Pocket Gamer Connects Digital is back for 2021, set to bring together some of the finest voices in the games industry and beyond.

PGC Digital #5 takes place on February 8th - 12th. To give you a taste of what to expect, we'll regularly be publishing interviews with the speakers at the show. 

The conference spans across five days and will feature a broad selection of tracks, talks and speakers, as well as various fringe events and the return of our meeting system. For more details on PGC Digital and to book a ticket, head to the website.

Today's spotlight is on Carlos De Las Heras Peña, data science director at Jump Data-Driven Intelligence. Carlos runs the Data Science Department at Jump and is in charge of the implementation of all AI solutions at the company. He'll be heading to PGC Digital #5 for a talk all about how to enhance the gaming experience through content micro-personalisation.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us a bit about your company?

Jump joined the media and entertainment industry in 2016 to democratise the use of Big Data and AI to optimise business performance, so that any company, and not only the big players with huge budgets could use this technology. We were convinced that business data – and its effective use – would be the key differentiator for success, and as the industry has evolved, our vision has proven to stand true.

Jump is well-known in certain entertainment industries such as Video Streaming and Pay TV, and now is making its way in the gaming sector where we see a huge potential for even more growth in the coming years, and a need for the kinds of technologies we offer.

Our solutions for game companies optimise customer retention, personalisation, engagement, and marketing effectiveness by connecting AI and ML techniques to free-to-play games to increase IAPs. We do this by analyzing players' behaviour and creating personalised recommendations for them.

What does your role entail? 

I lead the development of Jump’s product for the gaming industry along with a great team of data scientists specialized in AI and ML, working in close collaboration with some of the most important game developers and publishers worldwide. I make sure our product has a real impact on their business performance and put it to work as efficiently and scalably as possible; and since their needs change over time, our products also need to be in continuous evolution.

How does Jump's offer fit in the games sector?

We believe technologies like ours will transform the gaming sector. Major publishers know this and are working internally towards their development. Tracking players actions, analysing their behaviour and predicting their decisions will allow for a better personalisation of the experience, increasing key factors for the business, such as retention and monetisation.

An experienced and specialised company like Jump can save games publishers a lot of time and resources in this task, by helping them to identify and better understand their needs.

Our work with well-established game publishers has shown that we can make a difference in their earnings. Some of them have increased their monetisation by as much as 20 per cent in just a few weeks and been able to offer users in their stores personalised recommendations based on their individual tastes and playing behaviour with a hit rate above 73 per cent. This signals a huge increase in engagement and retention rates.

When in their life cycle can game companies benefit from Jump's technology?

I think the sooner any gaming company comes to understand its users’ behaviour and real needs, the greater its competitive edge.

I would say that any game company running on an IAPs business model could benefit from working with us from its very first day of operation.

And it’s not just the technology we offer; our team can also be a great ally in a gaming company’s business operation. Jump has the experience of dealing with many of the problems publishers face when they try to maximise their revenue streams. And we’ve been very successful with similar issues in other digital businesses as well.

We know what data to use and how to use it, and so we are able to intelligently apply the most effective strategies depending on the type of business approach, at a much lower cost and in a much shorter time than the company itself could do.

Companies looking to hire their own team of data scientists and data analysts with expertise in this field will find that this doesn’t come cheap. With Jump they can get the expertise of one of the top teams in this industry at a much more reasonable, affordable cost.

How do you think the use of data will evolve in the games industry?

I think data-driven technology will completely change the games industry as we know it. The amount of player information and data captured by games is increasing dramatically and is getting more and more difficult to analyse, and even to understand.

Machine learning leads to a new paradigm that will enable gaming companies to optimise the use of data in order to improve the personalisation of their games, and as a result they will find new ways to improve monetisation.

We at Jump think that offering your players precisely what they want at the precise time is key to keeping players engaged. It's the only way to succeed and have a competitive advantage in a very crowded market.
And with future trends such as cloud gaming, 5G, metaverses, etc. we anticipate an even greater need for Big Data and AI solutions.

Want more?

The full conference schedule is now live on the website. In the meantime, you can also check out our other track rundowns and coverage of previous Pocket Gamer Connects conferences ahead of the event itself.

Register for Pocket Gamer Connects Digital #5 today!