Videogame Analytics, Surveillance, and Memory

Abstract

There is a growing suite of commercially available analytics tools platforms use within the context of videogaming. Increasingly, these analytics tools are reliant on the capture of data pertaining to player activity—using machine learning techniques to parse these data and create subscription based “guide” services to assist players in their gameplay. This is often spruiked by marketers as a supplement to one’s gameplay and a method for improving one’s own performance. Looking at the example of DotaPlus, a recent kind of machine learning based analytics platform in the popular game Dota 2, this short essay argues that recent developments in gaming analytics might be understood as what Bernard Stiegler calls mnemotechnics—essentially technologies that shape human experience and perception in various, often commercially desirable ways. The theoretical argument I advance here is that the digital traces of player activity, captured and fed back to users in the form of DotaPlus guides, significantly alters the experience of playing Dota 2—done in a way that is economically desirable for the game’s developer.