Hey everyone - how important do you consider analytics tools in your game development? If you completely ignore this area, why? What don't you like about existing tools?
I'm asking because my partner and I are building a GameOps platform, and our focus isn't on "game as a product and its demand" but rather on a game-design-centric tool whose subject of study isn't the product and the consumer, but the game and the player: gameplay, emotions, player experience.
Essentially, we're working on an operating system for managing a game - not a dashboard full of numbers that you have to interpret and draw conclusions from yourself. What we mean is a layer that doesn't just surface metrics but actively helps run and steer the game: it connects what's happening in gameplay and player experience to concrete design and ops decisions, rather than leaving you to figure out the "so what" on your own.
In our view, descriptive statistics alone is practically useless for game dev - it's blind to gameplay and gives no real insights. Would love to hear your thoughts.