Case Study: Bakamo achieves discovery of EVE Online players' real-world skills and community insights with Talkwalker

How Talkwalker helped Bakamo identify customer insights from EVE Online’s community, and the valuable skills gamers gain for the digital and real world

Bakamo.Social, a strategic social listening consultancy, partnered with CCP Games to better understand the massive EVE Online community and tackle a core challenge: how to balance the game’s complexity to grow new-player engagement and retain veterans while proving the real-world value of skills learned in-game. Using Talkwalker’s platform, they set out to capture unfiltered player conversations across social channels, forums and blogs to surface insights that traditional research missed — especially given the stigma some players feel about openly identifying as gamers.

Bakamo used rule-based auto-tagging and correlated conversations against Maslow’s Hierarchy to map player development — the “EVE Effect” — revealing that 73% of players made new friendships, 56% used EVE-acquired skills in real life (e.g., data analysis, market economics), and 72% believed those skills helped them get better jobs. These findings drove product and community changes (targeted support after early losses, a fleet-finder, improved recruitment focus and hands-on new-player support) and opened a pathway for HR teams to recruit gamers for niche skill sets.

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