The founders of mobile publisher Deemedya have launched a new app monetisation tool that uses machine learning algorithms to understand player behaviour.

Called Game of Whales, the AI automatically studies how users are playing and tries to predict what kinds of offers are most likely to work to convert them into payers.

Bold claims

The tech has been in development for the last 18 months, and to test it out the company also conducted trial campaigns on 18 million players.

It claims that through the SDK overall daily revenues from the free-to-play games tested increased by 25 per cent, while the number of users churning decreased by 10 per cent.

Game of Whales noted that these figures are based on a comparison of game data and revenues between a control group of apps not using the platform, and a campaign group integrated with its platform.

The name Game of Whales comes from a controversial industry term referring to a small segment of the highest paying players - referred to as whales - who spend big on in-app purchases.

"As a games publisher ourselves, we are only too familiar with the ongoing stress and complexity of keeping people playing, and getting those players to spend something - anything! - in our game,” said Game of Whales CEO Doron Kagan.

“Game of Whales happened because, frankly, there was nothing out there that did the things we wanted. Making successful games should be about fun and creativity, not spreadsheets and data analytics.

“So we thought, why not build something that takes care of all that? That’s where the AI approach came from. The algorithms can analyse and make decisions faster and better than we ever could, and the proof is in the results it’s generated. You literally plug it in to your game, and leave it alone.”