In the current world of gaming, users are driving changes, according to Jack Gudenkauf,  VP of Big Data at Playtika Ltd. Gudenkauf joined theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s Media production team, during the HP Big Data Conference and described how data is being processed and used by his company to stay up-to-date with user demands.

Playtika deals with a “velocity and variety” of data as it creates new versions of its games based on analytics of game play and user feedback. Gudenkauf said, “It’s not like Field of Dreams, you know — you build and they will come. It’s ‘you build it, they use it, and then change it until the users are happy.’” Playtika is trying to get as close to the user experience as possible. Gudenkauf said the goal would be to “change the game in real-time.”

Asking the right task from a program

To that end, the company utilizes several programs to analyze its data, including Vertica, Spark, Hadoop and Kafka. Gudenkauf discussed how Vertica can handle the high volume of data that Playtika’s games, such as social Bingo, put out. The company utilizes a Vertica database that “ingests data through Kafka”; that data then funnels into Spark. Next, the data goes to Hadoop, where is transformed and parallelized. “There’s a total coexistence” between the programs that Gudenkauf credits to not asking the wrong task from a program.

Gudenkauf echoed Professor Mike Stonebraker’s remarks on how “a lot of problems come from people trying to use platforms in way they weren’t designed for.” Many players in the industry have been treating Hadoop like the cliched hammer. Gudenkauf remarked that Stonebraker is his “idol,” and he was very honored that when Gudenkauf presented an issue to the Turing Award recipient, Stonebraker said, “You’re doing to the right thing.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the HP Big Data Conference 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE