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Video-Gamers Are Being Watched

New video games software is being developed by Emergent Game Technologies that will monitor and analyze every action the player takes. The information revealed this way could help developers and publishers make better games. Peoples` behavioral patterns will be collected as they play, analyzed and distributed within a Web-based user interface. The software would provide answers to many questions, from what players do in the game and how long it take to reach level 10, to where they spend their money and how many people saw some product pitch in the game, for example.

It will be also possible to know how many people viewed the ad, and how long they stayed to either look or interact with it, said Larry Mellon, Emergent vice president of engineering and systems architect. The software can even look inside the online network as gamers play to help identify connection points within a game, providing insight into how information moves from one group to another.

Michael Arrington, senior analyst at Acacia Research Group, Vancouver, Washington said: "You can see how your marketing network moves, and how news propagates across the virtual world. There are privacy concerns, but if you`re playing in a MMOG world you`ve probably already given authorization for the site to collect data in aggregate, as long as they don`t identify you as an individual."