In today's game industry, titles like "Clash Royale" and "Pokemon Go" are free for most people to enjoy because there's a small number of players who pay for extras, like special weapons or more lives. Game developers have to strike a delicate balance in this free-to-play model between drawing the masses and encouraging big spenders — and they need both for a successful title.
Silicon Studio Corp. is trying to help by providing game makers with deep-learning algorithms to create what amounts to a psychological profile of each player. The Tokyo-based company's software predicts how long people will play, what levels they might achieve, how much money they might spend and on what. Even more important, the technology lets game creators mold player behavior to keep them hooked.
"Game data is perfect for studying human behavior," said Africa Perianez, chief data scientist at Silicon Studio and a former physicist at the European nuclear research organization CERN. "It's going to change the industry, change the direction of personalized games."