The purpose of this article is to apply societal discourses on ‘big data’ to the growing practice of the collection of individual information and behavioral patterns of video game players to create virtual player representations. Game developers make use of such data to enhance the gameplay experience, and publishers can learn more about their customers. This article explains technical backgrounds and reasons why developers and publishers have an interest in gathering such a vast load of data. It also explains server gaming and game metrics technologies, takes a look at methods of consumer research, and discusses a critical standpoint from a civil rights perspective. For the monetization of video games, real-time analytics are extremely important, and this soon became the business of specialized companies, which act as service providers to many major publishing companies in the games industry. Leading game developers are now making more money from so-called ‘player recurring investments’ (or ‘microtransactions’) than from the sales of digital games.

While single aspects of the topic like big data or data mining have been researched and discussed before, the fact that many of today´s video games are constantly retrieving, collecting and maintaining personal data about the players to learn about their patterns of behavior has had much less coverage thus far. Video games today analyze the behavioral and even emotional profiles of their individual users, making the planning and prediction of their next moves possible. In traditional software development a videogame had to be developed in an often visionary, forwardlooking manner based on past gaming and sales experiences. This process was constantly overshadowed by the risk of commercial failure. Today game development is increasingly becoming a real-time task and involves players in the development from an early stage on - either participating in Kickstarter or Crowdsourcing campaigns or as public beta-testers.

Cloud technologies make their data accessible to the publishers or developers, and keep them beyond the subsequent control and influence of the players. The latest generation consoles Playstation 4 and Xbox One work according to this principle. Even users of finally released products are still - often without their knowledge - involved in active development as their data and activity patterns become analyzed. Players slowly slide into the role of sparring partners for developers. The reactions of the players, analyzed in real time, now form the basis for innovation and change. This means nothing less than that development tasks become delegated to the users, which in the past had to be done by the in-house product quality departments.

From a civil rights perspective new dangers arise beyond the widely discussed topics of virtual violence or obsessive gaming and gambling. Critically put, server games tie players temporary and emotionally to artificial worlds. At the same time they get analyzed by ‘Game Metrics’, leaving behind emotional and mental ‘fingerprints’ deep within the systems. Today, the gameplay of registered users is constantly being recorded, comprehensively and completely. The technical system knows who focuses on criminal acts in the game and to what degree, who likes to slaughter orcs or who uses which weapons, who kills just as many people as possible in an open-world-game, who decides to fight for certain army units or terrorist groups, or who plays a particular war scenario.

Collecting personal and emotional data to be able to actually understand the previously unknown entity ‘player’ is also what intelligence services have always been interested in. If traces of individual credit card or cellphone use lead criminals or security agencies onto the trail of individuals and if social networks are already extensively being used by HR accountants to sculpt a model of characteristics of applicants before they have even had the chance to show up by accessing and using data which such applicants might have posted or uploaded (or created by accident) years ago, what profile will videogamers leave behind, whose actions over all the years of gaming provide a near perfect psychological and emotional fingerprint?

As for any other personal information there is a huge demand of commercializing even the most inner thoughts of a person. As a result, it highlights the necessity that modern computer game players should view themselves as vital parts of information networks and, in return for being entertained, provide important personal information that can help to make their individual behavior transparent and usable for third parties and probably information brokers. Not only do providers of games benefit from the socioeconomic information users give, but ‘invisible third parties’ also share a vital interest in any behavioural data that makes an individual become transparent and predictable. Intelligence services, corporations and social networks generate user profiles from data previously submitted during gameplay. This could have a significant impact on future job and life prospects and aid the economic and political control of individuals since character traits like cowardize or courage and sociality become traceable.