The online games company Great Games (GG) runs a portal where players can play a variety of
Question:
The online games company Great Games (GG) runs a portal where players can play a variety of games for free or for actual cash. A player becomes a customer when he/she makes an initial deposit (which can vary from Rs. 25 to Rs. 5000). A customer is eligible to play games for cash using their deposits and any winnings. A customer can withdraw their deposits and winnings at any time.
One very important metric for the Retention team is called Day1 Retention. If 100 players became cash players (made a cash deposit for the first time) on June 1, and 80 of them played at least one cash game on June 2, the Day1 Retention for June 1 is 80%. GG has noticed that Day1 Retention has dropped from a weekly average of 80% to a weekly average of 76% starting from the end of March and continuing into April. Here is the data for the past few weeks:
Month | Week | Day1 Retention |
---|---|---|
February | 3 | 80.14% |
February | 4 | 78.41% |
March | 1 | 79.87% |
March | 2 | 81.11% |
March | 3 | 78.42% |
March | 4 | 75.78% |
April | 1 | 75.51% |
It is suspected that a few events that happened in the recent past may or may not have contributed to this drop.
a. Starting Mar 19, GG ran a campaign which offers Rs 100 to existing players if they refer a friend who becomes a cash player. This means that if an existing cash player ABC sends an email from the GG website to a friend of his (xyz@domain.com), and then if the person with the email xyz@domain.com becomes a cash player (by making a deposit of Rs 25 and above), the player ABC gets Rs 100.
b. On March 20, GG raised the minimum deposit needed to play cash from Rs 25 to Rs 40.
c. On March 21, the Fantastic Fun (FF) Company, the major competitor of GG, announced an increase in a joining bonus to new players from Rs 200 to Rs 1000. This bonus can be withdrawn on making a deposit starting at Rs 25.
d. On March 22, GG changed the way a cash player logs in to the website to increase account security of cash players. When a player finishes making his first deposit, he is asked to choose a secret question and its answer. After this, whenever a player logs in, he is asked to validate himself by answering the secret question.
e. On March 23, GG decided to match FF’s offer, and announced a joining bonus of Rs 1000.
Please answer the following questions:
(1) Please rank the above events from the most likely cause of lower Day1 retention to the least likely. Explain your reasons.
(2) How would you test whether each of the above events is a cause of the lower Day1 retention? What data would you look at? (Assume that all relevant data is available about players playing on GG, but no data is available on players playing on FF).