A Day in the Life of a Game Data Analyst at etermax

What does being a Data Analyst mean? Learn more about one of the most important roles nowadays

All companies generate data. Their storage has become easier, but what happens when we leave our data lying around, piling up? The answer is simple: nothing. On their own, data do not answer our questions or add value to our business; someone has to clean, process, and interpret them so that they turn into knowledge and help us make impactful decisions.

In this context, the Data Analyst role has gained relevance over the last years and has become one of the most demanded posts, a must-have for all companies looking to be data-driven.

At etermax, we have a team of over 20 Data Analysts that specialize in different areas of the company. Today I’m going to tell you about one team in particular: the one focused on analyzing our games. But before going into detail about our day-to-day activities, let’s talk about the most important skills every Data Analyst must have:

The must-have technical skills are:

• Collection, extraction, cleaning, and processing of data: Ideally, Data Analysts should have knowledge of SQL and languages such as R or Python to perform these tasks.
• Conceptual knowledge of Math and Statistics: Descriptive analyses, experiment design and interpretation of results, and generation of insights, among others, are a great part of our tasks and it is our responsibility to make sure that these concepts are applied correctly.
• Data visualization: Not only does this involve having knowledge of tools like Tableau and Power Bi, but also being aware of the data visualization theory to be able to choose the graph that represents what we want to show best, and communicate our findings effectively.

On the other hand, and not of lesser importance, are the soft skills. Some of the most valued for this role are:

• Communication: The description of this skill can be quite broad. This time we will focus on two aspects: message adaptability and storytelling.

We must be able to communicate our findings appropriately to the rest of the team. If we find valuable and actionable information but don’t know how to communicate it clearly without overcomplicating our message with technical terminology, it will be worthless and it will steal the spotlight from what really matters: the value of our contribution.

When preparing our presentations, either as slides or dashboards, we must keep in mind not only what graphics to use and what the most relevant data are, but also what story we want to tell with those data. The way in which we structure our storytelling makes a huge difference on the impact our information will have on the audience.

• Problem-solving: As Data Analysts, we will constantly face questions and hypotheses to be solved through our analyses. Being able to identify problems and structuring the steps towards an efficient, creative and impactful solution is key to achieving valuable results each time.
• Knowledge of the industry: This is one of the skills you will have to learn from scratch when entering a new industry no matter how long you’ve been working as a Data Analyst, as you will need to understand what the functioning and processes of this business entail. This knowledge is key since it will allow us to contextualize our data, so we can understand it and turn it into insights and actionables. Once put into practice, they will have a real impact on the business indicators we are interested in.

Now it’s time for the question we’ve been asking ourselves since the beginning: What does a Game Data Analyst do at etermax?

I could say that our day starts with a coffee, joining our daily meeting with the Product team, followed by a planning session with our team of Game Data Analysts. This is as far as our routine goes, because the tasks that come after these meetings are not really part of a routine. Each analyst in the team has their own schedule depending on the segment and product they are working on, and more deeply, the dynamics and manners of each product squad.

But, are we part of the Data Team or the Product Team?

The answer is both. This characterizes Game Data Analysts: we’re from here and there equally. On the one hand, we are one of the verticals that make up the Data team, also integrated by Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Data Analysts that specialize in other areas, and more. On the other hand, we also work closely with the Product Teams, integrated by Developers, Artists, Content Producers, and Product Owners. Our tasks are always distributed among these two teams, but they share the same goal: improving our games.

However dynamic our schedules might be, there is a series of tasks that are inherent to our role and that will always be performed by any Game Data Analyst at etermax.

Those oriented towards our technical role inside the Game Data Analysis team are:

• Defining, running and analyzing AB tests: For more information about this, read the following article: AB testing for better decision-making
• Developing dashboards to monitor the main metrics of our games.
• Carrying out in-depth analyses to look for insights and lessons that allow us to make proposals and make decisions based on data.
• Being in charge of the metrics strategy for our games, and making sure the metrics are applied and standardized correctly among all our products.
• Training the rest of the company on the use and good practices of our tools.

Those related to our role as members of the Product Team are:

• Participating in brainstorming sessions to come up with creative ideas and proposals for our games.
• Doing research about industry tendencies to be up-to-date.
• Testing all new features to provide feedback to the team and work together on potential improvements.
• Sharing our Data knowledge with the rest of the team members and also learning from them, making our multidisciplinary teams places for constant learning.
• Documenting the experiments, changes, configurations and everything that allows us to keep track of the state of our products.
• Helping to define business goals and their measurement.

Putting into words a day in our lives is not easy; we are all different and so are our days. What matters is that all Game Data Analysts are ready to face new challenges, solve complex problems, make decisions based on data and, above all, we are always ready to play!