If there is a modern topic of discussion that elicits a strong response from the public, it is data privacy. Tech companies like Apple have made a conscious effort to educate the public about the issue, while making their products increasingly resistant to covert data recovery.
In the gaming industry, data has become a way of life. The industry uses everything that can be used to target new players, improve the flow of casinos (thereby making it easier and more profitable to attract customers), and generally improve market trends. However, there is a catch. At G2E Asia this year, Qlik Senior Director of Solutions and Value Engineering, Chin Kuan Tan, revealed the results of Qlik's research on gamers' preferences regarding data use in the gaming industry and the hospitality, which generated some interesting puzzles.
Tan's presentation showed that 72% of people will stop engaging with a company altogether if they are concerned about data collection, and he also said that 76% of gamers prefer hyper-personalization over mass marketing techniques.
The duality of these two statistics shows that gaming operators are walking a knife edge when it comes to how data collected from customers is used; And with the increased focus on data at the individual level, the way operators market themselves to customers has to evolve.
The more the industry uses servers and algorithms to solve and streamline everyday tasks, the more it relies on data collection to operate. “You would think that a lot of the data goes from the casino to our central servers or to our cloud servers; That is not the case. Everything is made locally. Traditionally, in a Las Vegas casino, all servers are located on premises and run our algorithms themselves, so we don't get that data on our servers.
Now, of course, any data going from the camera to the servers still needs to be encrypted; and it is, both in transit and at rest, but it's not going anywhere on our servers." The failure to categorically explain the security precautions in place, in addition to using the term "encryption", seems revealing. So the data and gaming industry is a strange mix. Today, the industry demands that gamers be protected from those who would do harm by obtaining data, while gamers themselves are willing to give up if they feel vulnerable for a second when signing up for a service.
Customers want what they've always wanted: continuous service that benefits them without risk. But with the online nature of the modern world, this risk is accepted as long as it is mitigated, leaving gaming companies juggling the issues of personalized experiences, data loss, and customer satisfaction.
Gaming companies want to use the data to improve the consumer experience while retaining and assuring customers that the data provided will not be sold or used in other nefarious ways, as has been frequently reported since the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013.
