Greetings Space Citizens!

Nice to see you here again! Hopefully your October was nice and toasty, with lots of pie and other treats!

A major issue that many game developers struggle with is getting detailed feedback. Most of it tends to be vague comments along the lines of "loved/hated it! Do more/less!" That little bit of feedback is helpful, but it doesn't really allow a developer to get into the nuts and bolts of what needs to be improved. There's also a strong negative feedback bias - which is to say that overall when people are content they tend to be silent, but when they're unhappy they post in forums. Thus, it's possible to feel like everything is terrible and folks hate your project when in reality the ship is sailing fine. 😅

That's where Google Analytics comes in! Once integrated into a game it allows a developer to see exactly what choices are being made (or not) throughout the game - and to see the player's path through the content. To say that this is profoundly useful for a dev is a massive understatement. Especially in a game like SNB with a lot of branching paths it's invaluable to see where players are in the story and how they engage.

If we see that players are often hitting certain quests, but totally ignoring others - then we know something's afoot! If players tend to stop halfway through particular sections or get lost, well that's something to investigate and improve! So we're spending quite a bit of time integrating G.A. into our systems - the benefits will be pretty excellent! 🤓

Now, a bit about privacy. All data from the upcoming integration will be anonymous and opt-in. Which means Google Analytics won't be enabled unless the player explicitly says they want to participate. We're also not going to bury the consent on page 37 in one of those standard Corpo "Usage Agreements" that are all the rage now. The team fully supports the right to privacy and the ability to opt-out will exist even if the player does initially consent.

Whew! That's a long post, but hopefully will explain why we're currently focusing on Google Analytics integration. It's going to massively help the development process in the long-term! (the tldr, as they say) We'd love to see you there!

Look for a big update next month just in time for the holidays! December will be a technical patch, so light on the content but heavy on the underlying systems. As always thank you so much for the support and love! 💗

With low-gravity high-fives,

-The SNB Team

p.s. Feel free to contact us on Discord! We'd love to see you there! 🎈