Videogames, Analytics and the 'Becoming-Gramme' of Play

Videogame data analytics, which harvest and aggregate gameplay and present in-game events as numbers and visualisations, are examined here as a growing part of everyday mediated life. The extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2018, argues that analytics platforms, now emerging in both proprietary and third-party forms and mostly in multiplayer games, reshape how play is understood and practised. The central thesis is that the "data-fication" of gaming can be theorised as a "becoming-gramme" of play.

The theoretical framework is post-phenomenological and draws selectively on Bernard Stiegler's concept of grammatisation: the breakdown of flows and embodied performances into discrete, retrievable and reproducible forms. Just as alphabetisation grammatises speech and then feeds back into how people speak, analytics grammatise the spatiotemporal flux of gameplay and fold back into gaming habits. Habit is understood as ways of doing and being transformed by environmental phenomena. Analytics thus function as Stiegler's "mnemotechnics," technologies that orient how players experience a game as a mix of perceptions, anticipations and recollections.

Methodologically, the study relies on an autoethnographic component of a wider research project, using the walkthrough method developed for studying apps. Two case studies of popular third-party analytics platforms for Dota 2, Dotabuff and OpenDota, anchor the analysis.

Two threads structure the discussion. First, analytics generate self-knowledge by externalising past performance, letting players reflect on well-played moments, correct errors and build productive habits. Second, analytics grammatise the play of others. Given Dota 2's playerbase of millions, the platforms make expert play visible and operate as an aspirational framework. In keeping with Stiegler's critical, activist orientation, the paper also addresses detrimental effects of pervasive stat tracking and sharing on the experience of play. As an extended abstract, it offers conceptual meditations rather than quantitative findings.