Francesco and the Privacy Team at GameAnalytics play a pivotal role in protecting player information. With a deep understanding of EU law and privacy management, coupled with the CIPP/E certification, they oversee compliance operations for over 100,000 games. This team manages compliance related to standards such as ISO 27001, SOC2 Type II, COPPA, GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, and CCPA. Their dedication ensures game developers using our services are meeting top-tier data privacy and security standards.

The role of privacy professionals in today’s digital age can’t be understated. They’re essential in managing privacy threats and ensuring information assets remain secure. The IAPP has set global standards in education and testing for privacy, with the CIPP certification being a prime example. The CIPP/E focuses on European data protection laws, enforcement models, and best practices for data protection. By acquiring this certification, Francesco aligns with an international network of professionals upholding these standards.

“Privacy is of paramount importance in the digital age, especially in industries that handle vast amounts of user data, like the gaming sector. Earning the CIPP certification not only highlights our commitment to data protection but also underlines the strategic importance of privacy professionals in our organization.” – Allison Bilas, COO at GameAnalytics

What is IAPP?

Established in 2000, the IAPP serves as a leading global information privacy community. As a not-for-profit organization, it sets benchmarks, provides resources, and supports the privacy profession worldwide. For more details, visit IAPP’s official website.

In this episode, Allison provides an in-depth look into the essential principles of tracking key success metrics in the gaming industry. She lays out a comprehensive understanding of the three core pillars: Acquisition, Engagement, and Monetization.

By watching this video, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of how to optimize important metrics like New Users, Retention, and Lifetime Value (LTV) – key aspects that can considerably impact your app’s performance.

This episode is packed with insights, practical tips, and strategies, making it a must-watch for all game developers, regardless of the stage of your game development journey.

Happy viewing!

GameAnalytics is thrilled to announce its inclusion in the prestigious Legal 500 GC Powerlist 2023. This distinguished edition held in Vienna, Austria highlights the top in-house legal teams that have showcased exceptional legal knowledge and made a strategic impact on their organization’s success.

“Our Privacy & Data Security Team has successfully navigated through dynamic and challenging periods over the past year. We’ve adapted to evolving business and regulatory landscapes while always prioritizing privacy and information security. The team has truly excelled in ensuring compliance with regulations and implementing best-in-class cyber security and data protection technologies,” states GameAnalytics’ COO, Allison Bilas.

“This recognition reflects our continued commitment to data ethics and excellence in the analytics sphere. The dedication and expert legal knowledge of our team have been instrumental in developing creative solutions that align with the needs of game developers and the highest transparency standards.”

As our industry continues to evolve, GameAnalytics will remain at the forefront, driving growth and success through product excellence, adaptability, and innovative ethical solutions.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2016. As it’s been a while since we’ve explored what the best tools are that you should be using, we thought we would go ahead and give this post a refresh. Let us know if you think we’ve missed anything important. 

How can you lower acquisition costs, improve engagement and drive more purchases? Where will you find the time? From basement to studio, game developers manage a growing remit of technical skills… yet the hours in a day stay fixed.

For sure, there are thousands of time-saving apps and services that you can make use of – but figuring out which are best is tricky. That’s why we’ve curated a list of the top game development tools, as voted for by game developers, to help steer you in the right direction and free-up your time to focus on doing what you love.

What’s here?

We’ll cover a wide range of different tools relevant to the development and marketing of mobile games. If you’re looking for something in particular, feel free to jump to that section:

• Advertising & Monetization

• Analytics & Error Logging

• Collaboration & Workflow

• Engagement & Retention

• Creativity

• Sound & Audio

• Other useful tools

Advertising & Monetization

Adjust

Cost: Adjust’s pricing is based on install volume as well as features
Supports: All major platforms

Adjust has multiple tools that’ll help you simplify your marketing, find out how players reach your game, and what each lead costs. Follow users through your campaigns, automate tasks, segment audiences, and stop fraud in its tracks.

As featured partners of GameAnalytics, we actually have a couple of special terms and offers with these guys, specifically for our users. Request a quote through the GameDev Toolbox here to learn more.

TopOn

Cost: Get in touch to learn more
Supports: iOS, Android, Unity, Cocos, Adobe Air

Make sure you’re getting the most out of your advertising. TopOn brings together services like Facebook and UnityAds so you can monetize your game and across multiple platforms and formats. You’ll be able to A/B test, get insight on how your adverts are performing and flow them through a process like a waterfall.

Unity Ads

Cost: $0
Supports: All platforms

Not only a game engine, Unity Ads is a market leading mobile ad platform built with game developers in mind, and focused on showing content across platforms and games. Unity only pays you when users install the advertiser’s game. That means that showing the ad in the right place, at the right time, without breaking a player’s game flow, will actually result in more revenue than showing too many ads.

If you’re looking for more ways to grow your user-base take a look at this post: How to Expand your Audience with Game Accessibility

Analytics & Error Logging

GameAnalytics

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

GameAnalytics is a free analytics tool built by game developers, for game developers. It helps you make sense of player behavior, improve engagement and drive monetization with real-time insight into more than 50 gaming metrics out-of-the-box. You can set it up in just a few minutes, with SDKs for every major platform and engine. What’s more, you can now A/B test in our tool. Get the latest info here. 

Crashlytics

Cost: Free to start (calculator on site for heavy users)
Supports: Android & iOS platforms

Start monitoring your app’s errors in real-time with Crashlytics. How do you improve engagement? Create a loyal player following with a UX free from annoying bugs. Crashlytics helps you achieve this by dealing with player issues proactively, before tickets flood your support team and eat up your bandwidth.

Benchmarks+

Cost: From $375 a month
Supports: All major platforms

Get real-world aggregated data on how players are behaving. What genres are they playing? How long are they playing for? How many are converting? Benchmarks+ shows you what’s happening in the industry and what the trends are. Filter by platform, region, or kind of spend to find out what’s happening and create your next chart-topping hit.

GameRefinery

Cost: $0 for basic plan
Supports: All major platforms

With the rise of F2P games and increasing market competition, GameRefinery is a tool that can help you stay ahead of the pack. With industry-leading feature level analytics, as well a market insights and benchmarks for the global mobile games industry, both developers and publishers can develop the best strategies for their individual titles or portfolios based on accurate information.

AppTopia

Cost: From $2,000 a month.
Supports: All major platforms

With AppTopia you can find out how specific apps are performing. Track your competition, benchmark your game against the industry, monitor every move your competitors make and use the insights to make better decisions. While AppTopia isn’t specifically for the gaming industry, it’s based on mobile apps – so it’ll still work.

If you’re new to game analytics you should definitely check out this post (it’s one of our most popular): 15 Metrics All Game Developers Should Know

Collaboration & Workflow

iOS Project Builder for Windows

Cost: $50
Platform: Unity

If you’re a Unity developer primarily working on PC, the iOS Project Builder for Windows is an extension that you need to add to your arsenal. No joke. This tool is an absolute gem. With it, you no longer need to switch to your Mac and launch Xcode to build your games for iOS. Save time and build them directly from Windows.

GameFlow

Cost: Free
Platform: Unity

GameFlow is a visual programming toolkit that helps simplify game development. With it, you can create complex game logic, effects and interactions, in a visual editor without having to write a single line of code. Bring powerful time-saving features to your development, including macros and keyboard shortcuts to automate tedious tasks.

Are you a game designer? You may find this article of interest: Squeezing more juice out of your game design!

Trello

Cost: $0 for basic plan
Supports: All major platforms

Trello is an excellent lightweight project management tool that provides you with simple ways to define and track projects. Through a digital dashboard, you can create and arrange various actions for yourself and other team members. What’s more, this tool easily integrates with a variety of platforms and has its own nifty little iOS and Android app!

Assembla

Cost: $10/month for basic plan
Supports: All major platforms

Built as a set of programs designed to improve task and code managements assignments, Assembla offers a number of incredibly handy features for game developers such as built-in code repositories. It also allows both individuals and teams to manage every aspect of mobile game’s life cycle in one unified place and now comes with integrations with Trello, Slack and JIRA.

HacknPlan

Cost: $0 for basic plan
Supports: All major platforms

HacknPlan is a specifically designed tool for game development, similar to Trello or other project management software. With careful consideration of the needs that developers have, HacknPlan focuses on simplifying a process that has many different moving parts. This may be for you if you’re struggling to unify and collaborate across several different projects and teams.

Engagement & Retention

Discord

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

Every gamer worth their salt is using Discord to chat while they play these days. So savvy developers are setting up their own channels to get engaged with their community, roll out demo versions of their games, and stream prototypes or developer QandAs to their fans.

Twitch

Cost: $4.99/month for basic plan
Supports: All major platforms

Twitch is the world’s leading video platform for online games, with over 2 million broadcasters and 100 million monthly viewers. With it, you can build gaming experiences that give audiences the ability to interact with live sessions, through dynamic gifting and commenting. And it lets you broadcast quality visuals for different datastreams, including kill counters, player stats, and minimaps.

Lootlocker

Cost: $0 (for first 10,000 players)
Supports: All major platforms

Built for indie developers by indie developers, Lootlocker is the way to build, ship and launch your game to the masses. Easily add loot boxes, leaderboards, achievements, currencies and levelling systems to your game, then manage your players and assets once you’ve launched.

Megacool

Cost: $59/month (if less than $200 000 in funding or revenue)
Supports: All major platforms

Not necessarily a time-saving tool, but definitely something you shouldn’t overlook. The Megacool SDK provides GIF capturing and sharing via multiple channels. Users simply capture and share gameplay moments with their friends, with a link back to your game. The best part for developers is this tool comes with access to analytics, and offers you a way to spread the word about your game in a visual and organic way.

Smartly.io

Cost: €5,000 a month
Supports: All major platforms

This is best for bulk advertising. You can design, create, and animate stunning adverts for your brand, and then launch a campaign across whatever social media platforms take your fancy. Once you’re live, you’ll be able to track exactly how your ads have performed and make sure you’re making a return on your investment.

Is your churn rate embarrassingly high? Learn how to get it down to a respectable level: 16 Reasons Why Players Are Leaving Your Game

Creativity

AppOnboard Studio

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

Similar to their no-coding engine – Buildbox – AppOnboard Studio lets you create simple interactive experiences, which you can share on social or as an advert, like a short choice-based adventure. All without needing to code.

Luna Labs

Cost: $0
Supports: Unity

Nothing is better than a quick demo of your game. So link Luna Labs up with Unity to create a playable advert or a quick video of your gameplay. Encourage players to try out your game, without needing them to commit. It’s the perfect way of making sure that people get to experience your creation before making a decision.

Synative

Cost: $1,999 a month
Supports: All major platforms

If you don’t have Unity, Synative is the app for you. You can either convert your game directly into an advert, or work from their studio to create a completely interactive game, showcasing the moments you think are best. Meanwhile, you can track how players interact with the advert to see what’s working or as a testing platform for new concepts.

Piskel

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

You’ll always need artwork. So Piskel offers free 2D pixel art support and animation development tools in its simple and straightforward open-source platform. Whether you’re a new game developer, hobbyist or throwing around some ideas for simple game art, Piskel allows you to quickly create sprites and animations through its clean and understandable interface.

Adobe Photoshop

Cost: $25/month
Supports: All major platforms

Adobe Photoshop is arguably still one of the best ways to texture various game assets when creating 3D models. As a tool used by creative professionals in all different industries, it comes packed with comprehensive creation features that offer developers everything they need to craft inspired game concepts into sophisticated digital realities.

GIMP

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

GIMP is a great free alternative to Adobe Photoshop, and comes with a wide range of professional-quality functions. Whether you’re looking for filters, tools, rendering effects or formatting capabilities, GIMP offers great features for fine-tuning your game assets. And all this without having to spend a penny!

Substance

Cost: $19.90/month for basic plan
Supports: All major platforms

Substance by Allegorithmic is a popular tool among 3D and digital artists, as well as many AAA studios crafting sophisticated UIs for their games. The impressive features of this software include scan processing, smart masks, smart materials, integrated 8K bakers, texturing and rendering. You can also create in Substance Painter and get real-time feedback in Unity through a live link.

Need some inspiration for your game’s artwork? Take a look at this article on 7 Incredible Game Design Examples And Why They Work.

Sound & Audio

Freesound

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

Freesound.org has a large collection of CC licensed audio samples, that can give your game that special touch you’ve been looking for. What otherwise may be costly or difficult to source, is readily available on Freesound.org. All you need to do is a little bit of digging into its huge database, and you’ll have access to some great synthesised sounds, field recordings, snippets, bleeps and all manner of other sound bites.

Audacity

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

Audacity is an open source audio editor that rivals many premium paid-for applications. Whether you’re making your own recordings for your game actions, dialogue, or special effects, Audacity is a good place to start. Many of its most useful and powerful features are available through its intuitive interface, making it practical for both audio wizards and sound-tech newbies.

FL Studio

Cost: $80 for basic edition
Supports: All major platforms

Being a bit pricier on the market, many developers now use FL Studio to create video game music. If you’re adding bespoke sound content to your title, this is a reliable and practical tool that will help you tune your audio landscape to perfection. The most important thing is that FL studio is flexible, well equipped and relatively straightforward, allowing you to finish your masterpieces and export to relevant formats with ease.  

Struggling to perfect your games sound and audio? Check out our 9 Sound Design Tips to Improve Your Game’s Audio here.

Other useful tools

Skillz

Cost: You get paid
Supports: All major platforms

Run and host competitions and encourage your players to strive and battle it out for the top spot. Skillz is the way to turn your game into an eSport, with over 30 million mobile gamers. It’s a great way to monetize your game, without bloating your interface with adverts.

GameScribes

Cost: $0
Supports: All major platforms

If you want to expand your game into other markets, you need to get it translated. GameScribes don’t just translate your text, but your audio as well. And they make sure that it fits in with the local culture, so you’re not accidentally making any faux pas in the process. They can do pretty much any language, too. From European languages like French or Spanish to Chinese or Japanese.

You don’t know what you don’t know

And if you think we’ve overlooked any gems, reach out to us on Twitter with your thoughts – we’d love to hear from you.

In a recent financial statement for H1 2019, Mobvista revealed that their total revenue came in at $225.1 million (USD) for the first half of the year – a 22% increase when compared to the same period in 2018. Their adjusted net profit also grew by 65% to $17.4 million (USD), and their adjusted EBITDA grew by 75.8% to $23.0 million (USD).

So then, the question on everyone’s mind is how did they achieve this? The answer: better programmatic advertising.

For those who don’t know, programmatic advertising makes it possible to buy and place ads in less than a second, usually done through an exchange or DSP. And Mobvista has been a leading force in developing this technology over the past decade, especially in Asia. Co-Founder and President of Mobvista, Clement Cao, provided this recent statement:

“We’ve always been focusing on how our technology can add value across the whole marketing lifecycle of a mobile app. In the first half of 2019, our programmatic advertising products remained the pillars of our business, letting us develop multiple cloud-based platforms offering machine learning, distributed computing, and elastic cluster management. These not only empower our core business offering, but also give us the opportunity to further expand into new services.”

We asked Mobvista to elaborate in more detail, and this is what we learned:

1. Mobvista placed more inventory with fewer incentives

More and more apps have been integrating Mobvista’s SDK, with over 11,000 apps now connected to their ad platform, from more than 2,400 apps developers using their partner network.

So, what this means for Mobvista is that they’ve been able to offer their customers access to high-quality inventory at a large scale. Interestingly, however, they spent less of their programmatic revenue on incentives for new customers, which was reduced from 10.3% in the second half of 2018, to 7.5% in H1 2019.

2. They grew revenue outside of China

Mobvista has had a strong and established presence in APAC over the past few years, enabling the company to grow its network globally and focus more attention on new markets. The greatest area of growth seen was in EMEA, where their revenue more than doubled to $34.3 million USD – now reaching 15% of their revenue total revenue.

We also found out that they’ve been partnering with different types of mobile app publishers, expanding their network from games, utilities, lifestyle, and news, to e-commerce, social media, and video. Their strongest performing vertical is now gaming apps (no surprise there), overtaking social and content-based apps. Ultimately, having a wider network of integrated apps in different regions has profoundly affected Mobvista’s business model.

3. They continued to invest in R&D and AI development

Mobvista has continued to invest a large amount of money into R&D, specifically AI and machine learning, as these technologies play a big part in the evolution of programmatic advertising. And although they may have not seen the results of this research immediately, this is surely something that will benefit them and the programmatic industry in the long run.

That being said, they were able to make some changes this year that contributed to their most recent success. In H1 2019, Mobvista applied big data computing, machine learning and elastic cluster management into the development of their business, which in turn powered their programmatic advertising services more effectively. And at the end of H1 2019, the company’s server costs did increase slightly by 1.0% YoY, while the programmatic advertising revenue increased by 43.7% YoY. Not a bad return on investment.

And they’re still growing…

The last major change Mobvista made this year was move their capabilities into a more mature technical solution: namely the Amazon Web Services Partner Network (AWS APN). And as an APN technology partner that responds to the commercial appeal of AWS’s customers, they’re now able to expand even further into new fields of business, bringing their technology to more developers around the world.

So it’s pretty clear that they have some pretty big plans for the future of programmatic advertising, especially around leveraging AI and machine learning. If you’re interested in learning more about the company, you can read the press release here.

You know the word, and you know it’s important. But what does GDPR really mean? And why do you need to care about it? To help new developers and studios located outside of the EU, we’ve outlined a list of important steps that can keep your game and company fully GDPR compliant.

TL;DR – Your GDPR checklist

• Step 1: Ask for consent
• Step 2: Find out where you data comes from
• Step 3: Put safety first (Data Protection Impact Assessment)
• Step 4: Don’t be clingy (Allow your users to withdraw)
• Step 5: Know how GDPR affects overseas developers
• Step 6: Be clear but creative with your forms
• Step 7: Embrace full compliance

So, what exactly is GDPR?

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and this new European law has changed the game on how companies manage personal data. While most mobile game developers have now adapted since its introduction on 25th May, some are still unsure about how EU user data should be handled.

The reality for everyone – whether you’re an EU-based studio hoping to release your first smash hit, or an international game developer with dozens of titles – is that toeing the line when it comes to GDPR is a must.

User activity tracking has been integrated into the core functionality of pretty much every digital platform. And games that monetize through ads have long relied on data tracking to optimise various aspects of user acquisition (UA). While GDPR doesn’t necessarily call for a complete overhaul of this, expect some work when it comes to mapping your flow of data, as well as being as clear as possible on how personal information is gathered and used.

Ultimately, the world of mobile gaming has not escaped the wide net that GDPR has cast over the tech industry. And with penalties that could amount to 4% of your company’s revenue, or €20 million (whichever is greater), there’s a high price to pay if you don’t follow the rules.

Step 1: Ask first – it’s more than just polite

You may already be aware of this new rule, but one of the biggest steps of GDPR compliance is getting consent from your players to use and store their data. This is pretty simple to do and can be done in a number of ways, but an electronic opt-in box is often the chosen method for mobile games.

An example of how King & Big Fish have implemented consent into their game’s UI on first launch. Players are not allowed to move on any further until they agree.

When it comes to language, convey your request in a clear and concise way, breaking down essential information into understandable chunks. There’s definitely room for using language and visuals that suit your brand, but before you move on to this stage, make sure your message is as straightforward as possible.

By keeping it crystal clear on how your players data will be controlled, as well as giving them easy options to opt out, you’ll be complying with GDPR’s Right to be Forgotten principle.

Step 2 – Find out where your data comes from

User data is personally identifiable information, which can include someone’s name, email address, or device ID (IDFA/GAID). Essentially, it’s anything that can be associated with one person, even if you cannot identify them in the real world.

And you can’t prove that you’re following the rules if you don’t understand how your platform gets that data. You’ll want to make sure to first identify what personal information you’re collecting, and how that data is being extracted from your users. You’ll then need to map the various transfers into your database.

You may find that some information is unnecessary or redundant, and should be removed to tighten up the amount of data you store – another principle of GDPR. And if nothing else, this process should help you hone your tracking and measurement skills when it comes to optimising your platform’s game analytics.

Step 3 – Put safety first

As GDPR is all about protecting the personal data of EU citizens, enforcing strong barriers against manipulation or fraud is a must. Think about how third-parties may access the information you gather and what they’re using it for. You’ll be liable for anything a third party controller does with this data.

An example of how Rovio has implemented consent into their game’s UI on first launch. Players are not allowed to progress any further until they agree.

A data protection impact assessment (DPIA) is highly recommended before you begin a project where user data is involved. This means you should review your process of data collection and identify any areas that may lead to risk of serious impact on individuals. Although we haven’t found a specified format to follow for a full DPIA which supports the GDPR’s accountability principle, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has a helpful checklist you can use.

Step 4 – Don’t be clingy

Under GDPR, the Right to Erasure clause requires that users should be able to remove their personal information from your system should they so wish. If there isn’t already an easy way to do this, you may want to seriously consider making one.

It might be a shame to relinquish useful player analytics that can be used to support your UA strategy, but saying goodbye when necessary is a requirement of GDPR compliance. So be ready for a few farewells.

An example of how Voodoo has given access to its users to remove any data they may have, within the settings of their games.

As Jason M. Lemkin says, ‘Making it hard to cancel doesn’t reduce churn, it just modestly delays it’. Meaning you won’t save yourself from losing users in the long run by making it hard for them to withdraw their data. Those who really want to leave, will, in the end, do just that.

Step 5 – Know your territorial boundaries

Even if you’re a developer coding away on the opposite side of the world, if you have a presence in Europe, then you’re going to be affected by GDPR.

Although at the moment GDPR is only bound to the EU, it could one day be the model for countries across the globe. And in anticipation of this change, we’ve seen multiple companies adopting this policy worldwide in efforts to save future time and money. This could be good practice if you’re thinking of launching your games into other markets.

Interestingly, not all countries are actually bound to implement GDPR in the same way. Finland for instance, has taken advantage of the new law’s margin of manoeuvrability. Countries are essentially allowed to integrate GDPR principles into their existing privacy protection framework, which means rules could vary slightly.

With this being said, it’s definitely worth double checking the relevant laws in the countries you wish to launch, just to make sure everything matches up.

Step 6 – Be clear, but creative (when appropriate)

As shown in our examples from King, Rovio and Voodoo, there are lots of different ways to you can put consent into your game. And fitting this to your company’s identity doesn’t always require a lot of words. As long as you’re including the right message and giving your players the option to withdraw, you’re free to add some creative flare to your data request forms.

Not that you need to go over the top, but there is certainly room for various visuals to accompany your opt-in screen or GDPR emails. This is a great way to add some consistency to your user experience while you gather your all-important user consent.

An example of how Lion Studios has given access to their users to manage their data in their Happy Glass game.

Keep in mind however, if your creative idea makes any of your forms unclear or difficult to understand, then you may be compromising your compliance under the GDPR law.

Step 7 – Embrace full compliance

Whether you need to conduct a full evaluation of your portfolio, or are working on your upcoming title, this is one situation where it’s better to grab the bull by the horns and make sure you’re fully compliant.

The end result is often a shiny new terms of service (ToS) document that you can send to your users, and a ‘hard wall’ interface, requesting consent before access to platforms is granted. This may even go unnoticed by your actual players, who are already accustomed to clicking ‘accept’ in various apps. But if you really want to make sure your company and mobile game stay protected, embrace the requirements of full compliance.

If you’re interested to learn how GameAnalytics stays compliant, check out the GameAnalytics GDPR FAQ page here.

We’re pleased to announce another integration that brings GameAnalytics to even more developers. If you’re building games with the Adobe AIR runtime you can now implement our GameAnalytics SDK to understand how players interact with your game, totally free of charge.

Setup is quick and simple. In less than 5 minutes you should be able to start viewing data about your players on our real-time dashboard. The most basic basic install will give you out of the box insight into hundreds of game specific KPIs without any additional setup.

The SDK is available to download on our Github page here: GameAnalytics SDK for Adobe Air. This page also contains documentation outlining the key steps to instrument the SDK.

About Adobe Air

Adobe AIR (formerly Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a cross-platform runtime system developed by Adobe Systems for building desktop applications and mobile applications. The runtime is programmed using Adobe Flash, ActionScript and optionally Apache Flex.

With the Adobe AIR runtime, you can repackage the same code into native applications and games for Windows and Mac OS desktops as well as iOS and Android devices. The Adobe AIR runtime reaches over a billion desktop systems and more than 500 million mobile devices.

Some notable game and applications built with Adobe AIR include eBay Desktop, TweetDeck, Angry Birds, and Machinarium, among other multimedia and task management applications.

Mobile features

On mobile platforms, AIR supports many mobile hardware features:

• 3D hardware-accelerated graphics rendering (using Stage3D)
• Touch-screen events (including multi-touch gestures)
• Device camera and microphone access (including video encoding for recorded video)
• Accelerometer and geo-location sensor input (GPS or otherwise)
• Networking with HTTP, TCP and UDP protocols
• AIR Gamepad – allows mobile applications to serve as secondary displays and controllers for Flash games.

About Stage 3D

The Stage3D APIs in Flash Player and Adobe AIR offer a fully hardware-accelerated architecture that brings stunning visuals across desktop browsers and iOS and Android apps enabling advanced 2D and 3D capabilities. This set of low-level GPU-accelerated APIs provide developers with the flexibility to leverage GPU hardware acceleration for significant performance gains in video game development, whether you’re using cutting-edge 3D game engines or the intuitive, lightning fast Starling 2D framework that powers Angry Birds.

Need Help? Get In Touch…

After downloading the GameAnalytics Adobe Air SDK make sure to check out our general documentation for detailed information about how to get the most out of your GameAnalytics setup. If you still need assistance, just reach out to our friendly support team!

Why GameAnalytics?

GameAnalytics a totally free platform which helps you understand player behavior. This understanding is essential for framing your decisions when you want to improve your game.

Where are your players coming from? When are they most likely to purchase? Is a certain level too difficult and causing your players to churn? GameAnalytics helps you answer all of these questions so that you can make informed, data driven improvements.

Sign up to GameAnalytics now to start seeing these insights and more!

We’re happy to report that our brilliant engineers have added yet another integration to the GameAnalytics mix; a free and lightweight SDK for the GameMaker engine.

To download it, or just to have a general peek, visit our Github page here: GameAnalytics SDK for GameMaker. This page also contains documentation outlining the key steps to instrument the SDK. Implementation is pretty straightforward, so within 5 minutes you should be able to start sending events and viewing real-time analytics for your players.

About GameMaker

This SDK integrates seamlessly with GameMaker Studio 1.4 and we have plans to update to the latest and greatest incarnation of the GameMaker engine soon. The aim of this engine from YoYo Games is to break down the barriers to getting started with game development.

 Edit (Aug 23rd, 2017): We have updated the GameAnalytics SDK and now offer full support for GameMaker Studio 2. Download the latest version of the GameAnalytics SDK for GameMaker Studio 2 here.

GameMaker makes use of an intuitive ‘drag and drop’ development environment so that you can have your game up and running in a matter of minutes with minimal technical knowledge and without having to write endless lines of code. GameMaker uses a simple built-in language called GML, which helps you learn to program as you as you go.

It has everything you need to take your idea from concept to finished game. With its extensive range of features and impressive ease of use, GameMaker Studio is an ideal engine for building high quality 2D games, at low cost, in a short timeframe.

Cross-Platform Functionality

GameMaker Studio allows you export your game directly to a range of platforms using a single development workflow. Available platforms include:

• Windows desktop
• Mac OS X
• Ubuntu
• Android
• iOS
• fireTV
• Android TV
• Microsoft UWP
• HTML5
• PlayStation
• Xbox One

Need Help? Get In Touch…

For more information about the GameAnalytics service please read our general documentation. If you have any feedback, general questions, or bug reports then please do not hesitate to contact our friendly support ninjas. We love squashing bugs. ? ?

Why GameAnalytics?

GameAnalytics is a free service which brings you unlimited insight into the behavior of your players so that you can build better games. It takes less than 5 minutes to setup and offers the following features out of the box:

• A centralized view of all your cross-platform player data
• Real-time insights that reflect the health of your game
• Beautifully visualized dashboards with powerful filtering
• Customisable reports, including automated emails of your KPIs

In addition, you’re able to  benchmark your game’s core KPIs against thousands of titles of a similar genre. Sign up to GameAnalytics now to start understanding your players. ?

Follow us on Twitter!

Happy to announce a new #gamedev integration for GameAnalytics! ? We’ve now added a #GameMaker SDK to the mix! https://t.co/ZgPu5EqKei pic.twitter.com/7WGTmiEBGn

— GameAnalytics (@GameAnalytics) May 11, 2017

We’re pleased to announce that you can now integrate GameAnalytics with Tizen devices. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Tizen is an open source, standards-based operating system originally developed for Samsung mobile phones in 2012. Since then, Tizen has evolved into a flexible and popular platform for a wide range of interconnected devices.

The GameAnalytics SDK for Tizen is available to download on Github here. As it stands, you can build games for Tizen devices with our Unity SDK and our Cocos2D SDK. The SDK has been developed for Tizen native applications (in C++). If you’d like to integrate our platform with web applications then we recommend that you use the GameAnalytics SDK for JavaScript and HTML5 instead.

Why Tizen?

Tizen powered phones, such as the Samsung Z series, are extremely popular in Asia and Africa as a more affordable alternative to devices that are prevalent in the West. This SDK will therefore give you access to untapped and high-volume customer segments in new markets.

Getting started

Integrating your Tizen game with GameAnalytics is quick and easy. Here are the key links to get you up and running in no time at all:

1. GameAnalytics SDK for Tizen OS
2. Full documentation for the Tizen SDK

About Tizen OS

Tizen is an open and flexible operating system built from scratch to address the challenges of building applications across the mobile and connected device ecosystem. Tizen describe themselves as the OS that “connects everything”. The Tizen operating system comes in multiple profiles to serve different industry requirements. The current Tizen profiles are:

• Tizen IVI (in-vehicle infotainment)
• Tizen Mobile
• Tizen TV
• Tizen Wearable

In addition to the above, all profiles are built on top of a shared language called Tizen Common (this is true for OS versions of Tizen 3.0 and upwards). You can therefore begin building with one of these pre-built profiles and modify it to suit your application requirements, or use the Tizen Common base to develop a completely bespoke profile.

Multiple Device Categories

Tizen offers powerful native application development with excellent HTML5 support. Tizen also allows you to extend the reach of your application to new “smart devices” running Tizen, including wearable tech, in-vehicle entertainment, IoT appliances smart TVs, cameras, VR headsets, and more. As you can see, the use-cases for Tizen are wide and varied. Check this Wiki for a list of devices running the Tizen OS.

Happy instrumenting! ?

Now you can build amazing games across web, desktop and mobile in the language you know and love and track player behavior across all environments in one place. Javascript is a powerful and flexible programming language. We’re pretty excited about this new SDK, and we hope you are too! ?

Many games start their life on the web. Whether it be a quick deployment to Facebook or a dedicated refinement on gaming portals such as Kongregate or Miniclip, it’s now easy for you to compare how differently your players behave across all of the different platforms they might play on – in one interface. In the future you will even be able to compare and run analysis across games, giving a holistic view of your game service and players, no matter where they are.

Download the Javascript SDK

You can find the full GameAnalytics SDK for Javascript on GitHub here. The documentation outlines the key steps for setting up the SDK and the best practices for configuring it with your game, including how to add custom events and dimensions, reporting on demographics and debugging the implementation.

Getting started:

In order to integrate your Javascript game with GameAnalytics we would recommend that you start with the following 3 links:

1. GameAnalytics SDK for Javascript
2. Full documentation for the SDK
3. Study the sample application

About the Javascript SDK

Our SDK is totally open source and written in Typescript. Typescript builds upon the same syntax and semantics already in use by Javascript developers. It’s essentially a superset of Javascript of the language which compiles to plain Javascript. The integration is lightweight with a release size of 60Kb (with logging included) and 48Kb (without logging).

Note: Despite the common use of the term “HTML5 applications”, this is actually a bit of a misnomer. HTML5 is not a programming language, but simply provides APIs for Javascript libraries, such as WebGL, Canvas or WebAudio. Javascript is the language doing all of the heavy lifting and providing the essential functionality for games, such as psychics and graphics rendering.

Javascript game engines

There are a wide variety of engines available for creating Javascript/HTML5 games, and the number is continually growing. You can find a comprehensive list of Javascript game engines here on Github. Some of the most popular engines are:

• Pixi.js
• Phaser
• Babylon
• Turbulenz
• ImpactJS
• Construct 2
• CraftyJS

In addition, both Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 offer different methods to export to HTML5. Using one – or a combination of – these engines and frameworks can speed up the game development process significantly.

Why GameAnalytics?

For those of you new to GameAnalytics, our platform offers the following:

• A platform built specifically for games
• Quick and easy integration
• Compatible with all major game engines
• Real-time player data
• Clear snapshots of game health
• Beautifully visualized dashboards
• Customisable reports
• Consolidated analytics

In addition, you’re able to  benchmark your game’s core KPIs against thousands of titles of a similar genre. Sign up to GameAnalytics today to get rich insights into player behaviour. ?

Get ready. We’re opening the doors of our Copenhagen office to the Danish gaming industry for 2017. The center, aptly named the ‘GameHub’, will act as a shared office space ideal for gaming professionals to learn from one another.

At a fair price, we will provide free coffee, fast WiFi and big meeting rooms in a beautiful space based in the heart of Copenhagen.

Founder and chairman of GameAnalytics, Morten Wulff, said: “Our aim is to give something back to the game development community in the city where it all began for us.”

“At GameAnalytics, we’re continually investing in developing our tool, always trying to improve the product and make it the best solution available. Hopefully, by working side by side with promising studios we can learn a lot from each other. Maybe we can help take them to the next level of success – and vice-versa,” he added.

With this in mind, anyone is welcome to use the space – from indie developers, to successful studios, or even game publishers.

About GameAnalytics

Started in 2011, GameAnalytics has grown into a leading global platform, which now processes over 5B events every day across 1.7B tracked devices. Mobvista, a leading online advertising platform, acquired GameAnalytics in Q1 of 2016. Mobvista specializes in creating technology which distributes mobile ads.

“This collaboration is a really exciting time for us,” said Morten. “We’re two of the world’s leading game monetization platforms and we have big plans ahead – watch this space.”

The opening of the ‘GameHub’ in Copenhagen comes at a time of rapid growth for the mobile gaming community. For the first time, revenues from mobile games have overtaken PC, reaching $36.9 billion in 2016.

Anyone looking to take advantage of the GameAnalytics ‘GameHub’ should get in touch with the Copenhagen office asap – places are expected to run out fast.

You can reach out to us on Twitter for more information or to apply for a space.

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.2 is now available on Steam. This update adds new features to make game development easier than ever. The full product is on sale with an 80% discount until January 2nd, during the Steam winter sale.

Compatible with GameAnalytics

Version 4.2 integrates analytics into Leadwerks games with a free GameAnalytics account. This allows developers to view statistics on player behavior and identify any trouble spots their game might have as players progress through levels. With GameAnalytics, developers can make data-driven decisions and get real-time information instead of relying solely on written feedback.

New graphical features make Leadwerks games more beautiful, including fast ray-traced reflections with a new post-processing effect called screen-space reflection (SSR). Easy heat haze, glass refraction, and soft particles can now be added to games just by dragging a prefab into the scene.  Textures can now be added to spotlights to project an image onto walls.

New animation commands and a built-in animation management system make it easier to display game characters with fluid movements. Just set the sequence to play, add a transition time, and the engine will automatically manage and play a queue of blended animations. A bug that sometimes caused animated characters to render incorrectly on Linux has also been fixed.

It’s now easier to purchase items in the Leadwerks Workshop Store. Clicking on the buy button in the editor will open the selected item in the Steam client, instead of requiring you to log into the Steam website through a web browser.

The professional edition has been upgraded to Visual Studio 2015, and is now compatible with the latest version of GCC with C++11 support.

The Leadwerks Winter Games Tournament is running until January 15th, and there’s still time to create a mini-game and publish to the Steam Workshop. All participants receive a prize, including stickers, posters, shirts, hoodies, and even Steam controllers.

Leadwerks Game Engine and the Professional Edition DLC are both on sale during the Steam Winter Sale with an 80% discount. Leadwerks Game Launcher can be downloaded for free on Steam.

About Leadworks Software

Leadwerks Software was founded in 2006 to make game development easy and fun. The company launched Leadwerks Game Engine on Steam in January 2014 and has experienced steady growth with over 10,000 paid users. Leadwerks Game Launcher was released as an early access title in September 2015, allowing developers to publish games to the Steam Workshop for free, with no waiting period and no approval process.