Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Analytics and advertising
When it comes to creating games, a lot of developers wish to make some sort of money
from their work. Not only do they want to create a unique experience that the player en-
joys, but they also want to see some sort of reward for their work, most commonly in the
form of revenue.
While simply selling a game can work, it isn't always the best way to go about the process
of making money, especially on mobile. Most developers don't just want to give their
games away for free as they have put hard work into the game; therefore, it has value. This
is where advertising comes in. Placing advertisements in our games allows us to generate a
small amount of revenue as the ads are displayed to players. The greater the number of
people playing the game, the greater is the revenue generated. This way, a popular app or
game can still see a decent return in revenue over time.
Analytics are essentially stats. They allow developers to see how their app is performing
and how people are using their app. Not only do analytics provide numbers or information
regarding players at any one time, including which country most players reside in, but they
also allow us to specify events within the games code. Google Analytics is a great example
of this. By placing analytics events in our project, we can see exactly what the players are
doing within the game.
Let's take a look at how these systems can be implemented in our project. For this, we will
use AdMob and Google Analytics as our services. Other services are available to use and
no service will be exactly the same; however, most will be similar. These services will be
implemented for an Android application.
Analytics and advertising are not available on desktop export modules (Windows, Mac,
Linux) and are mainly mobile only.
