Oi! Crossover Summit: 13th June, Sheffield Doc/Fest: Exploiting the Feedback Loop

A reminder!

Exploiting the Feedback Loop 13:15 / The Chapel

Tom Rawlings (Chair) / Jon Dovey (DCRC) / Kate Quilton (Channel 4)

Games like Bejeweled, Draw Something or Words with Friends are not one-off media events, but are on-going almost living entities. Being connected to the network they can collect huge amounts of data from players and so feed back to the designers which elements work and which do not. This allows them to respond, changing and improving the project in response. But while this ‘bio-media model’ clearly works for video games, can it work for filmmakers? By seeing video as data, a number of media thinkers are increasingly challenging the view that a film has to be a one off creation. Join us to find out more…

If you want a flavour of the event – try this…

In total, Begemann studies 128 data points. He does the same for the six other games that wooga has released. “Some differences are obvious, like Wednesdays are better than Thursdays,” Begemann says. “But if I still can’t make sense of the reports, I forward the question to the respective product lead of the game.” Then he puts away his phone, takes his two-year-old son to kindergarten and walks to wooga’s Prenzlauer Berg offices in east Berlin.

Wooga is a new type of game developer, one that emphasises metrics over creativity. Its core discipline is A/B or split testing, in which new features are introduced to a selection of users, and their reactions measured. Features remain only if users engage with them. If they don’t respond, wooga tries new features until they do. Each wooga title is updated weekly; the initial release is just another stage in development. “After launch we become very metrics-driven,” says Begemann. “During the first two weeks of Brain Buddies [wooga’s first game], we did four or five A/B tests. It was very fast — almost daily iterations.”