Big Data: What It Is and Why It Matters To Your Game

Businesses have a massive amount of data available to them on a daily basis. But not all of this data will help them, and only companies that can derive useful insights will flourish. This is the reason why large enterprises attribute their success to big data analysis. If you want your company to make insightful decisions, understanding big data and incorporating it into your processes is of paramount importance. 

What is big data?

Big data refers to large chunks of structured and unstructured data that businesses accumulate on a daily basis. The essence of big data doesn’t lie in data accumulation alone but how a business leverages information from it to its advantage. 

From reducing daily operational costs, developing new games, spotting new revenue generation opportunities to optimizing your offerings, understanding player behavior, and improving operational efficiency, big data has a myriad of benefits to offer. 

Slated to reach a massive $103 billion globally by 2027 according to Statista, big data is anticipated to take over 45 percent of the software market. Embraced by almost all industries, big data has played a major role in the accomplishments of various large enterprises, with one perfect example being Netflix. 

Netflix analyzed data aggregated from 100 million subscribers and used it to gain insights into its target market. More than 80 percent of all the content consumed on this platform is recommended to consumers by big data insights, helping them save a whopping $1 billion on customer retention. 

The three Vs of big data

Coined by Doug Laney in 2001 and popularized by Gartner, the three Vs of big data are “volume”, “velocity”, and “variety”, and these all cater to different aspects of data analytics. 

Volume

Volume refers to the large volumes of data that organizations accumulate on a daily basis. This includes data collected from various business workflows, different IoT (Internet of things) devices and more, that need to be stored, processed, and analyzed. This volume of data can accumulate up to the hundreds of terabytes or even petabytes. 

This data cannot be processed by regular laptops or desktop computers, and is difficult to navigate by hand. But it needs to be analyzed as it contains opportunities for conversions, streamlining workflows, optimizing player journeys and more. 

Velocity

Velocity, as the term suggests, deals with the speed at which data is generated. With immense data accumulation from various business processes, companies need to process data at an unprecedented speed to make faster decisions and yield better results. 

To understand velocity better, let’s take a look at the social media giant Facebook which experiences a massive influx of data. For instance, there are more than 350 million photographs uploaded each day. Additionally, it experiences 100 million watch hours daily, and 4 million likes every minute. Big data analysis helps Facebook to handle this massive data explosion by processing data and providing valuable insights in real time. 

Variety

Data for businesses is not restricted to any one type of format. From structured data like numeric-based information to unstructured data like videos, audios, emails and financial transactions, data isn’t as simple as counting how many players you have. Different types of data require distinct algorithms to process information. 

You need analysis to process different types of data and make accurate strategic decisions. To better understand how to integrate data science marketing elements into your marketing strategy, working with a video game marketing company that understands these processes is essential. 

The three types of big data

On a broader scale, big data is classified into three categories:

• Customer
• Operational
• Financial

Customer

Customer data analytics refers to collecting information about your audience and analyzing behaviors, current life situations, preferences and more to help you make strategic decisions. Using customer data analytics helps you find answers for player-related questions and find ways to better optimize their journey. 

Customer data analysis also allows you to understand players' reaction to specific price points and promotions, and also enables you to understand a customer’s lifetime value (CLTV). This will help you reduce marketing campaign costs, enforce targeted communication, improve customer satisfaction, and optimize your game portfolio to satisfy players. 

Operational

Operational data analytics is the process of using both big data analytics and business intelligence to streamline everyday operations and improve your efficiency in real time. A perfect tool for medium scale gaming companies to large corporations, operational analytics requires a robust team of data scientists and analysts to succeed. 

Gaming businesses that follow a conventional model and analyze customer data either quarterly, half yearly or annually will make adjustments to their workflow and customer strategies very few times. But with operational analytics, studios can analyze their customer patterns in real time to enforce faster decision making processes, increase productivity, and enhance the customer experience more consistently. 

Financial

With insurmountable data overwhelming the world of finance, there’s a lot of analysis that needs to be done. Big data analytics in finance refers to large amounts of structured and unstructured data that can be used to study and understand customer behavior to create growth strategies for financial institutions and banks alike. 

Through financial big data analytics, companies can detect and prevent frauds, target their customers better, improve their overall customer service, gain insights into the stock market in real time, and identify potential risks with ease. Additionally, financial firms can speed up processes by streamlining them, analyzing financial performance, monitoring growth, and increasing revenue through financial data analysis. This is not a type of big data analytics that you will have to consider as a game development studio.

Why is it important?

Enables you to effectively reach your audience

Gaming brands that use a data-driven approach increase their brand awareness and audience reach by 2.7 percent annually (as shown by Aberdeen Group’s Data-Driven Retail study). For example, if you want to amplify your marketing efforts and reach out to your target market efficiently, then you can count on the combination of big data and social media. 

Big data has been helping marketers to manage social media campaigns effectively by assisting them in creating personalized and targeted campaigns, and helping them convert new prospects. By doing so, marketers can avoid overspending and achieve the desired results by reaching the people that actually care. 

Gives you insights into real-time player behavior

88 percent of IT leaders claim that they understand customers, but only 61 percent of consumers feel that businesses understand their concerns and needs, according to study by Talend. Without big data analysis, businesses tend to act late upon the customer information they accumulate over time. Whereas real time big data analytics ensures that you can take immediate action as soon as the data enters their database. 

By incorporating big data, companies can analyze large amounts of data and immediately take appropriate action, avoiding any delays. From analyzing what platforms your players prefer, the type of games they like, and tracking campaign performances from end to end, big data gives marketers real time information and helps them detect any anomalies that may arise. 

This helps them increase their advertising campaigns’ effectiveness and also assists them in determining potential pricing strategies that may help them acquire more customers. 

So, what do your potential players want to see not only in your marketing campaigns but in the game itself? Why don't they keep playing or avoid purchasing? Big data will give you the answers.

Helps you create customized content

Visually states that 94 percent of marketers claim that personalization is essential to grow and accelerate their brand. Unlike other marketing methods that give you a collective result of what your target players are interested in, big data analytics gives you specific insights into what interests different groups, the platforms they prefer, how they interact with your brand, how long they spend time watching your videos or reading your content, and more.

With such intricate details, it is easier for you to create tailored content, improve player engagement, enhance gameplay experience, increase your reach to your target market, and amplify conversion rates drastically. 

Makes your workflow more efficient

The combination of big data and workflow automation can never be understated. From automating repetitive tasks to expediting work processes, big data workflows help increase your overall project management’s efficacy, and reduce your downtime dramatically to give you more opportunities for process and data optimization. 

Start tracking like a pro

If game marketing wasn’t hard enough, add analytics into the fray! This is a crucial part of your campaign, and something you’ll need to master if you want to get results. But it’s dangerous to go alone! Take this: The Game Dev's Complete Guide to Game Marketing Analytics.

Helping you optimize your processes and serve players better, big data analytics helps you create a happy fanbase and find new growth opportunities. Taking control of your data by partnering with an accomplished game marketing agency will help your game get the breakthrough it needs.

Game Marketing Genie has seasoned data analytics managers and key professionals that can help your game’s growth accelerate exponentially. Let's chat today about how we can help you succeed!