As the games industry grows and players get more demanding, the ways in which we monitor their preferences has to evolve.

As part of Pocket Gamer Connects Digital #5, JUMP lead data scientist Carlos De Las Heras Peña discussed the benefits of using data to track player preferences, and how content micro-personalisation can aid in retaining users. He also offered an overview of JUMP's platform and how developers can utilise it.

Heras Peña began with a brief overview of how big data and A.I. are transforming most industries, and that also applies to the gaming space. 

"We live in a time of a gaming boom, and naturally as the market booms, competition appears," Heras Peña said.

"Becoming a data-driven gaming service is no easy task."

Challenges in data

Heras Peña went on to discuss some of the challenges in transitioning to a data-driven product. These hurdles included multiple data sources, fragmented repositories and numerous analytics dashboards across a product which lead to longer waits between data analysis and taking action. 

With those issues in mind, Heras Peña presents a solution to make data analysis more streamlined. Using JUMP's platform, companies can unify their data sources, get business-oriented insights, and more importantly, be able to make sense of them faster in order to plan targeted strategies.

The silent unsubscribe

With other forms of streaming services, such as Netflix, NowTV and Spotify, there is a clear indication of when a user unsubscribes, and they can also optionally provide a reason for their choice to do so. As Heras Peña notes, games and apps do not have this, so it's less obvious when a user has stopped engaging and why.

"Use the data to understand where your users are spending time and where disengagement is happening," he added.

"Once you understand the different patterns of users, you can predict where they are going to disengage. You can then launch a marketing campaign focused on the points where users disengage in order to retain players."

Actions driven by data 

While player retention is incredibly important to the overall strategy, it is not the only thing that this data can be used for. Personalised insights can be used to make fresh, in-game recommendations to players based on what they already enjoy. Heras Peña explains that this method of targeted advertising can increase the popularity of an in-game item, character or transaction while keeping the player's preferences in mind.

"These recommendations make it easy for users to choose different options that may not be popular in the ecosystem," Heras Peña said.

"Again, we understand what the user needs, and then offer a similar item to the user's preferences while recommending something new.

"This is personalisation impact. We need to measure and have a good visibility of all the metrics that affect players, and then form targeted recommendation strategies based on that behaviour."

 PGC Digital #5 will run from February 8th to February 12th. To keep up to date with all of our coverage, check out the roundups here. There's still time to sign up - to find out more and book a ticket, head to the website.