Lukasz Twardowski, a young Polish entrepreneur, recently made an unexpected discovery. By analyzing data from video games, he thinks he’ll be able to predict whether players are color blind, have Alzheimer’s disease, or suffer from various learning and development disorders.
He can already use this data to tell whether players are gamblers, cheaters, or minors, so the profiling of medical conditions is not that distant, Twardowski claims.
“Games are the richest and the most meaningful form of human computer interaction,” said Twardowski in an interview with VentureBeat. “We can use [them] to build a full user behavioral profile.”
Since its launch in 2009, Twardowski’s company, Use It Better, has focused its analytics and profiling capabilities to help developers catch cheaters, based on an analysis of how these players interact with the game. Fraud detection has become an important component of the startup’s value proposition. As the company’s website explains: “It can’t prevent people from shoplifting, but it can show you who’s the thief.”
“By tracking how they play games, we can learn a lot about people,” Twardowski explained. Hesitatingly, he added: “That will be a huge responsibility for us later on.”
On first look, Use It Better does not seem like the kind of company on the brink of a major breakthrough. The 11-person team, primarily comprised of 20-somethings developers, is based in Poland, and the two founders divide their time between Poland and the U.S. The website still reflects the commercial goal and does not contain any mention of what Twardowski describes as “the big vision.”