| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Market Research |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Carlsbad, California, United States of America |
| Key people | Greg Short, President & CEO; Geoffrey Zatkin President & COO; Theodore Spence CIO; Jesse Divnich VP, Financial Services; David Fay, Client Services; Shane Hebard-Massey, Research Operations |
| Products | DesignMetrics, GamePulse, Research & Publications, Financial Services, Retail Services |
| Website | www.eedar.com |
Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) is a video game industry specific market research firm headquartered in Carlsbad, California. EEDAR was founded in 2006 by a team of interactive software veterans.[1]
Contents |
EEDAR is a market research organization that provides services in five different business divisions: DesignMetrics, Gamepulse, Research & Publications, Financial Services, and Retail Services. EEDAR has amassed a proprietary game database with 20,000 games broken down into more than 20,000,000 game features, a Guinness World Record,[2] that is the foundation for all of EEDAR’s services.
DesignMetrics is a sales and performance forecast service with a +/- 10% accuracy for the first three month sales. Designed for publishers and developers to help make crucial decisions, DesignMetrics can provide sales forecasts(US, EU or Worldwide), “What if” Scenarios to determine sales impact on feature choices, SWOT Analysis and Mock Reviews/Review Score Forecast of a specific upcoming game title.[3]
Gamepulse is the video game industry’s information service. It provides game title information, sales and performance data (North America & EFIGS, Retail & Digital), Downloadable content and digital games, review scores & media outlets, publisher & developer performance, industry trends (Macro & Micro), macro forecasting and market sizing, franchise insights, marketing and mixed media analysis, consumer awareness and activity data, retail circular advertising, product virality and word-of-mouth activity, institutional knowledge management, and custom dashboarding.[4]
In September 2010, EEDAR published a report called “Deconstructing Downloadable Content”, a series of four individual reports that explore consumer behaviors and historical data related to downloadable games and digital content. EEDAR also provides custom research services including data collection, formatting, topical studies and competitive analysis.[5] Financial Services: Financial services provide a range of products tailored to the financial industry. Financial services include due diligence research products, analytic consulting, company profiling, trend monitoring and forecasting services.[6]
Retail services provide a range of products tailored to the retail industry. Retail services include North America retail game data feeds (English and Spanish), North America and European console downloadable game and downloadable content data feeds (PSN, XBL), Feature based recommendation and discovery technology for POS, e-commerce, kiosk and mobile services, Loyalty enhancement data and technology packages, Market trending, demand planning and buyer intelligence dashboards, and support.[7]
In 2010, SMU Guildhall and EEDAR teamed up to do a study measuring the impact of review scores and sales. The study split 165 participants who had never played Plants vs. Zombies into three groups: one who had been exposed to high review scores before playing, one who had been exposed to low review scores, and a control group who hadn’t been exposed to any.
On completing the study, the participants got a choice of taking the game or $10 in cash. Participants who were exposed to high review scores were twice as likely to take the game. Also, the participants who were shown higher review scores gave on average the game 20 points higher a review score than participants who were exposed to a low review score.[8][9][10]
At DICE 2010, the CEO and COO of EEDAR, Greg Short and Geoffrey Zatkin, presented “Forces at Play: Examining What Has Really Been Impacting the Videogame Industry, and What It Means Going Forward” that analyzed the current 7th generation hardware cycle and how publishing strategies evolved over the life cycle of the hardware.[11][12]
At GDC Europe 2010, CEO Greg Short previewed EEDAR’s new “Deconstructing DLC Report” that showed, for example, that a majority of consumers want DLC for a new game 1 to 3 months after a game is released. Short comments that, given the data, DLC needs to become part of the game industry’s strategy. Short also showed that there is little difference between free and paid DLC, and that consumers want DLC whither or not it is free.[13]
After E3 2010, EEDAR released popular interest stats based upon trailer various attention matrix from Gametrailers.com and IGN.com. Joystiq.com, a popular games industry news website, noted some of the similarities and peculiarities in the lists published by EEDAR.[14][15]
In 2010, EEDAR released a study about the gender of characters and how it affects the quality and sales of a game. Jesse Divnich, the VP of Analyst Services, wrote that “console games over the last 5 years show no aggregate statistical evidence that indicates that gender selection (aside from having no gender at all) impacts quality scores.” Sales of a game are more determined by brand awareness, marketing spend, development budget and other factors that have little to do with the gender of the playable character.[16]
EEDAR was listed #15 on Forbes’ list of America Most Promising Companies, which is based on the size of their potential market, the strength of their intellectual property, experience of their management team, and track record in hitting product development benchmarks. [17][18][19]
At E3 2010, Guinness World Records presented EEDAR with an award for Largest Electronic Database of Video Game Features with over 25 million quantifiable data points.[20]
In February 2009,EEDAR and Nielsen announced a market research partnership. Information from Nielsen’s Monitor Plus is combined with EEDAR’s proprietary game database to further augment EEDAR’s Gamepulse and DesignMetrics services and increase marketing campaign effectiveness.[21][22][23]
In February 2009, EEDAR and GameTrailers announced a partnership to combine GameTrailers attention metrics with EEDAR’s Gamepulse and DesignMetrics services.[24][25]
EEDAR and ESRB partner to provide statistics in GamePulse and DesignMetrics on games’ ESRB ratings.[26]
In December 2009, Rentrak and EEDAR signed a data integration contract to further augment EEDAR’s GamePulse service.[27]