Benefits of Game Analytics: Stakeholders, Contexts and Domains

The process of creating a game is a perfect example of a multidisciplinary effort. Development teams are extremely heterogeneous, involving writers, programmers, artists, designers, engineers and architects, just to name a few. Each discipline brings a legacy of assumptions, practices and values that, more often than not, are far from aligned with each other. For example, designers often discuss with programmers in order to modify existing features or introduce new ones based on their past experiences, theoretical assumptions or “gut feelings”. User researchers often act as mediators in these transactions, and starting these discussions based on objective evidence and telemetry data has proven beneficial. It is, therefore, necessary to understand and chart the different possible benefits, biases, angles, needs, costs and requirements that each discipline brings to the table when it comes to game data analysis, since a thorough understanding of these facets can considerably help in defining a strategy to select interesting game variables to monitor.