With the continuing global growth in the Game, Entertainment, and virtual/augmented reality and immersive experiences industries, entertainment providers increasingly depend on data analytics to maintain a competitive edge while continuing to improve the customer experience. While traditional reporting and business intelligence has informed game and entertainment organizations about the historical and current state of business operations, the scale, scope, and volume of data that is continuously being generated and communicated provides a wealth of information that can feed more advanced analytical techniques to radically change and improve the way people are entertained.
Applying analytics to the game, entertainment, and media industries (or as we like to call it: GEM Analytics) means applying analytics and data science methods to support traditional media (such as newspapers, books, magazines, and traditional TV), professional sports (think Moneyball!), as well as newer products and service offerings such as Virtual reality, OTT (over-the-top) video (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+, Disney+, etc.), Internet access, video games, e-sports, virtual and augmented reality, immersive experience, and Internet advertising.
This website is intended to look at the many ways that individuals can use GEM Analytics to support customer profiling, personalization, optimization of content delivery across multiple channels, elongating customer lifetime value, maximizing channel revenues, as well as influencing the creation and development of content in alignment with other business drivers. At the same time, we will also examine some of the sociotechnical facets of entertainment provision and consider challenges and issues associated with data privacy, ethical design, and national security. We welcome your participation! If you are interested in learning more about opportunities in this fascinating field, please email me directly at dloshin@umd.edu.