Game development, data analytics, and discourses of care

Abstract

This article tracks promotional discourses surrounding ‘off the shelf’ data analytics tools used in game development, particularly those used for developing games in the platform economy. Through discourse analysis, I focus on the narratives produced by data analytics companies about the benefits of these tools for developing games (making, monetising, distributing). My analysis centres on the discourse of time–of data, as an object that renders spatially discrete ongoing flows of activity, providing prescriptive insight in real time, with minimal requisite technical knowledge–insights which profitably shape engage the ongoing process of game development; an imaginary which, I argue, severely delimits the potential for imagining alternative game development futures.