When I was a wee lad, the turnaround time for a piece of research was 5-6 years. From the first idea to the day it appeared in a journal. We now see functional models in game analytics that address practical social science problems in a couple months. Seems fast! But isn't fast enough. Game builders are making decisions hourly as their player bases shift and roil.
I wonder if we are on the wrong track in game analytics. We are using big data sociology, economics, and public policy as our models. Maybe the right model is meteorology. The weather is a vast complex system whose properties we need to interrogate on an hourly basis. Game companies are just the first to confront the problems of providing governance on an hourly basis. Also on an individualized basis. For a whole society, whose membership constantly shifts. It is a mind boggling problem and It seems that every time analytics catches up , the time scale has shifted down an order of magnitude.
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