Event Tracking

GameAnalytics features the following event types:

Event	Description
Ad	Ads shown and clicked, fill rate.
Business	In-App Purchases supporting receipt validation on GA servers.
Design	Submit custom event id’s. Useful for tracking metrics specifically needed for your game.
Error	Submit exception stack traces or custom error messages.
Health	Automatically submits health metrics related to your game such as FPS.
Impression	Impression data from different ad networks
Progression	Level attempts with Start, Fail & Complete event.
Resource	Managing the flow of virtual currencies - like gems or lives

tip

Read more about events here

Business Events

Business events are used to track real-money transactions.

Field	Type	Description	Example
currency	string	Currency code in ISO 4217 format.	USD
amount	integer	Amount in cents.	99 is 0.99$
itemType	string	The type / category of the item.	GoldPacks
itemId	string	Specific item bought.	1000GoldPack
cartType	string	The game location of the purchase. Max 10 unique values are allowed.	EndOfLevel

Android Business Event

When submitting a Business Event supply the following from the IAP procedure:

• receipt (INAPP_PURCHASE_DATA)
• signature (INAPP_DATA_SIGNATURE)

tip

Read more about retrieving these needed fields at the Google documentation here.

Add a business event when an in-app purchase is completed (Google Play Store only supported at the moment).

ga_addBusinessEvent(
  "USD",
  1000,
  "item",
  "id",
  "cart",
  "[receipt]",
  "[signature]"
);

iOS Business Event

When an in-app purchase is completed call the following method and supply the receipt from the appstore.

ga_addBusinessEvent("USD", 999, "Weapon", "SwordOfFire", "Menu", "[receipt]");

Non-validated Business Event

This is available on all platforms:

ga_addBusinessEvent(
  "[currency]",
  [amount],
  "[itemType]",
  "[itemId]",
  "[cartType]"
);

Resource Events

Resource events are used to register the flow of your in-game economy (virtual currencies) – the sink (subtract) and the source (add) for each virtual currency.

Before calling the resource event it is needed to specify what discrete values can be used for currencies and item types in the configuration phase.

source (add) Gem currency from an in-app purchase.

ga_addResourceEvent(GA_RESOURCEFLOWTYPE_SOURCE, "Gems", 400, "IAP", "Coins400");

sink (subtract) Gem currency to buy an item.

ga_addResourceEvent(GA_RESOURCEFLOWTYPE_SINK, "Gems", 400, "Weapons", "SwordOfFire");

sink (subtract) Gem currency to source (buy) some amount of another virtual currency (e.g: BeamBooster).

ga_addResourceEvent(GA_RESOURCEFLOWTYPE_SINK, "Gems", 100, "Boosters", "BeamBooster5Pack");

ga_addResourceEvent(GA_RESOURCEFLOWTYPE_SOURCE, "BeamBooster", 5, "Gems", "BeamBooster5Pack");

sink (subtract) 3 BeamBooster currency that were used during a level.

ga_addResourceEvent(GA_RESOURCEFLOWTYPE_SINK, "BeamBooster", 3, "Gameplay", "BeamBooster5Pack");

Field	Type	Description	Example
flowType	enum	A defined enum for sourcing and sinking resources.	EGAResourceFlowType.Sink EGAResourceFlowType.Source
currency	string	The resource type/currency to track. Has to be one of the configured available resource currencies. This string can only contain [A-Za-z] characters.	Gems BeamBoosters Coins
amount	float	Amount sourced or sinked. 0 or negative numbers are not allowed.	100.0
itemType	string	For sink events it can describe an item category you are buying (Weapons) or a place (Gameplay) the currency was consumed. For source events it can describe how the currency was gained. For example “IAP” (for in-app purchase) or from using another currency (Gems). Has to be one of the configured available itemTypes.	Weapons IAP Gameplay Boosters
itemId	string	For sink events it can describe the specific item (SwordOfFire) gained. If consumed during Gameplay you can simply use “Consumed”. For source events it describes how the player got the added currency. This could be buying a pack (BoosterPack5) or earned through Gameplay when completing a level (LevelEnd).	BoosterPack5 SwordOfFire LevelEnd Coins400

caution

Be careful to not call the resource event too often! In a game where the user collect coins fairly fast you should not call a Source event on each pickup. Instead you should count the coins and send a single Source event when the user either complete or fail the level.

tip

For more information on Resource Events go here.

Progression Events

Progression events are used to track attempts at completing some part of a game (level, area). A defined area follows a 3 tier hierarchy structure (could be world:stage:level) to indicate what part of the game the player is trying to complete.

When a player is starting a progression attempt a start event should be added. When the player then finishes the attempt a fail or complete event should be added along with a score if needed.

Add a progression start event.

ga_addProgressionEvent(GA_PROGRESSIONSTATUS_START, "world01", "stage01", "level01");

Add a progression complete event.

ga_addProgressionEvent(GA_PROGRESSIONSTATUS_COMPLETE, "world01", "stage01", "level01", 1000);

It is not required to use all 3 if your game does not have them.

• progression01
• progression01 and progression02
• progression01 and progression02 and progression03

caution

At least progression01 must be set for such events (an empty value is not allowed).

info

Progressions need to be set in order (e.g: you cannot have only progression01 and progression03, nor progression02 and progression03, you are required to start from 01 and continue)

tip

If you do not need progression02 or progression03 do not make any references to these parameters when calling the method.

Field	Type	Description	Example
progressionStatus	enum	Status of added progression	EGAProgressionStatus.Start EGAProgressionStatus.Fail EGAProgressionStatus.Complete
progression01	string	Required progression location.	World01
progression02	string	Not required. Use if needed or else set to empty string.	Stage01
progression03	string	Not required. Use if needed or else set to empty string.	Level01
score	integer	An optional score when a user completes or fails a progression attempt.	1023

tip

For more information on Progression Events go here.

Error Events

Used to track custom error events in the game. You can group the events by severity level and attach a message.

To add a custom error event call the following function:

ga_addErrorEvent(GA_ERRORSEVERITY_DEBUG, "Something went bad!");

tip

For more information on Error Events go here.

Design Events

Every game is special. Therefore some needed events might not be covered by our other event types. The design event is available for you to add your own event-id hierarchy.

info

Please note that custom dimensions and progression filters will not be added on design and error events. Therefore you cannot (at the moment) filter by these when viewing design or error metrics.s

To add a design event call the following method.

ga_addDesignEvent("Kill:Sword:Robot");

It is also possible to add a float value to the event. This will (in addition to count) make the mean and sum aggregation available in the tool.

ga_addDesignEvent("BossFights:FireLord:KillTimeUsed", 234);

Field	Type	Description	Example
eventId	string	The eventId is a hierarchy string that can consist of 1-5 segments separated by ‘:’. Each segment can have a max length of 32.	“StartGame:ClassLevel1_5”, “StartGame:ClassLevel6_10”
value	float	A float event tied to the eventId. Will result in sum & mean values being available.	34.5

tip

For more information on Design Events go here.

danger

It is important to not generate an excessive amount of unique nodes possible in the event hierarchy tree.

A bad implementation example. [level_name]:[weapon_used]:[damage_done] level_name could be 100 values, weapon_used could be 300 values and damage_done could be 1-5000 perhaps. This will generate an event hierarchy with: 100 * 300 * 5000 = 1.5M possible nodes. This is far too many. Also the damage should be put as a value and not in the event string. The processing will perhaps be blocked for a game doing this and cause other problems when browsing our tool. The maximum amount of unique nodes generated should be around 10k.