---
name: analytics-telemetry
description: Use when adding telemetry, defining metrics, building dashboards or using player data to make design decisions. Starts from questions, respects privacy and turns data into specific changes.
---

# Analytics and telemetry

Draft from the Game studio skills library by THE DREAMING JESTER. Adapt it to your game, team and engine.

## Goal

Answer real design questions with data, quickly enough to change the next build.

## Before you start

- Write the questions first: where do players quit, which options do they pick, how long does progress take?
- Check privacy law, platform rules and your own policy. Collect only what answers a question.

## Process

1. For each question, define the metric and the events needed to compute it.
2. Name events consistently with a version, a timestamp, a session and build identifier, and only the properties needed.
3. Validate events in development: fire each one and check it arrives with the right data.
4. Build a small dashboard per question rather than one dashboard for everything.
5. Compare by build, so every change can be judged against the previous version.
6. Turn findings into a decision: keep, change or cut, and say what will be measured next.
7. Remove events that no longer answer a question.

## Quality bar

- Every event maps to a question.
- Builds are comparable, and changes are judged with data where data exists.
- No personal data is collected without a clear need and consent.

## Output

An event specification, validated instrumentation, focused dashboards and a decision log.

## Avoid

- Tracking everything and analysing nothing.
- Drawing conclusions from tiny samples without saying so.