Knowledge gap stopping mobile devs acting on data

A lack of knowledge is halting small and medium developers from making use of data analytics to improve their games, mobile specialist Dimoso has claimed.

James Kaye, director of Dimoso, which specialises in digital, mobile and social content told Develop that there is still a large knowledge gap stopping game developers from utilising data in the mobile titles they produce.

“The biggest disadvantage now is not ‘design by data’ but the fact that small and medium mobile game developers may not have the skills to properly analyse and interpret the data they have in order to introduce new features or make key design changes” said Kaye.

“Whilst many of the large and sophisticated mobile publishers may have the skills and knowhow to create ‘funnels’ and ‘events’ in Flurry Analytics and extract maximum insight, smaller developers are still in the dark. Rather than be analysts and marketers, all they want to do is make a good game.”

Flurry Analytics is a popular free-to-use analytics tools for mobile apps. It’s one of several freely available tools that today’s most discerning mobile developers are making of use. The software displays category benchmarks, demographics and also enables developers to track key actions and events that players do in apps.

However, with a significant amount to do just making a fun game, Kaye says the benefits of data analytics are unknown to many small developers. And those that do many not have the time or skillset within their teams to act on data collection.

Kaye added: “I very regularly deal with small developer teams of ten or less people who want to self-publish but have little or no understanding of marketing, analytics of interpreting customer usage and acquisition data. This is a significant skills gap that developers have to redress if they want to be successful at self-publishing.”

Develop spoke to Kaye and other data analytics professionals for a feature on the sector, which you can read more about here.