Surveilling the Gamers: Analysis of in-game data gathering

Crazy to think that this stuff can potentially end up tied to your identity and used for advertising, or even (in theory) other purposes like credit worthiness or a job suitability assessment.

"For example, a recently patented profiling method uses play traces to de- termine whether a user is frugal (e.g., indicated by saving in-game money even in the face of attractive spending options), fiscally responsible (e.g., indicated by investing carefully and focusing on strategically important purchases), or wasteful (e.g., indicated by taking financial risks, spending money quickly, and buying items not relevant to the goals of the game) [19]. The method also aims to evaluate whether a player is “trading-conscious”, i.e., fit for certain finan- cial trading products, and to detect an “eagerness to go after new products or services” based on how players develop their in-game character. Even non-financial aspects of a game can allow insights into a user’s money- management style. The above patent, for instance, proposes to assesses a user’s level of frugality based on ammunition expenditure patterns in first-person shooter games (e.g., rate at which bullets are fired, percentage of hits, pre- cision shots and controlled bursts vs. wasteful use of ammunition) or based on the user’s performance in driving games and flight simulators (e.g., aggressive driving, overspeed, crash frequency) [19]. Such links between gameplay and real-world spending behavior have also been reported in the scientific literature. Correlating the results of an online survey with log data from the popular sandbox video game Minecraft, for ex- ample, Canossa et al. [37] found that money-conscious players tend to build fewer sleeping accommodations for themselves and prefer to use cheap in-game materials, such as stone, sand, and iron instead of precious materials, such as diamond"