Which Android Devices Should I Test My Game App On?

摘要: For Android game app developers, the star ratings that their apps receive from users are directly tied to their revenues. These ratings are given by users who run the game app on one of hundreds of Android devices. These devices can have very different interface and hardware capabilities. Therefore, to achieve (and maintain) a good rating, developers have to test their apps on many devices and fix device-specific problems. This turns out to be very difficult because of the sheer number of Android devices. On analyzing 99 free Android game apps, we find that these apps receive user reviews from 38 to 132 devices. However, most of the user reviews are from a small subset of devices. On average, 33% of the devices account for 80% of the reviews. Thus testing the devices that account for most of the reviews first, can be a good prioritization scheme for app developers with limited resources. Furthermore, we find that developers of new game apps that have no reviews can use the review data of similar game apps to prioritize their testing efforts. Finally, among the set of devices that generate the most reviews for an app, we find that some devices tend to generate worse ratings than others. Game app developers can take specific corrective actions for these devices.