Event Design & Tracking Guide for GameAnalytics

Designing

your events

Your data tracking plan

A Step-by-Step Guide for GameAnalytics

It takes plenty of effort to make sure you have

valuable data downstream. If you want to get the

most out of your data within GameAnalytics, you

need a solid plan for what events, fields and

dimensions you’ll be tracking.

Creating this plan builds a bridge between the
people

analyzing the data and the ones collecting it. So make

sure you involve both sides when going through
these

steps. It’s also helpful to determine an owner to make

sure the event structure, implementation and

analysis doesn’t get off track.

Create a tracking plan

Tracking data is

never simple.

A tracking plan should clearly define the specific data

points you want to collect (and how). It serves three

purposes:

1.
It helps you avoid collecting redundant or

inaccurate data.

2.
It’ll act as a roadmap for how you’ll put your

processes in place.

3.
It’ll be a document to make sure you stay

consistent if you need to add more tracking or

if your team changes.

The more precisely you document your process, the

more confidently people can analyze the data.

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Your tracking plan will make sure everyone involved in the data analysis

process is on the same page and working towards the same goals.

Five steps to get you from your questions to

some answers.

What’s inside?

Brainstorm your burning questions

Create your events

Define your dimensions and attributes

Plug in your game

Keep updating your plan

Contents

3

1

2

3

4

5

Step 1

Get everyone in a room and ask them: What

questions do we have? Start by thinking about what

you need to know about your players and why. It’s

also helpful to break down those burning questions

into sub-questions.

Step one

Brainstorm your

burning questions

For example, you might come up with:

●
What do I need to know about my players?

●
Why are we collecting this data?

●
What are we working towards?

●
How long does it take to finish the tutorial?

●
What stops people from buying our in-app

purchases?

●
How much are players willing to pay for X?

●
What are the most (or least) used by

active players: levels, items or guilds?

●
What IAP packages convert free users into

paying users?

●
Do players see the weapon stashed in the

corner?

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Figuring out what questions you have helps you see

what you need to measure (your metrics) and how

you’ll measure them (your events.

Step 2

Events are distinct actions that a player can

perform in your game.

Struggling to start? We’ve already looked at the most

common burning questions and created our

predefined event types
.

If you use these, we’ll automatically calculate the

relevant key performance indicators (or KPIs) and

add them to your dashboard.

Step two

Create your events

Start with our predefined events, then match

whatever you can to your burning questions.

These events include:

●
Session start and end:

Triggers
automatically.

●
Business:
Track in-app purchases and

validates the receipts on our servers.

●
Resource:

Track virtual currencies – like gems

or lives – and how you manage them.

●
Progression:

See how players progress

through levels with Start , Fail and Complete.

●
Error:
Submit exception stack traces or

custom error messages.

●
Ads:
See how players interact with ads in your

game and monitor how they perform.

●
Impression:
Get impression data from ad

networks.

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Step 2

Step two

Create your events

Here are some examples:

Category:
Weapon

Sub Category:
[Weapon Name]

Action:
Fired, Reloaded, Swapped

Category:
Character

Sub Category:
[Character Name]

Action:
Created, Leveled up, Equipped item,

Used ability

Category:
Vehicle

Sub Category:
[Vehicle Name]

Action:
Accelerated, Braked, Steered, Used

power-up

Category:
Building

Sub Category:
[Building Name]

Action:
Built , Upgraded, Moved, Attacked

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As a rule of thumb, we recommend keeping custom events to a

maximum of 50 unique events. Otherwise, your event plan will

become difficult to monitor, fix, and analyze.

You can also
design your own events
. In these custom

events, you can have three event dimensions and one

value. We recommend using the
“Category > Sub

Category > Outcome or Action”
framework. This is a

standard way of organizing data that focuses on the two

main components: the object (or item) and the action

taken on that object.

Only track events that actually answer your burning

questions and consider keeping your designed events

broad (but not necessarily generic) with clarifying

information in the dimensions.

Step 3

Dimensions describe your event and the context

around how it was triggered. You can have both

global dimensions (which go across event types) or

dimensions that only relate to a specific event type.

In GameAnalytics,
you can use three custom fields

to get this event context. These are available for

analysis within our webtool.

You also have 50 custom fields
for these

descriptive dimensions. These are available for

custom analysis with
our flexible data tools
.

Step 3

Define your dimensions

and attributes

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Step 4

Step four

Plug in your game

GameAnalytics offers a multitude of SDK’s to

integrate with your project:

Each of the SDKs have their own quirks when you’re

integrating them, so visit the
individual guide
for

whichever one you’d like to use.

But generally, you’ll need to:

1.
Create your game
in the GameAnalytics web-tool.

2.
Visit the documentation
for the SDK you want to

integrate.

3.
Download the files for the SDK to run (either from

github or any available marketplace) and include

them in your project.

4.
Set up your Game Key and Secret Key.

5.
Initialize the SDK.

6.
Start sending events. (Our integration guides give

examples of syntax for making events for each of

the SDKs.
You can also learn more here
.)

And

more

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If you need a helping hand,
get in touch with our support team
.

Step 5

Step five

Keep updating your
plan

You should always be updating your tracking plan,

particularly when you add new features to your
game.

Reconsider your burning questions and go through

the same process to determine your events and

dimensions.

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Keep an eye out for:

●
Creating events that trigger twice, leading to

duplicate (and misleading) data.

●
Using multiple events for the same action.

●
Using event names or parameter abbreviations

that nobody understands.

●
Putting your events in the wrong order.

●
Not validating your schema properly.

●
Going too granular with your event structure

●
Adding events with no business or product

purpose.

●
Missing or using wrong identifiers.

●
Not testing or validating your events on staging.

●
Using the wrong parameter types.

●
Changing parameter enums.

Before you get cracking, here are some common

pitfalls we’ve spotted.

If you have any questions visit our

documentation centre, or contact support.

We’re happy to help.

Watch out for

common pitfalls

One last thing

Visit our docs

Contact support

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