Sara Grimes wrote an excellent piece on this topic in The Escapist: Mining the game.
While I definitely see both the temptation of datamining and it's immediate application value for game design and game research, I can also see the ethical problems with analysing data not originally designed to be analysed in this manner. It's disconnected from the context of whoever submitted it, it is heavily dependent on the skill and mindframe of the analyst (yes, everything is, I think this is just more so), and it is, in some cases, plainly illegal.
I am not saying it is wrong, but it is definitely a way of gathering information which needs to be questioned, discussed and explored methodologically and ethically.
Friday, March 16, 2007
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Many companies have much more data than they use. They gather an incredible amount of information on each transacion, that could be used to improve services and products, but it is not used.
I guess that datamining is a powerful tool to take advantage of information that is already there.
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