Game Analytics

  • #1, z dionousThursday, 27. April 2017, 07:47 hodinky 8 years ago
    Hello to all,

    Ever discussed the possibility to include game analytics functionalities in VS? Being able to analyze players' behaviours gives important info for optimizing your game. 

    For example, a simple form of this for starters would be a log of the players actions/clicks.

    Some more info for those interested:



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  • #2, z sebastianThursday, 27. April 2017, 08:24 hodinky 8 years ago
    I don't see this much relevant for classic P&C games. This genre is very slow and mostly follows simple game mechanics (pointing and clicking) and mostly has narrative driven gameplay. I dont believe that there are places for Ingame purchases or how much a player start up your game here. 

    And even getting stuck in an adventure game is part of the thrill in that game genre. 
    The things where you see how your game is played by others is a alpha/beta test phase where you get feedback to improve.

    These game analytics seem more to be aiming the mobile mini game market razz

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  • #3, z dionousThursday, 27. April 2017, 08:53 hodinky 8 years ago
    It's true for P&C games we don't need advanced analytics, agree on that.

    But still, there is a lot of info you can collect even for P&C games. It could help you improve the gameplay, puzzle design etc, if you are able to 'watch' your players. It would complement playtesting superbly!

    You should not release any commercial game without playtesting and having analyzed player's behaviour first smile

    Some great advice on this matter by Ron Gilbert for Thimbleweed Park:

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  • #4, z LebosteinThursday, 27. April 2017, 14:39 hodinky 8 years ago
    You can write a simple log file. Log all actions that the players made with timestamps:

    2017/04/20 15:30:42 = Player enters room "Diner"
    2017/04/20 15:30:45 = Player walks to x = 400, y = 345
    2017/04/20 15:30:48 = Player walks to hotspot "service staff"
    2017/04/20 15:31:10 = Player talks to hotspot "service staff"
    2017/04/20 15:32:10 = Player choose dialogue line 3200
    ...

    the you can write a program, that parses such log files and so on....

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  • #5, z dionousThursday, 27. April 2017, 14:59 hodinky 8 years ago
    Thanks Lebostein, yes this could be a great first step. You know if this would be possible currently with VS?

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  • #6, z afrlmeThursday, 27. April 2017, 15:18 hodinky 8 years ago
    Thanks Lebostein, yes this could be a great first step. You know if this would be possible currently with VS?
    Well, there is Lua Socket & libcurl support, so yes... in theory you could use one of those features to store data somewhere online, maybe via a text file or a mySQL database or something.

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  • #7, z dionousThursday, 27. April 2017, 16:23 hodinky 8 years ago
    Thanks Lebostein, yes this could be a great first step. You know if this would be possible currently with VS?

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