“Adding Speed and Accuracy to Passion” - PUBG Corporation Implements Real-Time Data-Based Decision Making With Tableau

PUBG Corporation started as Ginno Games in 2015, a developer studio under the global game developer, Bluehole Inc. After the global success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), the name was changed and PUBG Corporation was born. PUBG broke the Guinness Book of World Records in 7 categories, such as “the fastest million seller on Steam Early Access (SEA),” “the fastest SEA game to make $100M”, and “the first Steam game to have over 2M players online.” PUBG Corporation will continue to expand globally to keep up with the rapid growth of E-Sports and Battlegrounds.

According to Siyoon Lee, a data analyst, PUBG’s Service Analytics team, “PUBG uses Tableau’s simple visual analytics, superior scalability, and compatibility with existing data to provide daily analytics to offices around the world. Everyone can use this data to make decisions suited to each region’s and team’s needs, and that leads to business growth.”

Since it opened in 2017, PUBG has grown rapidly, breaking 7 different Guinness Book of World Records categories. Both users and employees have exploded in number; both data and analytics requests have grown exponentially as well. PUBG adopted Tableau to use its faster analytics process to manage big data and provide useful insights with limited time and personnel.

Thanks to Tableau, PUBG is able to quickly analyze diverse game data, create over 100 indicators, and share insights with the whole company. With Tableau, for example, PUBG can create visualizations of daily/weekly user numbers, new/returning user ratio, etc.

According to Minsu Jang, general manager for PUBG’s Data Analytics, “PUBG tracks traffic and counts users in real-time. Server status is an example of in-game indicators we monitor to detect and fix issues for performance enhancement. We analyze item balance, such as which firearm users prefer, in order to apply this knowledge to development direction.”

PUBG utilizes Tableau to analyze petabytes of databases on premises and through Amazon Redshift and MariaDB. PUBG was able to use Tableau to give users the ability to analyze vast amounts of raw data from a simple browser in just a few minutes, saving time and money compared to previous analytic processes.

PUBG leads the E-Sports industry by providing gamers around the world with on/offline gaming events and new content. PUBG introduced Tableau’s analytics platform to make quick, accurate decisions based on vast business and marketing data.

The first thing 80% of business and marketing team members do at work is opening the Tableau dashboard, which shows Key Performance Indicators (KPI) such as sales and profits up to the date. Through this, employees are able to find regional differences in KPI and research varied correlations between their rise and fall. Tableau supports not only raw data, but also ad-hoc analytic tools to quickly review why some patterns might appear.

Minsu Jang, general manager at PUBG, said “it was difficult to keep track of a game launched on a global scale with basic queries and spreadsheets. But with Tableau, we are able to receive daily updates on sales, profit, game, and user insights, run ad-hoc analytics, and make prompt decisions on a global scale.”

Furthermore, with Tableau’s educational resources and intuitive UI, PUBG was able to easily expand Tableau platform within the organization. Siyoon Lee, data analyst at PUBG, said “Tableau provides online and offline training for new users to quickly learn how to use the program. Furthermore, the simple UI meant anyone could easily analyze and visually understand the data.”

In the gaming industry, the image and perceived value of a game service is paramount. That is why when issues arise in an item or the game, they need to be resolved as quickly as possible. PUBG also monitors user communities to respond to service issues quickly and provide solutions.

PUBG‘s development team periodically reviews written complaints and utilizes Tableau dashboard to review a set of indicators that point to the source of an error. Youngjoon Ki, a data analyst for PUBG’s Game Analytics team, said “PUBG locates the server, storage, or whatever infrastructure the error occurred in to optimize solutions. Furthermore, we collect points of improvement using Tableau and share it with the whole company to raise awareness on errors that are occurring.”

Minsu Jang, general manager at PUBG, said that Tableau’s visualization tools are valuable because “as a game company, we need to make a lot of quick decisions that are difficult to change later. Tableau’s visualization allows the whole company to understand the current situation and to see the direction of improvement. This allows people with different opinions to resolve their differences to reach a decision.” PUBG will continue to use Tableau to involve the whole company in making decisions and improvements.