Retention data available but not segmented by acquisition channel, game version, or first session experience -- so you know players are churning but not which players or why?
Economy health visible only in revenue numbers, with no view into the currency source/sink balance that shows whether inflation is developing before it becomes a player complaint?
Game Analytics Platform
Custom analytics infrastructure for game studios who need player behaviour data that commercial platforms don't capture at the depth your game requires -- event schemas designed for your game's specific actions, retention analysis by the segments that matter, and economy monitoring that catches inflation before it damages retention.
Generic analytics platforms track what they track. A custom analytics platform tracks what your game team needs to make decisions -- the specific progression steps, the economy events, the social interactions, and the live service metrics that determine whether a design change is working.
Game event tracking with schemas designed for your game's specific player actions
Retention cohort analysis by acquisition channel, player segment, and game version
Funnel analysis showing drop-off at each progression step
Economy health monitoring covering currency sources, sinks, and conversion metrics
RaftLabs builds custom game analytics platforms for game studios -- player event tracking with custom schema, retention cohort analysis, funnel reporting, economy health monitoring, matchmaking quality metrics, and live service dashboards. Most game analytics projects deliver in 8 to 14 weeks at a fixed cost.
100+Software products shipped
·FixedCost delivery
·10-14Week delivery cycles
·24+Industries served
Game analytics is not the same as web analytics
The metrics that matter for a game are different from those that matter for a web product. Session length, return visit rate, and page views are web metrics. D1/D7/D30 retention by cohort, match completion rate by skill bracket, progression funnel drop-off by level, and currency source/sink balance are game metrics -- and they require an analytics platform designed around game data structures, not adapted from a web analytics tool.
A custom game analytics platform is built around your game's event schema: the specific actions players take, the specific progression steps they pass or fail, and the specific economy events that determine whether the live service is healthy. The result is a platform that answers the questions your game team actually asks rather than the generic questions a commercial dashboard makes easy to ask.
What we build
Game event tracking pipeline
Event schema design for your game's specific player actions -- session start and end, level attempt and completion, match result, item purchase, social interaction, and any other events your game team needs to analyse. Client SDK for your game engine that handles event batching, local queuing for offline play, and transmission when connectivity is available. Server-side event validation ensuring client-reported events have the required fields and plausible values before ingestion. High-throughput event ingestion pipeline handling the volume of events a large concurrent player population generates without affecting game performance. Event storage in a queryable data warehouse with the retention period your analytics team needs. The event pipeline that turns player actions into analysable data without the game client team writing data pipeline code.
Retention and engagement analysis
Retention cohort analysis tracking the percentage of players who return on day 1, day 7, and day 30 after their first session, segmented by acquisition channel, game version, geographic region, and device type. Rolling retention tracking the return rate over a moving window rather than just the fixed-day cohorts. Engagement depth metrics measuring session frequency, session length, and the player actions per session that indicate engaged vs passive play. Reactivation analysis showing how many churned players return after absence and what triggers their return. Feature engagement tracking showing which game features are used by which player segments. The retention analytics that give the game team evidence for where the game is losing players and which segments are most and least sticky.
Progression funnel analysis
Funnel definition for any progression sequence in your game -- the tutorial steps, the level sequence, the unlock pathway, or any multi-step flow where understanding drop-off is important for design decisions. Funnel visualisation showing the completion rate at each step and the absolute player count at each stage. Time-to-complete analysis showing the distribution of time players spend at each funnel step -- identifying steps where players stall rather than quit. Segmentation overlays showing whether drop-off patterns differ by device, acquisition channel, or player segment. A/B test funnel comparison for testing progression changes with the statistical significance reporting your product team needs. The funnel analysis that makes progression design an evidence-based process rather than an intuition-driven one.
Economy health monitoring
Currency source and sink balance showing the ratio of currency being generated (gameplay rewards, purchased currency) to currency being consumed (purchases, spend sinks) across the player population. Inflation and deflation detection with alert thresholds that fire when the balance moves beyond the design parameters -- giving the game team time to adjust before players notice. Conversion rate tracking from active player to first purchaser, and from first purchaser to repeat purchaser. ARPU and ARPPU trends with the player segment breakdown that shows which populations are monetising above and below the average. Item sell-through analysis showing which catalogue items are purchased and which are ignored. Drop rate validation comparing actual drop rates from loot systems against configured rates -- catching the bugs that cause items to drop at unintended frequencies.
Live service and matchmaking metrics
Live ops event metrics showing player participation rates, economy impact, and retention change for each live service event. Matchmaking quality metrics tracking skill differential between matched teams, wait time by region and game mode, and match completion vs abandonment rates. Server performance metrics showing latency and error rates by region correlated with player experience signals. Content release impact analysis comparing retention, engagement, and economy metrics before and after each major update. Live service health dashboard giving the operations team a real-time view of the metrics that indicate the game is running normally vs showing early warning signals of a problem. The live service analytics that make operating a live game a monitored system rather than a reactive exercise.
Reporting and data access
Dashboard design for the specific reports your game team uses regularly -- daily health report, weekly retention review, economy balance report, and live event post-mortem. Scheduled report delivery sending the key metrics to the game team's communication channels on a configured schedule without anyone needing to log into a tool. Data export for the cases where your analytics team wants to query the raw data directly. Integration with your existing BI tooling for organisations with an existing data stack. Custom report builder for game teams that want to build their own analyses without engineering involvement. The reporting infrastructure that makes game analytics a routine part of the game team's workflow rather than an occasional engineering project.
Frequently asked questions
Commercial analytics platforms handle standard game metrics well -- session count, retention by day, and revenue metrics. The case for custom analytics is specificity: your game's specific event taxonomy, the specific segments that matter for your design decisions, the specific economy metrics that reflect your monetisation model, and the specific matchmaking and live ops metrics that commercial platforms don't surface. Custom analytics also means you own the raw event data, which commercial platforms often restrict or make expensive to export. We give you an honest assessment of whether a commercial platform would serve you well before scoping a custom build.
The event ingestion pipeline is designed for the peak event volume your target concurrent player count generates, not the average. This means asynchronous ingestion with a queue buffer that absorbs traffic spikes, a pipeline that scales horizontally under load, and an ingestion architecture that separates the analytics path from the game API path so a surge in analytics events doesn't affect game performance. Load testing against the target event volume is part of the delivery process.
Yes. Game event data can be routed to an existing data warehouse -- BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, or similar -- alongside the custom analytics platform. If you have existing BI tools (Looker, Tableau, Metabase), the analytics data can be exposed to them via the warehouse. The integration approach depends on your existing data stack, which we assess during discovery.
A platform covering event tracking, retention analysis, and funnel reporting typically runs $25,000 to $50,000. A more complete system with economy health monitoring, live service metrics, matchmaking analytics, and a custom reporting layer typically runs $50,000 to $100,000. Fixed cost agreed before development starts.
Tell us your game type, the player decisions your analytics needs to inform, and where your current data falls short. We'll scope the right platform and give you a fixed cost.