Game data science, defined as the practice of deriving insights from game data, has created a revolution in the globalgame industry—informing and enhancing production, design, and development processes. Almost all game companies collect data from games and have adopted some type of game data science, —yet, there has been no definitive resource for professionals, academics and students in this crucial and rapidly developing aspect of games until now.

Games Data Science delivers a thorough introduction to this new domain and serves as a definitive guide to the methods and practices of computer science, analytics, and data science as applied to video games. It is the ideal resource for professional learners and students seeking to understand how data science is used within the game development and production cycle, as well as within the interdisciplinary field of games research.

Organized into chapters that integrate laboratory and real-life game data examples, this book provides a unique resource to train and educate both industry professionals and academic experts about the use of game data science, with practical exercises and examples on how such processes are implemented and used, interweaving theoretical learning with practical application throughout.

For additional details, please see the book’s companion website:

Edited by Magy Seif El-Nasr, Truong-Huy D. Nguyen, Alessandro Canossa and Anders Drachen.

This book is focused on providing the foundational, accessible, go-to resource for people interested in user experience (UX) and user research (UR) in games. It is a community-driven effort—it has been written by passionate professionals and researchers in the GUR community as a handbook and guide for everyone interested in user experience, user research, and games.

We aim to provide the most comprehensive overview from an applied perspective, for a person new to GUR, but which is equally useful for experienced user researchers. We stress the term overview — GUR is a deep, interdisciplinary field with thousands of professionals working within it worldwide; hundreds of scientific papers are produced on the topic every year.

It is not possible for one book to provide everything you need to know about GUR, but what a single book can do is provide the bird’s-eye view, introduce the contexts and methods, and provide a pathway for further self-illumination. That is not to say that this book is not practical, as the various chapters not only describe high-level concepts, but also how to work in practice with GUR methods. This book contains practical guidelines on how to conduct user research across topics such as planning, methods, lab design, mobile games, accessibility, budgeting user research, and more.

The book is grounded in the design and development process, and describes which methods we use at which stages, mimicking the glossaries used in the industry and academic research today, but putting everything into context. The connection between the wider context of GUR and the nitty-gritty details of work ‘in the trenches’ is perhaps the most valuable aspect of this book.

  • Most robust and comprehensive overview of Games User Research (GUR) and Game User Experience (UX) best practices that exists, covering all aspects of user research and UX in games
  • Written by experts across the games industry with advice that can be applied to any game production, across indie game development and AAA titles
  • Practical advice from the experts who do UX research and user-centred testing of games every day
  • Integrates the latest research and knowledge across industry and academia, distilling the wisdom of dozens of professionals with combined hundreds of years of experience
  • Heavily illustrated with colour screenshots

The book is published by Oxford University Press, an can be ordered here.

For an overview of the contents and authors see here.

We want to take the opportunity to thank the GUR community for help and contributions to the book. More than 100 people were involved in the creation of this volume, from people who wrote chapters, reviewed chapters, provided feedback on what should be included in a core handbook on GUR, etc. We have now an awesome collection of chapters distilling hundreds of years of hard-earned wisdom into a 500-pages plus volume.

For following news about the book, follow us on twitter @GamesURbook

Edited by Anders Drachen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke

Developing a successful game in today’s market is a challenging endeavor. Thousands of titles are published yearly, all competing for players’ time and attention. Game analytics has emerged in the past few years as one of the main resources for ensuring game quality, maximizing success, understanding player behavior and enhancing the quality of the player experience. It has led to a paradigm shift in the development and design strategies of digital games, bringing data-driven intelligence practices into the fray for informing decision making at operational, tactical and strategic levels.

Game Analytics – Maximizing the Value of Player Data is the first book on the topic of game analytics; the process of discovering and communicating patterns in data towards evaluating and driving action, improving performance and solving problems in game development and game research. Written by over 50 international experts from industry and research, it covers a comprehensive range of topics across more than 30 chapters, providing an in-depth discussion of game analytics and its practical applications.

Topics covered include monetization strategies, design of telemetry systems, analytics for iterative production, game data mining and big data in game development, spatial analytics, visualization and reporting of analysis, player behavior analysis, quantitative user testing and game user research. This state-of-the-art volume is an essential source of reference for game developers and researchers.

The book is the result of collaboration between more than 80 people across the games industry and games academia. At a whopping 800 pages with over 200 illustration it is a beast of a volume! We hope it will prove a valuable addition to the growing field of game analytics and business intelligence in game development. The book is published by Springer and can be ordered here across hardcover and e-book formats or from Amazon here.

  • The first book on game telemetry, game metrics and game analytics
  • Numerous case studies from industry and research showing which analytical techniques to use in which situations
  • Essential reading for developers, researchers and students on the current industry-wide adoption of data-driven methods for game development
  • Thorough introduction to game analytics; covering analytics applied to data on players, processes and performance throughout the game lifecycle.
  • In-depth coverage and advice on setting up analytics systems and developing good practices for integrating analytics in game-development and -management.
  • Contributions by leading researchers and experienced professionals from the industry, including Ubisoft, Sony, EA, Bioware, Square Enix, THQ, Volition, and PlayableGames.
  • Interviews with experienced industry professionals on how they use analytics to create hit games.

Edited by Magy Seif El-Nasr, Anders Drachen and Alessandro Canossa.