I was going through a research publications on Data management in gaming/virtual worlds and came across this interesting comment left by one of Zynga's analytical leads (Ken Rudin) on their data architecture. 

To clear up the confusion about whether we use MySQL/membase or Vertica, the answer is pretty simple: One is used for transactional purposes, and one is used for analytical purposes.

The games write transactional data to MySQL/membase, and the architecture is described here:http://code.zynga.com/2011/07/building-a-scalable-game-server/

By transactional data, I mean data regarding a player’s state in the game, such as what their game board looks like, how many coins they have left, etc. It’s all the info that the game needs when the player logs in so they can continue playing where they left off previously.

The games also separately write analytical data to our analytics platform, and the architecture is described here:http://code.zynga.com/2011/06/deciding-how-to-store-billions-of-rows-per-day/

This analytical data is primarily event data related to player behaviors. Did the player just send a horse to their friend in Farmville? Log that to the analytics system. Did they visit a neighbor’s city in Cityville? Log that to the analytics system. Etc.

Hope that clears things up.

interesting the difference between the platform and app selection 

CORE COMPETENCY- Create, perfect, create again .... 

"Acess to the Web is now a human right," he said. "It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger."

Bern ers-Lee  touched on smartphones, repeating his stance that it is better to develop Web apps that run on mobile devices than to create apps that circumvent the open Web.

He also said it's important for the Web not to simply become an instrument to spread unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories. One of his goals is to make the Web a system in which scientists can share data and information more effectively.

The Web has grown so large that the number of Web pages rivals the number of neurons in a human brain, Berners-Lee said. And the Web must be analyzed, just as we analyze the brain.

"To a certain extent, we have a duty about the Web which is greater than our duty about the brain, because with the brain we just analyze it," he said. "But with the Web, we actually get to engineer it. We can change it."

via networkedworld.com & MIt media lab