I'm curious why you consider it creepy. Note that we don't see any identifiable information and all of the metrics I report are all used to improve gameplay and help monetize the product.
"Yes, we maximize for users who spend over $10k. These users even have names. They're called "whales" in industry parlance. Why wouldn't you want more of them in your game? This is a business afterall. I feel just as bad as the next person wondering whether some of these "whales" are addicts. I don't want to be creating products for addicts. But what if these users are just rich people who have tons of money to spend off the cuff? There's no way we can know because we never get that data. All I see is what's reported in ItunesConnect."
I think the somewhat layered nature of it is what creeped me out. It kind of reads like an internal dialogue of somebody trying to justify their own actions to themself.
As I said in another comment, I think this industry is still in its infancy and getting a lot of its mechanics worked out. I don't honestly believe we make a game targeted to addicts, otherwise I could not work there in good conscience. But I'm also not ignorant in thinking that addicts aren't part of our userbase.
The question that confronts me when I go into work everyday is how can we make this game fun for everyone, and how can we make money in a non-destructive, ethical manner?
>how can we make money in a non-destructive, ethical manner
I have an answer, provide people with tools that make their lives better. Does the service you're providing actually make people's lives better. And I don't mean does it make their lives more entertaining. There's no objective way to measure this, so it comes down to a VALUE judgement. YOUR value judgement. And it's not about making money, it's about making products, services and tools, for people. For people, like you, me and your mom, and my mom.
Also you said 'These users even have names. They're called "whales"'. No that's not their names, their names are bob, joan, mike, susan blah blah blah even if you don't have those names in the data, they exist. seriously, its easy to forget when you abstract them away, but there are actual humans at the end of each one of those clicks.
Have you seen Rain Man? Remember that control room from which the casino executive monitors what's going on on the casino floor? That dashboard is your virtual control room. To me, the "free-to-play" social gaming industry appears to be eerily similar to the gambling industry. You even use the same terminology ("whales"). And the gambling industry has always been a little shady, trying to squeeze as much money as they can out of people who can't really afford it. Maybe that's why it appears creepy to some of us?
That is a good point. And actually I didn't know we used the same terms!
I'm obviously aware of what goes on in the industry and its similarities to gambling are something I think about a lot. But as an analyst, I feel like I have a lot of power in helping to create games that are fun and engaging, plus learning how to drive a product to be successful. I don't think of it as a spam machine or a front for taking money from the poor.
Maybe the business model needs to be changed. If its virtual currency that makes it creepy, then maybe switching to a fixed-cost product is something the industry as a whole needs to move to. We're still in the infancy here in learning how to harness mobile devices to make better products.
The fact that your job exists is kind of the creepy part. Games that are just made for fun don't have teams of analysts trying to optimize games in order to modify player behavior. That said, your comments have been pretty interesting. How did you get the job in the first place?
Well, analysts aren't exactly new. Do a search for business analyst and you'll see lots of jobs posted at hundreds of companies. The difference is that mobile game companies deal with extraordinary amounts of data so they actually need people who not only have statistics knowledge, but programming knowledge as well. So I don't think its creepy (obviously), I just think this industry is so new that a) people are unfamiliar with the role and b) the business model is (apparently) controversial and in constant flux.
I came from a web company. I was a data analyst there too. But I really wanted to work in the mobile industry and figure out how to deliver insights on a completely new platform also at massive scale as well.
I have worked in mobile e-commerce analytics but on the engineering side. It seemed like the analysts we had usually had a business background but I was always too busy to ask them how they got into it.
It's weird that you think that "traditional" (whatever that means) games don't have analysts looking at player behaviour: in the games industry we call them "game designers" or "producers". Some game designers do some creative work but there is a lot of metrics-driven design in most games.
Fair enough, that part was a little hyperbolic. What I meant to say is that these people may not be aware of how much they spend overall, because it's in such small increments. I can't prove it, but I think if Zynga would offer their games for a monthly fee, even the players that regularly spend more than that amount would quit, or not subscribe in the first place. Somehow some people are much more comfortable spending $1 twenty times than $10 once.