Big Data's biggest challenge? Video Games..

I'll start with a few facts in order to convince you of the enormity of information held in gaming.

1) over the last decade the video game industry has grown from 200 million consumers to 2 billion consumers.

2) "Battlefield 3:" 1 TB of data is generated daily (this data includes kills, deaths, shots, explosions, etc.)

3) More simple games such as "The Simpsons: Tapped Out" generates 150 GB daily and 4.5 TB Monthly

4) In a typical month over two and half billion sessions are held over the entire platform of games (~ fifty billions minutes of game play.) 

The reason the gaming platform finds big data so interesting is due to its evolution from paid to play games to free to play games. Many gaming companies are changing their business model from an initial one time payment to free to play in hopes that you will spend money to receive in game help (ie better weapons, new characters, different maps, etc..) They find that the relationship between prices and purchases or  limitations and purchases are vital in maximizing their profits. Rajat Taneja states that "the right data at the right time is more valuable than bigger data sets." Since there is so much data being generated daily, descriptive data of one day may be more telling than descriptive data  from the whole week. By looking over a small data set you may over look an opportunity to enhance the consumer's gaming experience.    

Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK_PXlbvOfM