FrostyCat
Redemption Seeker
I have recently learned that GDPR compliance was one of the reasons why 2.1.4 was a forced update, and it has made me revisit an old issue regarding analytics on GMS 2.
From day 1 I have been a fierce opponent of burned-in analytics on GMS 2. In my argument, I cited legal issues, inflexibility in updating the runtime and a lack of developer-end utility as potential problems. In my honest opinion, all three of the above have come true.
YoYo staff claimed that the analytics data may one day be shared in an aggregated report and/or available on an individual basis, such that it's useful for us on a personal level. Neither has come to fruition. YoYo needs to recognize that when we use GM to develop commercial games, we are developers first, GMS 2 users second. We need and want data pertaining to ourselves individually, as well as that of the market as a whole or a specific segment. The way GMS 2 telemetry is done satisfies neither needs: We can't get at our own stats with it, and it is neither big enough to be reflective of the market as a whole nor specific enough to describe the segment we're individually interested in.
YoYo staff also claimed that telemetry helps them understand usage and improve GMS 2. Yet from the way YoYo responds to breakers in monetization and analytics plugins in iOS/Android, or major crashes or pain points in the IDE, I see little evidence of action on collected data. The analytics is not used proactively, in fact most if not all of the bug-fixing activity is still passively driven by the helpdesk. Either the analytics data is being allowed to pile up without doing anything, or it is collected in a way that cannot be acted upon (e.g. failing to capture exceptions that can be caught). All while tickets still sit in the attic for months at a time.
Quite frankly, if the analytics collected by YoYo is not being used productively, then it should either be improved or removed. As far as an end-user developer like me is concerned, it is a technical and legal liability that has not been offset by tangible assets elsewhere. Please create that asset, or provide evidence of that asset if there's something behind the scenes I don't know of.
YoYo should stop asking what we can do for their analytics, and start asking what their analytics can do for us.
From day 1 I have been a fierce opponent of burned-in analytics on GMS 2. In my argument, I cited legal issues, inflexibility in updating the runtime and a lack of developer-end utility as potential problems. In my honest opinion, all three of the above have come true.
YoYo staff claimed that the analytics data may one day be shared in an aggregated report and/or available on an individual basis, such that it's useful for us on a personal level. Neither has come to fruition. YoYo needs to recognize that when we use GM to develop commercial games, we are developers first, GMS 2 users second. We need and want data pertaining to ourselves individually, as well as that of the market as a whole or a specific segment. The way GMS 2 telemetry is done satisfies neither needs: We can't get at our own stats with it, and it is neither big enough to be reflective of the market as a whole nor specific enough to describe the segment we're individually interested in.
YoYo staff also claimed that telemetry helps them understand usage and improve GMS 2. Yet from the way YoYo responds to breakers in monetization and analytics plugins in iOS/Android, or major crashes or pain points in the IDE, I see little evidence of action on collected data. The analytics is not used proactively, in fact most if not all of the bug-fixing activity is still passively driven by the helpdesk. Either the analytics data is being allowed to pile up without doing anything, or it is collected in a way that cannot be acted upon (e.g. failing to capture exceptions that can be caught). All while tickets still sit in the attic for months at a time.
Quite frankly, if the analytics collected by YoYo is not being used productively, then it should either be improved or removed. As far as an end-user developer like me is concerned, it is a technical and legal liability that has not been offset by tangible assets elsewhere. Please create that asset, or provide evidence of that asset if there's something behind the scenes I don't know of.
YoYo should stop asking what we can do for their analytics, and start asking what their analytics can do for us.