Data Doesn't Solve Problems. Decisions Do.

If you have actual facts and truth that you can argue about, then you're talking eye to eye. Hello world. Welcome to the Pocket Gamer Podcast with your hosts, me, Brian Baglo, and the Grand Dam of data, Miss Peggy Anne Saltz. Hello, Peggy. It's good to see you.
Oh, it's good to see you too, Brian. It has been a while and so much going on. I mean, particularly in your world, you've been a busy man.
It has been a bit of a roller coaster. The start of 2026 has been politically charged, shall we say. Um, so if you've not been listening along, I wrote a big piece of strategy um for the Scottish government designed to radically change the way that games are understood and supported across the whole country um using all of the devolved powers that Scottish government has. And that was published at the end of January, debated in the Scottish Parliament in uh early February. And as of uh the weekend just

passed, the Scottish Liberal Democrats uh endorsed it entirely and called for the government to implement it. So we're now sitting down with the business minister for a line by line review, fingers crossed, on the 18th of March. So
yeah, it's been all fun and very little games if you understand me. But at some level it comes together here because is about games being a business making better decisions around gaming. You might be going through it line by line but for other studios they should be going through it you know line by line in a different way looking at the data because we say that studios don't have enough data. Actually they're swimming in it. They don't have enough clarity into the data, you know, enough insight into the data to know what to trust, what to act on, and when. And that is something that is more important now than ever because, as you know, don't need to tell you. You know, we have UA

costs, we have a privacy first world, we have AI putting pressure on studios. So, we're going to look at data, but data not as an object. data, how to make decisions better. So, what better way than to look at the data than with a company that is in the data, immersed in the data. That's game analytics. And we have Falco Booka. He's head of BD and customer success at game analytics. And you'll like this, Brian, because he entered the industry a little bit like you, right? I he was a first of all a freelance writer in 2007. Then he joined with one of his clients um in PR and then went from there to licensing and working with publishers such as Flur Games, Joyack, full circle back to the business side and here he is with us today. Welcome. It's great to have you Falco.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
It's I feel like I've found my tribe. Um Falco, it's a pleasure to meet you. It's we'll have to swap some war stories

about the the the good old days when journalists were journalists and PR people, you know, just had to buy them lunch. Um
indeed. Yeah.
But I I am, as Peggy knows, secretly a bit of a data geek and it is one of one of my constant frustrations is that so many developers don't really take it seriously or or are simply overwhelmed. So before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit more about the company? What does games game analytics do and how did you find yourself in the world of data and gaming?
Game analytic provides tools for studios to track in the first place and then understand, visualize, interact with the data that they are uh that they're collecting. Data was always a part of of that or you kind of grow into that eventually, right? because you have to speak a common language between the two sides and um there is a lot of creativity and gut feeling in our industry but in the end you need to argue over facts and like really test things and see how they work in real

life. Um, and I always liked analytics because it also changed a bit this power imbalance that you sometimes have between publishers and developers because if you have actual facts and truth that you can argue about, then you're talking eye to eye and it's not just like experiences, which can be great, but they also change. the market changes, the player behavior changes, the styles of games change, and how can you keep updated with players uh and what they think about your game by using tools to track by looking at the data and actually talking about the facts rather than just guessing how players see your game.
And how about your own your own journey into this? It's like from, you know, a freelance writer in PR, it's leaping into data. That that seems a bit of a shift. Can you talk us through a little bit of your background?
I was just a gamer all my life. I got my Game Boy for my first day of school. In Germany, that's a thing. On your first day of school, you get some some little presents. So, it was always a given, I guess, that I'm ending up in the games industry somehow. And I just love talking about it, writing about it, talking at the what is happening. So, I

started just offering my work to to a couple small magazines. And one of these magazines turned into one of the early free-to-play PC publishers back in 2008. Um, and they asked me if I want to come aboard. After a while, that company grew a lot and we needed uh better ways of testing new games for publishing, interacting, communicating with the developers that were making those games. And I had the opportunity to grow into that role. And then later on, I switched um sites every now and then to look from the developer side kind of seeing their experience and their um issues and and and challenges with that process. And some of the things I talked about right now is like okay how do we communicate between those two sides and how do we come to conclusion what is the next best step for the game that is not just the publisher telling the developer uh what's supposed to happen but actually having everybody involved and looking at the data from the gameplay perspective what is actually happening in the game

from the marketing perspective data become just became more and more important and since I was always in first on PC later on mobile in the free-to-play service style games, you have this ongoing flow. You don't have to make all of your decisions up front. You can actually use the incoming data to keep working and improving your game.
That's the point. I mean, you need it from the very start. I'm talking to so many marketers who are like, we need it just for the forecasting alone to understand, you know, where are we going to be? Not just where's the game going to be, but where's the studio going to be? Because again, they're not short on data. They're short on clarity. their shirt confidence in making decisions.
Allison, our CEO, talked about that on a recent web series that we did um our master class that people can check out on our YouTube channel about this differentiation between being mature in in the data in your data pipeline and being sophisticated in using that pipeline, right? Having more and more data is not necessarily helpful if you

can't ask the right questions about it and have the right people look into it and make decisions based on what you're seeing. Not you're you cannot just collect data and hope it will magically fix all the problems that you have.
And I encourage everyone to check it out. We'll have that in the show notes as well. But that's just the point. You know, you're working with thousands of studios and you're seeing how they use data, how teams think about data. I talked about forecasting, but what are you seeing as the biggest shift in how teams are thinking about data or where they're applying it or where they're bringing it to forefront of what they're doing? It's, you know, it's not now checking to see what the data said. It's like checking to see the data will give direction. For example,
first of all, more studios are using it. Um, studios that are smaller that were too intimidated by it in the past. Studios from different genres or platforms. on PC it's growing for example
um and we see it more going through the

whole team instead of just one or two analytics uh specialists or or or uh data crunchers within the team because it can be valuable to everybody. We've seen more and more of these people jump straight into the data and being able to interact with it more to come up with these hypothesis and questions and use the data themselves to come to these conclusions and rely on the data specialists for more complicated integrate kind of um analysis.
So data are in Brian that's what you need in a team. I mean if you were you were back at a studio you'd be you'd be the one in demand. I think it's always been the case. You know, it's the the the game sector generates more and more and more data, you know, not just every down to every mouse click or tap on the screen, but um how your players um engage, where they engage, you know, it is we we've suffered from an embarrassment of riches almost, which which I think is taking you back taking us back to your previous point, Peggy.

The focus now has to be on um not just storytelling but practical and actionable outcomes. So it's not just let's gather everything we can stick it in a data reservoir and drown in it but how do we actually use it personalize it for automation segmentation personalization and all of the things that that developers and publishers really now have to focus on. How do you see this differing between studios? You know what's the difference between the largest studios out there and some of the the smaller indie guys? is are we starting to see new tools or new techniques for making better use of data?
There's always the expectations everybody should use data all the time, but the reality of an indie studio is often as a small team that has to make and finish a game and then update the game. Data might not be the biggest factor at the forefront of their mind. Um, so I can understand that they start with something simple and something simple can be very helpful. Very simple AB tests or funnels for your tutorials. That's something that even less sophisticated team can uh set up and draw a lot of nice conclusions out of.

What we see with bigger teams is that it gets more and more detailed. In an AB test, one might be slightly better than the other for 55% of the players, but are you uh is it now worse for the other 45% of players and with segmentations, you can go deeper into that up to a point where some studios are now focusing on every individual's player experience. And that is kind of the cutting edge right now. and it's not very widely uh used yet, but we see more and more studios experimenting with things like
credible. just trying to think about that approach and where we were in marketing where we said no that's that's a segment too small I won't bother with that but now it seems that yes the concept of onetoone marketing um is important when you think about fullfunnel but again coming back to Brian's question you know AB testing is that the starting point is that where we are where should indies be aiming for they're not going going to necessarily

get to the point of onetoone marketing. That doesn't make a ton of sense for them. That's just something they don't have. Well, not yet anyway. We'll get to AI later. What that brings to the table, but that's not where they're thinking. They're thinking about groups of players, not individual players.
Yeah. And that's fine. And I think the tools are catching up and helping with that and making that easier and making those steps easier. But it is a like a development. You cannot expect somebody to start out with data and know everything about it. if I uh if I suddenly stand in a workshop full of saws and uh tools and stuff like that, I don't know how to use all of those. But you can start with something, right? And start making conclusions out of that and learn about it and get better over time. Uh and I think that is what uh smaller studios should focus on. Use the tools because they're free, they're accessible. A lot of them have easy ways of getting something out of it and then build your skill set, build your experience. If you're big enough, you might be able to hire somebody that brings in more of the that experience already and can help distribute that

throughout the team. But don't think you have to do everything all the way from the beginning. It's a it's a process of getting there and what you can do with it and the value that you get out of the data will just exponentially grow over time.
I guess we are seeing more and more new tools, more and more new services come through that that will help you not just visualize but act on the data. But where do you see studios coming you know unstuck? um when they're starting to look at the full funnel, is it the connections between the game play, marketing, monetization or where where are the problems creeping in?
Yeah. Um I mean having those different parts of the company communicate and merging data from different sources. We try to partner with a lot of um marketing providers like adjust and a few others. Uh so you can import some of the data into it to then see like okay I paid this much for my players. I know that from from adjust or something, but um I also know how people behave. But how do the people from specific campaigns behave? Did I target the the right people or is it just because

they're not everybody who is cheap to acquire as a user is a good player for your game, right? That uh eventually brings in return on investment. So having these these parts of the company talk to each other, merging these data sets and looking at the whole picture um is important to kind of really get somewhere rather than just fixing little problems and having little improvements here and there.
So just to be clear, your role in this is what exactly? I mean at one level you're helping companies, you're helping studios come up with a fullfunnel approach informed by data. You're working with partners. such as adjust to make certain that data is mapped to the funnel. But what would you describe game analytics as in this uh an enabler an orchestrator? What would it be?
Yeah. So um there's different challenges that we're trying to solve. One is how do you collect the data? How do you send events to a server? How do you aggregate

them? How do you do that at a level where it's not crazy expensive? We're seeing single games with 20, 30, 40 million daily players in Roblox sometimes. uh where how would you build an infrastructure yourself that can deal with that that can aggregate the data that isn't insanely expensive for a small studio, right? How do you interact with it? How is it easy to come up with graphs that show what you want to show so you can check in on important metrics that you want to see? Did the update really help people finish the tutorial more? Did this new content patch increase the retention so players stick with your game longer? being able to quickly visualize that and not having to learn how to query an SQL table uh right from the beginning, having somebody from the design team check how his levels are performing themselves rather than having to wait for the data analyst or engineer to be available. The more we can merge this with other data sources, the more we can make it available um for more sophisticated setups, how studios that

grow with the data can extend from there rather than having to switch solutions because that's another important part. Eventually, you want to have custom segmentations and having a tool for that. Eventually, you want that SQL database to export import the data to feed your own dashboards on those kind of things. maybe provide some data data to partners that you're working with and um having a system that can grow with the studio and provide that is what we're trying to focus
almost sounds like a new description of a new type of player. I was thinking like signal engineer, data engineer because it's not just the data. This is I mean I know game analytics because I know the reports and I look at the data and the insights but it's also creating a system that will allow you to capture the insights, ingest the insights, analyze the insights, right?
Yeah. The reports are mainly us giving back because we do have all this data. We know it helps the industry as a whole to understand the platforms better and what's happening there. So we try to aggregate of course anonymized. Nobody's

individual data is being exposed. Um, but our main business is providing these tools for developers to understand what they're doing. Um, and we're trying to build and build on top of that. It was a very simple web tool in the beginning. Now it's supporting more sophisticated data pipelines. We introduced a new uh new tool specifically for marketers to look at what campaigns are out there, how do other people advertise their games on what networks, what platforms, and how can that inform your decisions of bringing your game out there to the players that you think should see it.
Smart, Brian, because you need that holistic view, right? You need to know what's going on in your company. You need to go need to know what's going on in other studios and in the wider market. you can operate in a silo, you know, either as a studio or the different teams and departments within a studio. So, if you're not having those conversations, you're not aware of the context you're operating in, you're not going to be around for very long, certainly not for game number two, three, or four. Um, so, Falco, I'm I'm

curious. Um, can we can we ground this a bit? So, in the studios you've worked with, how did this sort of fullfunnel approach look? Um, in reality, you know, how did the game analyst collaborate with designers, product leads, marketers? Who's the sort of the vision keeper and where does the data fit within kind of the chain of command if you will? Um, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Again, very different from this the style of company, the size of company, the genres they're operating in, right? Um hyper casual was a genre where we saw data completely take over because you get so much of it in such a short amount of time but you have to make decision and and changes quickly but your games are small so you can react to this there it was a full team effort most of the people were somehow involved and integrated in the data. Um, when I was working with bigger publishers that work with external developers and bigger teams, usually there was some kind of BI interface where other people within the studio could go to to ask specific questions. Um, I think what we're seeing more and

more is these things becoming more proactive. So, people going out into the team, providing this data, inviting these conversations to make people aware that there is this this wealth of information to dig into um, and ask questions to and hopefully find answers. What about the actual different stages in the game? The data infrastructure, for example, pre-launch, how that's different from live ops, you know, or should it be all the same from the start?
I don't think it should be the same from the start. Um, you will learn to understand your players better and better on the whole picture. Over multiple games, you learn best practices and things that you should integrate into every game, but tracking everything in detail can be overwhelming. And then what you do with the data can be challenging. So you start more general and then get smaller and smaller once you go in. The same is true for the problems and the levels of data you have. Right? In the beginning you can say like do I make more money than I spend on marketing and still have enough left over to keep the lights on and pay my people. That's the most important

thing. But how do you act on that? How do you just increase that? So you go another layer deeper and say okay what is the most important things for that? Of course, marketing will use um different tools to inc to work on the campaigns making them more efficient. But in-game, what are some factors? Retention, for example, uh playtime, these are these are big factors. Um so you get an idea of okay, maybe I can do something that improves that. And then you can go a layer deeper. What helps with retention? Having a tutorial that explains the game better, is easier to finish, maybe figuring out some super tough spots or maybe boring parts where people bounce off. And then you can it's way more actionable to go in and work on these specific points rather than just having a huge problem that you don't know anything about how to fix it. It's good to have kind of like a basic idea, a good idea, have the most important things that you've identified that you want to uh track because also you can't go back and track data that already happened. Um, and that can be challenging based on the game. Luckily in mobile games we have an environment where you have new users coming in so you can keep improving uh things

throughout the longer period of time. Um so you can get more and more detailed over time. Um but finding the right balance there I think can be quite challenging. Tracking enough from the beginning but not too much that you're completely overwhelmed and spend all your time on just collecting data but never doing anything with it. Can you give us any case studies, any real world examples where a decision made early in development has paid off further?
Yeah, there was a game at a publisher I worked for that was based on a core gaming IP and the initial users were super familiar with that IP uh with a with all the material around it. So great numbers, crazy retention, uh they understood the rule set right away. They spend frankly a lot of money uh on it. Uh, and then once you start casting a wider net in marketing, you suddenly figure out, oh, that's not all the players out there. And then you have to decide, do I stay in my niche and work for them? And that can be lucrative depending on your studio, or do I have to adjust the game so it actually welcomes players that might not already

be familiar with the source material and gets them on board and teaches them the game in a more detailed, more uh in a softer fashion that doesn't require them to be already a hardcore fan? Um, and do your marketing campaigns still make financially sense once you're running out of those players that already wanted to check it out anyway, right? Once you and then it's not that it's just core fans and non-fans, then it's like, let's say it's based on a board game IP, you will have fans of that IP, then you will have fans of board games, fans of strategy games as a whole, and then you go from from there.
How did it turn out? I'm curious. Did they did they go for the uh lowhanging fruit of the existing tribe or did they try and take it to the the next level with the non-fans?
They did definitely improve to get it uh to a wider audience. It never went full mainstream. I think that would also have not been the right things for the core fans. You don't want to water it down too much if that is what your IP is about, right? Working with IP completely other topic. You probably have an episode just on on that. They tried to

find the middle the middle ground and luckily the initial boost of players coming in that did support it that much also meant there was there were enough resources to do that and work on that. Not every studio has that luxury unfortunately.
Can we stay with that example for just a moment because again Brian we're trying to
teach studios particularly indies this is like this is what you need to have in place you know welcome to the world of data deal with it it's here. Therefore, what do you put in place? You know, is there something you do now that later on saves time, money, mistakes later? So, I have to ask you, Falco, working with all of these studios, what is it that allows you to have that flexibility? You said yourself, the studio said, "Hey, look at this." You know, we have our core fans, we have other people, other players we can bring into the game, but the infrastructure has to be there. what was put in place to make this possible to flex out and to refocus a strategy?
I think it's also kind of represented in

the types of events that game analytics comes with out of the box because first of all, if you just integrate it, you get already stuff like how many players do they have, how long do they play on average, how often during the day do they play. That's just general top level information retention that you can calculate very easily out of that. um that is why we have it in a way where it doesn't require any work or specific interactions from the studio that kind of works automatically with the SDKs and then we have events specifically for progression uh for business and then it goes into resources and economies we have like resource events specifically for that the developer then has to make the decision of
what is important to me to know uh what players are doing in the game what gives me the the biggest picture of specific interactions in my game that I can then react to later. And uh again on mobile you can still add some of them over time once you figure out that maybe you started with a broad category of starting a level, finishing a level, but then you you spot the level where there's a specific problem that doesn't

help you anymore. Now you have to go in and track more specific steps within that to be able to to take action on on the data that you're seeing at the top level.
I like that. So you map data really to the full funnel we're all talking about from beginning to end and of course post launch um where games are made or broken. So it is something that it's about not just the metrics but it's the engagement and tracking that.
Yeah. I think what a lot of people forget with data is that's real people playing your video game, right? It's not just numbers on a screen that represents how people play the game. Something that happens on somebody's device. If somebody if retention goes down that means people have a problem with your game they don't want to continue playing they're either bored it's too difficult or there's some other problem technical problem for example it is a real world thing that is just abstractly translated into numbers so asking the right questions and coming up with uh with the answers to those questions and those

issues that your players are experienced should be on the forefront of your mind not just I want to increase number from from 45 to 47%.
Mhm. So if we're if we're moving into sort of live ops, um you know, what is it that you see studios looking at? What are the KPIs? What are the data signals that are most important when you get into the live ops phase, if we want to call it that? Um and which ones do you see as mattering most?
Yeah. Uh I I think that goes back to what I said before, right? You start on the top level, you have to make more money than you spend. Otherwise, in the long term, you don't it doesn't work as a business, right? uh and that is for most studios an important part of it. Of course, some are in it for the art and then maybe analytics don't matter so much. Um and that's fine. I love those games. But if you want to run it as a business, that's the main thing. And then you have to see like how can I get smaller and smaller and closer and closer to the problems. The first way where you can start saying like okay there is a problem somewhere in this area and now I have to dig deeper and identify. Um so if you have a wealth of

data you can do that immediately but again in mobile you don't have to do that can introduce more and more tracking over time um especially when you're still in a testing phase right so that can be another approach rather than um having your minimum set and going out with everything is you do more tests while you're still small before your big campaigns run out to optimize some of these quirks out of it. It's never going to be the same. It's never going to scale uh the same way once you're going up with the numbers. But getting yourself in a position where you already have some of this in in place uh can be a big advantage once you're in live service. But you cannot expect to know everything before you go out and see real players. So keeping a little bit of your of your time capsule of of developers for that uh for that those uh interactions should be uh within the plan.
So the game is evolving and this is data

I'm using through that evolution. How do teams particularly again the indies these metrics they're the metrics we you know it is it is standard metrics for the most part but how do they move beyond the surface metrics and start to understand the why it's great to see the numbers you said yourself they're players at the end of the day not numbers but getting to that why of why engagement or retention is changing now that is strategy and that's what's going to make a studio sustainable in the end How do teams move in that direction? Particularly indies.
Yeah, that's where we go into testing. And then it depends on your capabilities of how precisely can you test, right? An AB test is something every studio should be able to do in my opinion. So let's say you have a tutorial, you see a huge drop off in players in that tutorial. You can use AB testing features. There are solutions out there, but game analytics has something integrated that automatically distribute your users into

smaller groups. Once you become more sophisticated, we get into segmentation. Okay, we have ABC tests maybe, but now we want to look at subgroups of users that have specific behavior, my multiplayer only users that always hit the quick play, quick match button and only interact with other players. The ones that don't want to play with people out there and try to okay, how can I interact with bots or campaign or something like that and start breaking those down into different categories of users and then see how big are those segments because likely you don't know, right? Like how many people do this more than than other things in your game. So you might be focusing your development time all on one feature that nobody ever interacts with while your core user base is in a completely different part of your game. And once you start segmenting in that way and finding out more about these more precise groups, then you can react in much more detail than you could do with a generic A test.
That's really interesting. And I guess that kind of picks up on on Peggy's earlier point. when it comes to live ops, um, how does your use of data

change as a game matures and you're no longer focusing on acquiring and retaining users? You know, so a game in a more mature sort of phase um of its of its life cycle, do you see the use of data changing and the way that that companies can best utilize at that point?
Yeah. Uh, usually it grows with retention, right? In the beginning, you have very short retention because you don't have the content yet. You all the little issues here and there are not iron completely. But depending on your game, play time might be 30, 60, 90 days beyond a year or two. We see a lot of mobile games in the top 100, top 500 that have been there for years. The environment changes, your competition changes, right? So, you will always have to look at the incoming funnel uh to a certain extent, but then you have to uh go and say like, okay, let's resegment here. We have to look at our core players, the people that really have been enjoying this game for many years. How can we make sure that there is enough stuff for them to do, that they keep getting entertained for the months

to come. So, you're shifting your uh your view a little bit, not completely, but a little bit more towards specific subsets of players that might be more experienced with your game already.
Interesting. I had the situation where I got into a new game and the main menu is full of options and different features and here's the PVP and here's the clan system and here's this building um with with all these different functions and a new player can be overwhelmed by that as well, right? So, you have to be careful when you make those decisions again full funnel because your funnel never stops in a mobile game. And is there one game or a couple of games out there that you think you've really kind of you see them nailing the live op strategy recently? And and if so, what do you think it is that they're
Yeah, I mean a a lot of mobile game studios are very sophisticated with this. I think it's super exciting what we're seeing on the Roblox side right now.
Uh because it's um again so many players that suddenly appear in your game, right? It's this hype based system where suddenly you go from a couple hundreds to a couple millions of users coming through your game every week and you have to react to these these changes.

You also don't have a lot of data, no historical data. We understand a lot of genres in the mobile space and there are specialists you can reach out to uh that can help you with that. Roblox everything is so new, right? The next cool game is already uh is already out there. the next five cool games are already out there and the they're your users are already playing this because they sample so many different games, right? So having big titles like Grow a Garden, join our platform um and seeing what those guys are doing, how quick they react, and the amount of players they are dealing with was super exciting and very impressive to see.
So I I find that fascinating. I have a 9-year-old who is mildly obsessed with Roblox. I shall add in here in the interest of transparency, I play Grow a Garden. I have an Ember Lily. It's only because my son gave it to me. But um I I find the whole Roblox experience fascinating. And looking at it from a development perspective, it is so different to what we consider the game's industry because it is the barriers to moving on are so low and the trends that

just come through that game over the course of days is is completely fascinating. So what we're talking about at the end and what I'm what I'm excited about is that the data is there. It's really about the visualization. It's about the filtering. You know, it's all there and then it's about acting on it smarter, right? So that will be more than dashboards. That'll be tooling as well. And you said yourself you have a lot built in. What's changing right now in analytics and with game analytics? I mean what is fitting into that shift that we need to act on it faster. So we sort of need to have it surface insights to us. Yeah. We need to more active and proactive rather than say oh look what the data says. No the data is saying something to us. We need to do something.
Yeah. Yeah. Having this range of accessibility that everybody can interact with it but it still supports high-end sophisticated systems. That was

a big uh part of it. We started with the easy part uh or well uh arguably but we started with a web interface that everybody can understand and interact with that is very straightforward that deals with aggregated data. Then we saw no there are studios that are way more sophisticated. They need a database level access to every event from every player to do their own calculations very precise segmentations. So we introduced that. Then we learned, oh, there's people in the middle that can't interact with this full kind of data set, but they still want a way of going deeper than what this is offered in the main tool. So, we introduce what we call segment IQ is still a visual interface, but it goes beyond of what the regular game analytics uh can supply and that market IQ again uh aimed at marketers. um being aware that different kind of people from different backgrounds are interacting with your tool now that have different goals and different challenges and having tools for them to to use that solve their problem. Um and something that can grow with the studios again, something from a free tool that can give

you information very fast when you don't have time for complex implementations that you don't have to completely retool and rework once you are at those bigger steps. That's important for us. It uses the same event system in the background. So there's no additional implementation. Um and then we see new things coming up. AI is a is a big example, right? AI, if AI is really good at something, it's interacting with large chunks of data, right? Um and that can be simple things of just natural language. Um hey, tell me what the retention from my players on the US on Samsung phone is Samsung phones is. and getting the information, a graph or something like that out of there without having to learn complicated interfaces to then stuff that just happens in the background any anomalies in your data that you wouldn't have spotted because you cannot as we said look at all your data all the time but an AI can a computer can look at everything and detect these changes and then we hope in the in the step beyond that um is that they can actually make suggestions and see correlations right

this number went down that had an effect in other places in your game these things are connected somehow. You should look into that because that is something that is definitely a challenge for us because the games on our platform are so different, the developers are so different. We can give some base guidelines, some best practices, but being more individual uh requires looking at a lot of data very quickly and uh we hope that with with some of the AI tools we can support developers in that way so they don't have to learn to understand and spend so much time on going through everything in detail. Yes.
And are you finding AI is most useful as a as a co-pilot as it were Falco or you know humans are still uh required in the decision-m process I assume. So so where is AI best placed at the moment when it comes to your data and analytics?
Yeah, I I think it is in interacting with the data and highlighting stuff to give humans the chance of making the decisions. I think once we're getting more into the segment of one uh where it

is more detailed because those decisions have to uh happen right away within the play time of the players I think that is where we might see it sooner right a player played a certain way so the next level should be a little easier and we've done this forever and with kind of like very simple things in PC console games right you get suggested an easier difficulty but once you get more detailed and you have more individual play styles you need some kind of processing power that helps you uh do that even if you have the easiest interface uh it can be challenging to come up with the right things and helping people getting there just asking a simple question getting simple answers is a good way of getting into analytics so I think that's overall a trend that we've seen in in analytic it used to be the super complex black box that you needed uh crazy specialists that can interact with databases and server uh messaging and then JSON files and stuff like that uh to something that normal person can lock into
or or just ask it. So that's

Yeah, just ask. Exactly. Right.
Um so that's good because in a way AI and we couldn't have a show without discussing AI, you know, it does really really well when things are rules based. But looking at games, looking at players, that's very individual. So yes, humans will be the co-pilot. They still need to drive. looking forward, you know, let's wrap this up with some practical advice about the rest of the year because we're just starting it. There's lots we can still do. Um, what's the very first step that a studio should take if they want to build a fullfunnel data set? We're talking about the tools. We have the tools. We'll have the tooling. We'll have more from game analytics, but it's also a mindset. You have to have your mind set on fullfunnel and what's possible without over complicating things. So how does NDI Studio get into that zone?

Yeah, I think the simplest is just start tracking something. Now there's tools that are free that you can today start tracking some basic information with not too much work like not that the whole team doesn't have to work on this for a week. one developer that spends half a day, maybe a day on it to start getting basic information about your game. Don't be intimidated by this huge kind of thing that we we we've discussed so many different nuances and and things that you can do with analytic that might be intimidating, but there's value along the way of getting uh there every single step and making this this big project that you might be able to track in the in the future when you have time. This is just going to keep you away from ever ever doing it. Just have a simple implementation. Pick a tool game analytic but there's others out there also other free ones. Just look at what is what is good for you. something that you think you can grow with uh but something that is easy to implement now where you can get data now uh to just start interacting with it and learning with otherwise I think developers are

uniquely educated in a way of coming up with more stuff later because they're already used to breaking things down a huge concept into small individual steps that you need to take to get there and that's a good approach to have in in data as well I have this huge issue the this huge question that I want to solve I always thought coming from more passionate, creative side of of of gaming. Um that oh this gonna be so boring to just look into numbers all day. But once you make this connection, no, those are real people playing your game. You cannot ask every single one about what they're doing in your game. But you can get a much better understanding of the the real people enjoying having fun with your with your games by just basic very basic high level tracking and then you can uh start diving deeper into it in the second and third step. I
I like that. That's almost like having a playful attitude toward data because it's being collected, you know, your platform. But I like that. Start start just small. Everything starts.
Yeah. And and mobile studios don't have the luxury that PC studios sometimes

have that there's eight different forums about their game where people discuss every everything in detail. And even that usually doesn't give you the the picture because it's usually the people that have a problem or an issue with something in the game. If you could ask everybody about the experience with your game, you would if you had the time to sit down with everybody, right? And that is another part that a lot of studios do and that I think is important, just looking at individual people and how they interact with the game either through like recorded play sessions or things like that or even just their data. Um, this is a luxury that not everybody uh can afford and it's nice for details, right? But you want to have an efficient way of understanding as many of your players as you can to kind of provide the the most value and most fun experience to as many of them as you can.
Well, you're absolutely correct and I think this is this is one of the the strange things is I I've spoken to developers in the past who say you can't design with data. But to me, the data is putting the power back into the hands of the designers and developers. You know, as you said at the very beginning of the the program, Falcon, it takes out the

guesswork. you know, you're no longer going what will happen if um and and then applying it and finding out it's all a disaster. Um I remember shipping a game once which uh was incompletable because we didn't realize we had put one of the little trophies on alleged it was too high for people to jump. You know, it was such a stupid thing. Um and of course it was a physical cartridge back in those days. But for me, I think data is such an important tool in the developers arsenal these days. Yeah, data will also not fix that problem for you, right? You have you have to have a human uh that comes up with uh what can we do to solve this? And this is straightforward with an item that is too high to to reach, right? Make the platform a little bit lower. But maybe it's something more complex. Maybe it's like
I have a really cool game concept, but it's too hard to understand some of the basic rules. how what is a better way of of introducing players to it, learning it step by step, so it really becomes second nature and they can then enjoy this this cool intricate system that

I've uh that I've built. And the data will not solve that for you. The data will just tell you people don't really understand this uh so well. Maybe maybe there's something you can do. But you're still the creative driver behind then coming up with the uh with a problem and asking that question. If you never look at the retention number or or completion rate of a certain level or something, you will never spot that there's a problem with it. Right.
What I like about your approach to it is now it's the developer, but it's also now the team because a lot of this and we're discussing this so much in the industry that if it doesn't sort of make its way back to marketing or make its way into creative or make its way around the studio, it is then therefore not actionable. and it's invisible and it's almost then worthless because the whole idea is the insights I have marketing has to have its insights and that's what's happening here and what you're building you're not just building data tools and what's possible to see in the

data it's really like mapping an organization to the data an infrastructure to the data and and making it really what it is in in all businesses outside of gaming in any case it's the lifeblood of the of the company. You're so much more powerful if you work together as a team to a common goal where this goes from from development marketing to people that uh that optimize inner purchases and those kind of things like through all all elements of game development once you once you bring this together uh you can work much better uh together and I think it can be part of this glue of getting this Wii feeling and interacting more more and discussing this more. So, we're nearly at the end. Brian, if you want to wrap it up with our favorite questions, I think we are ready to roll.
I shall. I absolutely shall. And Falco, this has been totally fascinating. Thank you so much. It's been really insightful. I think our listeners are

going to get an awful lot to take away from this episode. But before we let you go, we have a couple of questions that we ask all of our guests. The first is, what is it you're playing right now that's maybe taking up a little bit more time than you know it should be? And secondly, your favorite game of all time. So, what will it be?
I just got Arc Raiders out of my system a little bit and I was stuck on that for forever. Um, on mobile, it's mostly Apple Arcade stuff that I'm playing right now. I love merch games. Merch Mayor was one of my favorites for a very long time, and I'm trying to find more Apple Arcade merch uh games or just merch games in general. I don't know why. I'm I'm a a hardcore gamer that grew up with all the consoles, but they do something special to my
beautiful mechanic.
Yeah,
it is. It is. And and and there are no wrong answers here. You're in a safe space. We're all We're all
No, I'm not I'm not saying that. So, I have those two kind of uh things. And I

love just um getting back to uh games in the past that moved me and reexperiencing them. So, Red Dead Redemption 2 is something that I recently started again going through it with a little bit more time, not trying to hurry through it. Um, kind of really enjoying that uh that game. When it comes to my favorite game of all time, there are certainly things that I always go back to because games from my childhood that I love. Doom, Starcraft, I keep going back to them.
Um, but I think Shadow of the Colossus is probably my favorite game of all times. It's this mix of
mechanics, artistry, uh gameplay, emotions that it causes, uh that I think is just perfect in there.
It it it's a very very strong choice. Yes. Um weirdly not one we've heard an awful lot on the podcast.
I'm thinking now three years of being with you, Brian, and I can't recall, but you are unique in your own way as well, Falco. If I think about your background, you know, lifetime gamer and then also straddling working with the studios, but

also Yeah. working with in the in the press, working as a journalist, you know, bringing all that communication together. It makes sense. You're eclectic.
Yeah. I I hope uh I can do what helps bringing the uh the games industry forward. that I'm might not be great at making games outside of little uh little game jam projects, but I think bringing the creative artistry and the business part together to make sure we actually can enjoy making new games for the years to come is an important part and um I'm happy to be be a part of it and talk to people like you about it and learn more about it and hopefully helping people uh along that journey. Well, I think that's very much exactly what we need right now, Brian, because we're hearing it again and again at every show, every PGC connect. Um, it's about being a business, you know, it is a business. It's going to be more of a business when we see DTOC. So, it's really important for studios of all sizes to grasp the data that's going to

allow them to evolve to that.
Very much so. Very much so. It's uh you know as we keep saying it's crossing your fingers and hoping it goes all Angry Birds didn't even work for the last Angry Birds.
Um so Falco it it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you again.
We'd love to get you back on maybe do something about AI you know or uh let's really drill down into that granularity that came across in literally all of the discussions. So um thanks and hopefully we can invite you back at some point soon.
Anytime. Thank you so much for having me. This show is all about how to do your job better, how to make an amazing game, how to market it, and you have a say. So, if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on, then we would love to hear from you.
We want to hear from you. We want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness. So, if you have any

suggestions for us, if you have any feedback for us, you can always get in touch. You can email us at podcastpocketgamer.biz. You can find us on Twitter @pgbiz and you can reach out to us through the pocket.biz website. If you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts, you can find them at pocketgamer.biz/mpodcast. And we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows.
And we've got you covered on all the major platforms. So subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said, look for us on YouTube. If you want to read it, hey, you can do that, too, because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocket gamer.biz website.
Tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast, and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future.