Gaming Industry Analytics Leveraged and Explained

Calling all tech gamers who wonders how the Madden NFL and The Sims games get better each year or version? Every year when these popular games enter the market’s circulation, reviews and suggestions flood the internet on the likes and dislikes of the updated features. If you’ve wondered who is listening to those suggestions, you’ll want to tune in to today’s episode!

Joining us is Zachary Anderson, SVP and Chief Analytics Officer at Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts is the critically acclaimed creator of high-quality brands such as The Sims?, Madden NFL, EA SPORTS? FIFA, Battlefield?, Need for Speed?, Dragon Age?, and Plants vs. Zombies?.

Zack has been on the vanguard of customer analytics innovation to improve both products and customer satisfaction. He and his team continue to grow and focus on what motivates players, what they like in games, and how to make games better.

Data analytics in the gaming industry leveraged and explained.

At Electronic Arts, customers are called players, who are, of course, the motivation behind how their games have evolved into what they are today. Zack’s team works around the behavioral data on what motivates their players to play, what they think about the games, how they play the games, and what keeps them engaged.

Electronic Arts (EA) has a business sector, EA Studios, which comprises over 20 studios and more than 6,000 creators globally.

Data analytics and insights are driven by customer clusters where players are grouped and analyzed based on a specific metric. Groups such as live services and non-live services are analyzed based on metrics. Metrics such as how far players get through the game, how they engage, or whether they’ve installed the game or not is how EA can calculate the basics of lifetime value for each customer sets.

Game telemetry plays a significant role and is the foundation for analytics in game development. EA uses various telemetry pieces to gain insights and customer life value (CLV) to test hypotheses around how to drive better engagement. From the overarching view of one of Zack’s primary responsibilities is to use some of these insights to better serve EA’s studios.

Zack shares, “Sometimes I think about my group, like a consulting organization. We have to pick the right products for each of our studios based on their position on the curve. Their product set up, what their customers expect, and how much contribution the knowledge of their game will make the overall portfolio of our products and understanding of our customers.”  

EA focus on constant optimization towards the positive cycle of experimentation, automation, personalization, and player journeys as the kind of means to achieve business and player engagement acceleration. 

More telemetry or hooks are being added to the FIFA game, a massive hundred-million-dollars live service based on the player journeys they want to manage.

The future challenge and way ahead.

During his time at EA, Zack’s learned that flexibility is the best way to operate in this industry while being less dogmatic. He’s also known of the difficulties toward delivering data and insights back to a largely scaled organization like EA. He’s realized that over time they’ve experienced a little bit of a bottleneck in how that data is delivered, but continually works with the analyst to optimize those hurdles.

Lastly, Zack breaks the myth of technology as the most challenging piece toward evolving their products when it is the human demand. He concludes that you must be flexible to adapt and fit into the system. Simultaneously, the human changes and the thinking changes. Demand is actually a much harder problem to solve than selecting a technology.

If you’re struggling to gain clarity into your customers’ behavior and motivations and recognize the value of using data analytics and customer insights to drive better engagement. Then this is the show for you!

Listen to the Full Episode