How big data is disrupting the gaming industry

Big data plays a big role in online gaming. Generating $40.6 billion in global revenue last year on mobile devices alone, the electronics art industry is set to boom in the next five years. One of the biggest reasons for the proliferation of online and social gaming is big data. Yes, we’ve been able to collect it for a long time now, but the capabilities of understanding how to use big data for monetization and optimization are just coming to fruition.

The big players, like Microsoft, are seeing the value of data aggregation and acquiring gaming companies, like Minecraft for $2.5 billion, because they realize the importance of big data in the long run and need data-forward firms to help them mine and understand user behaviors.

Additionally, big data companies are seeing the opportunity in online gaming and creating platforms that cater to the unique market. The smaller developers often don’t have the marketing budgets to compete for a more significant piece of the pie, nor do they have budgets for data scientists to make sense of all the metrics they’re collecting.

A few stats to consider, compliments of Reality Games:

Here are the top ways this data is being used to upend the gaming industry:

In game design, big data highlights the importance of giving users what they want. Using behavioral data to update the game according to what is working well means making games that are challenging, but not something users get frustrated with and want to walk away.

For example, Zynga, the online game developer most famous for social games like FarmVille, used smart data to better understand the importance of giving users what they want. They monitored and recorded user behavior to see how well their games were being played and used those insights to tweak and improve gameplay. 

“Graphics and creative storylines are no longer enough,” says Dan Schoenbaum, CEO of Cooladata. “Today’s online game developers should be investing in the business intelligence to understand user likes, dislikes, what’s off-putting, when they’re leaving and not returning, etc. These behavioral insights are what’s needed for online gaming to become more strategic, and ultimately successful. Game developers and marketers should be chasing after real-time user intelligence, but many don’t know where to begin or how to get started.”

“If people are playing your game and there is something they are frustrated with, the developers can fix it and make the players happy, and the players will continue to stay on the product,” says game designer and former pro StarCraft player Sean Plott has said.

Personalization, 1-to-1 marketing, people-based marketing and other trending terms describe how marketers in every industry are working to stop aggressive, irrelevant advertising campaigns and create highly targeted interactions.