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GameAnalytics Updates
6 min read
#Data & Analytics
Analytics In Swivel 2D (GameAnalytics Demo Game)
Introduction Like any other software development team, the GameAnalytics SDK team invests time in team-building and in other activities that elevate the team spirit. We participated in a local game jam in late spring where we managed to imagine and implement a simple immersive game mechanic. With a little more work after the event, we managed to build a simple game, which we later named Swivel 2D. The intention of building this small game is to illustrate how the GameAnalytics product can be used, from instrumentation through to the planning phase and finally on to programmatic implementation. Download the game! In order to fully understand the contents of this page, I’d recommend that you download and play the game. Here are the links: Download Swivel for iOS Download Swivel for Android Swivel is a pseudo-single player casual game for mobile platforms created by...
13 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
How We Built GameAnalytics (An Interview)
Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, GameAnalytics turned 5 years old. What better way to commemorate this landmark than by interviewing our senior frontend developer and SDK team lead, Nikolaj Pedersen. Nikolaj has been with us from the beginning and his work has been essential in the development of the tool that you know and use today. ? Q. Nikolaj, you’re GA’s longest standing employee. How did it all begin? The idea behind GameAnalytics originally came from a Danish game company (now called Cape Copenhagen). Back in 2010, they created an internal analytics tool and met with our founder, Morten Wulff. Morten had previously founded a tracking company called TraceWorks and together they discussed the idea of building an analytics tool available for all game developers. However, Cape Copenhagen decided not to pursue analytics and instead chose to focus 100%...
5 min read
#Data & Analytics
6 Game Analytics Questions: Answered by Data Scientists
Top 6 GameAnalytics questions: Can I use the same pair of keys for all platforms I am targeting? What common KPIs should I track using design events? I have sent events but I cannot see them in the tool. Where are they? I’ve setup IAP validation but all my monetization data is still invalid. Why? Can I automate the data export feature? Why did my funnel report fail to process? If none of the above concern you – good stuff. Maybe check out our recently updated post: how to increase your game revenue by 510% 😀 1. Can I use the same pair of keys for all of the platforms that I am targeting? Short answer: This is possible but we don’t recommend it. Long answer: We suggest that all users create a unique game entity for every platform that they target....
2 min read
#Data & Analytics
Mobile Games KPI Benchmarks for September 2015
Here we go again with another benchmarks update! As you may know, Benchmarks is a feature that allows you to compare your KPIs to those of 6,000 (and counting) other games tracked by GameAnalytics. Trends in the industry are continuously moving, and we offer you a reference point from which to start your analysis and drive business decisions. If you are wondering what the current situation of the market is, you should log in and check it out. Benchmarks for September are up and ready! Some highlights for September 2015: ARPDAU, ARPPU and Conversion have increased for genres such as Word, Trivia, Sports and Puzzle. Although retention overall has not increased, the same substantial growth is found in session length. This might be a direct consequence of people going back to work after vacation, and therefore, daily commuting....
11 min read
#Data & Analytics
Game Analytics From A Game Designer’s Perspective
As game designers, we tend to perceive our activity as a mix of art and science. After all, game design is deeply linked to psychology, as well as design! The design part is pretty straightforward and well-documented. There is plenty of reading on the topic, starting with Jesse Schell’s famous textbook. It is different with game analytics. The domain is still young. 10 to 15 years ago, we lacked both the processing power and the connectivity to track player behaviors. But today, it is different! Game analytics offer an exciting array of new possibilities for everyone in game studios! Game analytics can change the face of game development. They are helpful from alpha testing to QA, community management to monetization. Where we had to guess before, we designers can now make decisions based on real data! This is...
3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
The GameAnalytics-PlayMaker Integration Got Better
Jean Fabre about how well PlayMaker and GameAnalytics work together.
10 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
Unleash the Power of Events to Drive Revenue in Games
Xing Wang gives game designers some insight on how to effectively leverage events in their games.
2 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
How to use GameAnalytics to validate design decisions
We’re proud to announce that GameAnalytics has just been featured on Gamasutra in Amir Fassihi’s article on “Closing the Loop: Validating Design Decisions Using Player Data for a Platformer”. Amir is the team lead of Dead Mage, the studio behind the popular iOS game Shadowblade. Those of you who feared that tools such as GameAnalytics are only useful for freemium games and monetization tweaks, you should know that Shadowblade is a one time-purchase. Moreover, Dead Mage has been using our tool to fine tune the most trickiest aspects of their game: “Quantitative measurement and feedback has been a main pillar for all disciplines of science for a long time and validation of the design assumptions in every product design is an essential part of the whole design process in many areas. In game development, art and programming are two main aspects that...
3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
Building beautiful games with Corona in a fraction of the time
With the occasion of the official GameAnalytics - Corona SDK partnership, David Rangel, COO at Corona Labs, points out the awesome in their mobile game development platform.
6 min read
#Data & Analytics
Balance and Flow Maps
Anders Drachen brings Sean Houghton on the GameAnalytics blog to share some of his experiences with taking heatmaps to the next level by investigating balance maps in Transformers: War for Cybertron.
3 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
Introducing Email Reports
Benefit from more mobility, as heatmaps become accessible anywhere and basic game statistics can now be sent to your inbox.
Bonus: data exports, A/B testing and a sleeker Unity package.
6 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
Getting started with analytics 4: Reading (Part 2)
If you are interested in game analytics one of the best things to do early on is to read up on what other people do. While this does not result in a plan for how to implement analytics in your game, it provides useful information guiding the design of the plan. This second post focuses on presentations, research articles and relevant material around games.
8 min read
#GameAnalytics Updates
Getting started with analytics 4: Reading (Part 1)
If you are interested in game analytics one of the best things to do early on is to read up on what other people do. While this does not result in a plan for how to implement analytics in your game, it provides useful information guiding the design of the plan. In this post we provide suggestions for some of the best material out there on game analytics.