Towards Understanding Game Data Work

This study examines how data work is organized within game companies, asking who performs it, what it involves, and how it reshapes understanding of game work more broadly. Drawing on two datasets, a collection of game industry job advertisements mentioning data and semi-structured interviews with 20 Finnish game industry professionals, the authors seek to explicate and operationalize the concept of "game data work" and identify how it differs from data work in other sectors. The research situates itself within the broader shift toward data-driven methods in digital game production, particularly in free-to-play and mobile development.

The job advertisements reveal a growing number of data-intensive positions, often concerned with different components of the data pipeline or analytics stack. Listings describe data professionals as key hires, central to decision-making, and holding lead roles, suggesting that data-intensive processes may be altering existing power structures within studios. The interview material complements this public-facing picture with accounts of everyday practice.

From this material the authors propose a three-part typology of game data workers: dedicated data professionals such as data scientists, analysts, and engineers, who increasingly build custom tools and studio data architectures and whose communication and training responsibilities are more central than often assumed; "product people," including management, producers, designers, and marketing staff, who must monitor the "health of the product" through performance indicators and real-time live operations; and "everyday game data workers," the wider development staff whose tasks are not overtly data-heavy but who operate in environments saturated with analytics and "data talk." The authors conclude that game data work resembles data work elsewhere in some respects but is distinctive in its close collaboration with creative teams and its growing influence on other areas of game development.