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Game science will give you an advantage over your competitors

ashley hay

In “What Games Are: The Scientism Delusion,” writer Tadhg Kelly argues that there is currently a fashion for “scientism” in today’s gaming industry. He states that developers and companies try to use “mystical formulas” to achieve success but that this approach rarely proves fruitful. He rails against those who espouse the use of analytics and mourns the death of gamemaking from a place of pure creativity rather than market-driven research.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.