Game Analytics

Game Ana­lyt­ics has gained a tremen­dous amount of atten­tion in game devel­op­ment and game research in recent years.

The wide­spread adop­tion of data-driven busi­ness intel­li­gence prac­tices at oper­a­tional, tac­ti­cal, and strate­gic lev­els in the game indus­try, com­bined with the inte­gra­tion of quan­ti­ta­tive mea­sures in user-oriented game research, has caused a par­a­digm shift. His­tor­i­cally, game devel­op­ment has not been data-driven, but this is chang­ing as the ben­e­fits of adopt­ing and adapt­ing ana­lyt­ics to inform deci­sion mak­ing across all lev­els of the indus­try are becom­ing gen­er­ally known and accepted.

The group inves­ti­gates game ana­lyt­ics tech­niques, includ­ing data min­ing, visu­al­iza­tion, and tools to inves­ti­gate the use of ana­lyt­ics to make busi­ness and design deci­sions as well as study human behav­ior tri­an­gu­lat­ing teleme­try data with affec­tive, eye track­ing and self report measures.

Faculty: Alessandro Canossa, Anders Drachen, and Magy Seif El-Nasr

Students: Bardia Aghabeigi, PhD Student, College of Computer and Information Science

Selected Publications:

• Seif El-Nasr, M., Drachen, A., and Canossa, A. (editors). (2013) Game Analytics: Maximizing the Value of Player Data. Springer.
• Gagne, A., Seif El-Nasr, M. and Shaw, C. (2012). Analysis of Telemetry Data from a Real-Time Strategy Game: A Case Study. ACM Computers in Entertainment, Vol 10, No. 3.
  
• Canossa, A., Drachen, A., and Sorensen, J. (2011) Arrrgghh!!!: blending quantitative and qualitative methods to detect player frustration. Foundations of Digital Games.