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Game Analytics

francoisvnfrancoisvn
edited in General
I'm looking to implement some analytics for my current prototype. I looked around and it seems like the best option is Playtomic (http://playtomic.com). Playtomic offers most of what I want, but not everything. I might be able to massage things so that they'll do, but it could be less than ideal. The other option is rolling my own system, but that will take some time which I'd rather not spend unless I have to. Does anyone else have any experience with Playtomic or any other free analytics service? Anyone written their own system?

Comments

  • dislekciadislekcia
    I've been told that setting up actual Google Analytics isn't too hard - you just need to pepper your game with the correct HTTP calls and go from there. GA handles session identification and all that for you, but you can also add custom variables to track in-game events.

    I'm beginning to wish we'd done that with DD (and maybe we will eventually) but the game's already got a really simple logging system that we can pull stats from via simple SQL calls. Stats are neat :)
  • TheFuntasticTheFuntastic
    Google analytics is great. The only it's not so good for is tracking your "funnel" and seeing at which point users drop off. Game analytics are tailored for that kind of thing. Still possible in Google Analytics, but requires a bit more effort.
  • francoisvnfrancoisvn
    I did think of Google Analytics, but that offers even less flexibility. For instance, I can't even plot separate events against each other. Playtomic offers those sorts of things, with APIs for most game engines/platforms, all with a free option. What Playtomic doesn't offer is the flexibility that I would want for a non-standard game (I'm thinking specifically of my Zendo prototype here).

    I'm thinking that a simple system that I roll myself is probably not as much work as I was thinking, at least for the recording part. The analysis part might be a bit of work, but I might be able to find something pre-built that I can use.

    Then again, Playtomic is very easy to get running for now. Then I can use it a bit and make notes of it's shortcomings so I don't run into them with my own system if I decide to write it a bit later. I think this is probably the a good option for now.

    @dislekcia: For DD, do you analyse your data by looking directly at the SQL query results? Or do you have something you use to plot the data?
  • dislekciadislekcia
    @francoisvn said:
    @dislekcia: For DD, do you analyse your data by looking directly at the SQL query results? Or do you have something you use to plot the data?
    Sometimes I just manhandle together a big icky SQL query. Other times I grep a bunch of data and shove that into a spreadsheet for other calculations. It's mostly rough and ready right now, very little intelligence to it beyond what I do with the spreadsheets... My girlfriend's an analytics pro though, so she keeps pointing me at things we could do better ;)
  • francoisvnfrancoisvn
    edited
    Ok cool, thanx for the info. I think for now I'm going to just use Playtomic because I had to write about 10 lines of code to get it working. As I use it, I'm going to make a list of all it's shortcomings (at least for me), and then when I have some time, roll my own system. Analysing the results with raw SQL queries seems quite usable, and I can always draw some pretty plots for frequently used queries.

    I do recommend that everyone looks at Playtomic if you don't already track your game analytics. It is very easy to use and will probably be perfect for quite a large number of games.
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