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Using the example of the largest participant in the porn industry market, we talk about the formation of a new data collection model using adult games
MindGeek is the parent company behind Pornhub, Brazzers, and a host of other popular porn studios and sites. In 2015, she invested in Nutaku, a platform that develops and distributes sexually explicit animated hentai games.
The historical reputation of hentai is so bad that some popular gaming platforms flatly refuse to even consider releasing porn games. Since the 1980s, far too many hentai games have turned out to be little more than traps with viruses and credential phishing.
Why would MindGeek take such a risk?
Nutaku representatives claimed that MindGeek is ready to invest in their business as it wants to capture the huge untapped market for hentai games. However, the real goal, according to Mashable, is the attractiveness of the type and level of user data. It is possible to collect them due to the growing demand for games of this genre in the West.
Supporting this version is that MindGeek included numerous data collection and sharing permissions directly in Nutaku’s privacy policy. The latter reserves the right to collect information about virtually everything a user does on the site or app, and share this information with other MindGeek sites to tailor content, advertising, services, and analytics.
Nutaku spokesperson Jay Eiswedo noted that MindGeek decided to launch Nutaku because it noticed “massive consumer demand for adult games in the West.” The Nutaku team has also seen signs of a cultural shift, he added, which could herald a reduction in public negativity about the bundling of adult content and games that has made the market difficult in the past.
One way or another, all this speaks to the desire of MindGeek to go beyond digital distribution and streaming services.
Problems of collecting data from websites
The collection of data from adult sites began with the creation of YouTube clones in 2007. YouPorn and RedTube were originally conceived as projects for quickly downloading pornographic videos. Everything led to the fact that the world has the first array of related data with such a piquant source.
Sites can collect all search and browsing history associated with a single IP address, device, and browser to compile a dossier on a user. They are able to track the time and depth of viewing, which parts of the videos the user is watching more actively, and many other details.
The collected user data includes assumptions about demographic characteristics, this is necessary to obtain hidden detailed information.
However, the brevity of visits and the efforts of a number of consumers to hide their identity lead to the unreliability of the information received.
Porn companies may try to supplement the basic information with surveys. For example, Brazzers periodically releases aggressive ads asking you to fill out a survey. On adult sites, people tend to lie, even in anonymous surveys. As a result, the effectiveness of information decreases.
xHamster determines user preferences based on internal analytics and user geolocation. Thus, a person on the main page sees videos that he might like according to the algorithm, and the viewing region is also taken into account.
How is data collected in games?
How adult games help collect data
Games are a much more active, involved digital activity in which players make decisions all the time. Most hentai games take place online, which means that any activity can be tracked.
“Each game choice is actually like a survey question. Only in this case the answers are given honestly. On average, they are more reliable than the results of anonymous surveys. Some companies have started developing games specifically for market research,” says Rob Shavell of data protection company Abine.
“There’s a lot of data you can get just by watching people press buttons,” agrees Chris Ling, CEO of the Sekai Project (licensing, translating and publishing adult games from Japan for Western audiences since 2014).
Notably, many games on Nutaku involve active decision making. Moreover, almost every adult game platform requires registration and proof of age. Often, microtransactions require bank card details.
By the way, the OnlyFans service has a similar model. The user completes the registration, conducts the transaction and gains access to the content. Given the explosive growth in the popularity of the service in 2020, one can only guess at the amount of data received.
Independent porn game developers also play an indirect role in the aggregation of information about users. For example, 4 adult-themed projects have now been launched.
“MindGeek is first and foremost a website development company. Porn is just a strategy to collect user data,” said Brandon Arroyo, pornography researcher and host of the Porno Cultures podcast.