Turiya Media, which helps game publishers mine and analyze user data, was just selected as the top startup in the Who’s Got Game Competition at our GamesBeat@GDC event in San Francisco.

The company says its Leafnode product uses advanced predictive algorithms to track hours of logged time by individual players and create individual behavioral profiles. It focuses on three areas of the game user lifecycle — acquisition, retention, and monetization. All this data helps publishers retain and make money from their players. You can read more about Turiya here.

To get to this point, five finalists were selected from 37 applicants, and they presented at today’s conference. Then a panel of expert judges chose the winner. Jeremy Liew, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners and the panel moderator, said Turiya was chosen because it offered a “critical piece of functionality.” Bigger game publishers will probably build their own in-house products, but if the game industry grows, and especially if the number of independent publishers grows, there could be a big business here.

“It’s a terrific, non-hit-based, great app,” Liew said.

Read all of our coverage from GamesBeat@GDC

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