Analytics in Gaming: It's Data for the Win!

Customers often tell us that Tableau is fun—like a game—with a significant business value reward. That’s been the experience for executives at two gaming companies who we recently had the chance to interview.

"Deep down inside, everybody is an analyst," says Kirill Andriychuk, Business Intelligence Manager at Aeria Games. "With Tableau, they can go on this discovery path and find out new opportunities and better ways to deliver their products they're delivering, and better ways to monetize the customer, and also give the customer a better experience within our games."

Based in Berlin, Aeria is an online gaming company with a thriving global customer base. When they introduced Tableau Online to their organization, they found that employees engaged deeply with the visuals and the stories they told. In this interview, Kirill explains how this translated into significant business value.

GameFly, the top video game subscription service in the US, first tried Tableau while looking for a solution to the reporting bottleneck they were experiencing. With just four people on the analytics team—and a data set that was so enormous it could have taken out all of these villains at once—it was difficult to find much time to reach new insights. Most of their time was just spent on the mechanics of gathering data.

Now, says Andy Calver, GameFly's Director of Business Analytics, "we are always digging into the data to determine how effective things are. We take answers to the business teams before they can bring the questions to us.” And by making insight more proactive and engaging, GameFly has seen major business benefits like a 5x increase in new membership trial participation.

We love hearing about happy endings like these. But at the end of the day, what do these stories really mean? In the gaming industry, it's clear that engaging insights just spell 'win.' Learn more in the full interview with GameFly employees or our conversation with Kirill from Aeria Games.

Photo credit: Kenny Louie via Flickr, Creative Commons. (Photo cropped.)