Activision Blizzard’s world of StarCraft II

Anyone with a serious video gamer in her life probably is well aware that that person not only is addicted to one or another gaming console, but also to posting online about the system and the games he’s playing on it – the good and the bad. Given the huge amount of online chatter that accompanies the debut of hot new titles like Activision Blizzard’s StarCraft II — as well as whatever else is taking up their screen time in this fast-changing and fast-paced market — you could see where game developers, publishers, and retailers could potentially be a big market for text analytics vendors.

Overtone thinks so, and this week it introduced the first of a planned series of vertical-industry focused semantic analytics SaaS solutions. GameVoice Interactive is aimed at giving those involved in the video game creative, publishing and selling space log-in to this verticalized version of its OpenMic “listening” application access to customizable dashboards and analytics about what is being said – both positive and negative – about products in the social media space. “All companies are new to this,” says Neil Patil, Overtone’s Chief Marketing Officer, of business’ exploration of online expressions of sentiment. “Social media analysis is in its infancy – it’s evolving from buzz tracking to really figuring out what customers are saying so they can improve products or service.”

Drawing from about 35 sites Overtone says cover most of the video gaming conversations, and covering over 300 video games, the system uses natural language processing to analyze what users are saying about things like graphics, game play, and story line – even what other games those who have bought a certain game also are mentioning. Patil says retailers could use such information about game sentiment to determine whether or not to order more stock, or perhaps promote the price down on a game that isn’t being favorably discussed. Or developers can gain insight into what players like about the graphics capabilities that could translate into a product they’re working on. Publishers, of course, can determine what’s positive or negative about its brand or a particular game series, and use that to inform future plans. The company says it worked with big video game developers and publishers on what they’d like to see in such a packaged insight portal, but making this available for a quarterly subscription fee, Patil says, makes the technology accessible to small players in the space. And that could be helpful even if their own offerings in the space aren’t as talked about as those from bigger entrants. “Even if you’re a small developer or publisher, you can now afford to tap into all this information and figure out what is being said about you or your competitors,” and perhaps take some cues from what features in other games get positive comments from players.

Being able to get this data through a service also appeals to potential users’ desire not to want to have to learn the ins and outs of NLP to make something work and to maintain it. That’s been true among customers of its OpenMic platform as well, which has evolved to encompass social media along with its original intention of helping companies analyze direct and open-ended feedback from online surveys, emails, and so on. Rather than working by feeding its system keywords and maintaining associations among them, Patil says OpenMic uses statistically-weighted machine-learning technology that begins to understand why a comment might relate more to service than reservations, or be more positive than negative, by mimicking how humans interpret such information, and then taking over the process 24/7 and delivering word clouds that let users dive deeper into comment sentiment. Overtone says its NLP approach enables comprehensive sentiment analysis by time, location, author, and topic or any combination of each. He also notes the technology can support “emerging topics” alert for things that pop up that might not have been anticipated and so wouldn’t be accounted for through linguistics systems that rely on keyword and dictionary updates.

Patil says the next industry that might get a vertical SaaS version of its technology is travel, but he says Overtone also is starting to hear from the social media gaming market about whether its technology can apply there and not just to traditional video console products. That could present some issues as conversations around some of these popular games – think Farmville — tend to take place over private discussions in places like Facebook, and Overtone won’t collect that data. But there may be plenty of other fish to fry – and a good reason to try frying it: Nielsen just said that online games just passed e-mail as the second-most popular activity online.

Announcing Semantic Tech & Business Conference - San Francisco 2012

Semantic Tech & Business Conference is returning to San Francisco in June! Join us from June 3-7 for complete coverage of Big Data, Linked Data, Extreme Information Management, and Semantic Web. From breakthrough approaches to solving business problems to the big data implications of fast–evolving technologies, SemTechBiz provides you with an unparalleled interactive experience and delivers tangible business value. We're offering a special early rate when you register by February 17. Sign up now!