 if possible.
 Scalability: Start with dataset from one server…
ingest datasets from hundreds later.
GRIEFING

5. Proposed Solution:
Technology Stack
 Analytics: Splunk Storm ingests
weblogs & player comments.
 Scalability: AWS & Splunk scale
“from laptop to datacenter.”
 Fault-Tolerant: AWS S3 provides
secure data storage.
 Skill Level: AWS AMI template
enables easy setup.
 High Availability: AWS EC2 provides
24x7 access.
 Low Startup Costs: AWS EC2 Free-
Tier for 1st Year = $0
• Splunk Storm for Weblog &
Sentiment Analysis, Anomaly
Detection, Dashboards. Splunk
Indexes files directly; no need for
ETL or database management.
Analytics &
Visualization
• AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service) --
similar to Hadoop HDFS.Data Storage
• Game Hosting AMI (Amazon
Machine Image) for YOURCraft
Server. Wizard-based template.
Application
• AWS EC2 (Amazon Web Services
Elastic Compute Cloud)Infrastructure

6. Proposed Solution - Architecture
YOURCraft Server
• Game Web Logs
• Player Messages
• Game Metadata
• User Data
AWS
S3
DATA SOURCES:
Game Web Logs
Player Messages

7. Proposed Solution Benefits
 Infrastructure
 Cloud-based game hosting – No need to buy any hardware. Secure,
scalable, high-availability, fault-tolerant storage & resources, 1st year
free. Easy enough for teenager to setup and maintain.
 User Experience
 Web log Analysis to track user “stickiness” and player activities. Easy for
an 8yo to monitor dashboards and report “griefing” so users & IP
addresses can be blocked if needed.
 Product Management
 Sentiment Analysis & Data Visualization to gain insights on attracting &
retaining users, fee-based services, monetization. Splunk works directly
on AWS S3 files – no ETL or database needed. Easy for busy mom to
define new algorithms & business questions.

8. Sample YOURCraft Weblog
Data elements we can search,
summarize or graph:
• Player logins
• Player IP Addresses
• Player session time
• Blocks placed
• Blocks broken
• Dangerous block placement
(fire, water, lava)
• Player deaths
• Player in-game messages
• Player issued commands

9. Splunk Dashboard:
Monitoring Player Behavior

10. Splunk Anomaly Detection
“Griefers” vs. “Busy Builders”
“Blocks placed” point to high-
value players who do a lot of building
and should be rewarded.
“Blocks broken” can signal destructive
behavior. If needed, can block:
• Specific users
• All users from a specific IP Address.

11. Splunk Data Visualization:
User Behavior, Stickiness

12. Splunk Sentiment Analysis:
Player Conversations
Sentiment analysis can reveal
popular themes, characters, game
features. Users can be banned if
they engage in negative comments
or online harassment.

13. Deployment strategy
Year 1:
Setup YourCraft Server
 Use Analytics to gain insights on
server admin best practices.
 Use insights to improve user
experience, game features.
 Share insights with other
YOURCraft admins (9,000+
servers worldwide!)
 Recruit other server weblogs for
bigger, richer analytics datasets.
 Rinse and repeat…
Year 2:
Innovate & Monetize
 AWS Free Tier expires! Start
offering premium fee-based
services such as:
 Safe sandbox – parents control
game content; limit playtime
hours.
 Members-only access to videos,
tutorials, game objects,
“playdates” with other players.
 Use analytics to check
effectiveness.
 Rinse & repeat…
Innovate
& Iterate
Analyze
Acquire
Data