How the online gaming industry is riding the big data wave

Whether it’s a puzzle game on your mobile phone, or a high-tech game beamed to you via a virtual reality headset, online gaming is becoming the mainstream, when it comes to digital entertainment.

The industry’s exponential growth is rooted in the fact that by 2024, experts are predicting that more than a billion players around the world will be regularly engaged in online gaming of some form.

The fact that people enjoy playing games is nothing new, so why are tech and computer game developers valued so highly in today’s market?

A globalised world is leading to all entertainment going online

As the world becomes more connected and environmental concerns mount, it makes sense that in order to do business, as well as to enjoy oneself, many are heading online.

This trend is clear across many industries, with the film industry perhaps being the best example of this. With traditional production houses and cinemas completely overrun by online streaming services, which deliver infinitely more content for a mere fraction of the price.

In addition, streaming services are also eating into the revenue of sports networks.

Of course, the abundance of online activity indicates that people are tending to stay home or remain connected to their entertainment streams, via their smart phones.

This means that they have more time to spend indulging in things ranging from online battle royal games to 1,000 player-strong poker events, some of which you can even get free tournament tickets to enter with.

The floodgates have already been opened to the unregulated farming of big data

A player’s data is more valuable than their custom

Despite many games companies generating revenue from selling games and in-game add-ons to their loyal customers, this is far from the only way they gain their income.

Over the last decade, there has been a race to mine the personal data of individuals. Companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook quickly worked out that such data would soon become a more valuable commodity than oil or even gold, and with little regulation in place to stem them, they have been storing vast quantities of it.

This, in turn, has been used to create marketing tools that can predict how a person will spend their money, as well as giving clues as to how their behaviour can even be shaped to coerce them into using a certain brand or acting a certain way.

With this in mind, it may come as no surprise that these same tech goliaths want in on the blossoming gaming and Esports industry, where a player makes a thousand decisions on any given day, their online play and interactions a veritable treasure trove of big data for the aforementioned companies to mine.

Players from all over the globe connect and play on a daily basis

AR and VR paving new forms of expansion

To put this into context, a good example is Pokémon Go, an AR game developed by one of Google’s subsidiary companies Niantic. Not only did the game go viral, but it also managed to herd consumers to exactly the places it wanted them to go, meaning stores and cafes could pay Niantic to have players sent their way. This shows just what an incredibly powerful tool big data can be, when combined with aggressive marketing techniques.

Eyebrows were raised in 2014, when Facebook bought VR start-up Oculus, for a whopping $2 billion. However, when taking into consideration the amount of data that can be accured from a person playing a VR game online, you begin to see that this may turn out to be a wise long-term investment.

With Facebook obtaining the ability to log how players react to decisions, objects and people in an environment that is virtually the same as the ones we encounter in real life, you may realise just how powerful the major players of this industry are set to become.