V3RTEX Gaming

[V3RTEXGaming]

Hello all,

I've just recently created V3RTEX Gaming, which aims to provide analytic tools to game owners. Our goals are to provide you with vital tools you need, to ensure your game runs smoothly. This includes providing multiple features through our tracker, that we've been constantly developing. These features include, but are not limited to, tracking in-game monetary exchanges (or in-game purchases), tracking cheaters, assistance in code optimization (more below), tracking events, and even E-Mail analytics.

As of yet, we do not have an exhaustive feature list, but below is our base feature set, which is what we plan to launch with on August 1st, 2011.

• E-Mail Analytics
• Page Load Time
• Tracking page views
• Tracking in-game transactions
• Tracking in-game events
• Tracking conversions
• Tracking cheaters
• Code Optimization

E-Mail Analytics:
Providing you with the ability to know when a visitor opens a piece of mail they receive (requires HTML emails), so that you can handle this event, and do whatever you want with it, using our Analytic API. This gives you the ability to offer bonuses for viewing your e-mails, and gives you the freedom to decide what you want to do with it.

Page Load Time:
Tracking your pages load time means a lot these days, as you want to know how your pages are performing for your players. If perhaps you have a page running slowly, you could implement our code optimization techniques, to debug your code, and follow it as it executes to see where it bottlenecks. Being able to track this is key to ensuring you keep your players returning.

Tracking cheaters:
Using the community of our clients, we can quickly determine whether someone who's visited your site has been flagged as a cheater, on other sites, or even yours. We've developed this so you can be aware of who your players are, and whether they're there to have fun, or cause mayhem.

Code Optimization:
Optimize. Optimize. Optimize. I don't think you can say that word enough when it comes to running a website. Being able to really dig into your code and see where it's bottlenecking gives you the ability to dig in, without ever having to touch a shovel.

As this tracker is focused toward gaming, it's uses are also pliable to general website use, however you have the ability to save data along with visitors, such as the following example.

Let's say you get a visitor, but you want to be able to save their player ID to them with our tracker, that is completely possible! This breaks the barrier of not actually knowing who your visitors are, without over complicating things. Being able to view your game economy as a whole, then break it down into sections, and then view each individual player, is what makes our tracker unique.

We hope you've enjoyed this mini-write up for our service, and would love to hear your feedback and suggestions. If you'd like to start trialing our tracker as we develop, that would be great, as we really need someone with any amount of traffic to participate, so we can have a constant flow of data in.

If you want to find out more (please note our site is not complete), please visit: www.v3rtexgaming.com

[CygnusX]

Sorry, but your software would not be useful to me.  I am only one voice, but I don't believe it would help the majority of bbg designers either.

[Nox]

Noone forces you to use it

[Zeggy]

Sounds like a cool idea, but most of the analytics stuff is already possible with normal analytics software.

Tracking cheaters across all games sounds pretty good though, and tracking the economy and spending/earning also sounds good.

I suggest you get a professional design for the website.

[V3RTEXGaming]

I'm currently unable to respond to each individual post, however later on today/tonight I will be able to hold a discussion.

[Harkins]

Code: [Select]

<script type="text/javascript">
v3.init({
accountNumber: "XX-1234567890", //(* Required)
trackCheaters: true, //(Default: false),
trackPageView: true, //(Default)
});
</script>

//Elsewhere in your game, where you know someone trying to access is trying to cheat
<script> v3._trackCheater(true, 0-10 (severity), 'Log Description'); </script>
...the cheat logging and tracking code requires the cheater to run the code? Wouldn't a cheater use NoScript or GreaseMonkey to just turn this off?

[V3RTEXGaming]

Code: [Select]

<script type="text/javascript">
v3.init({
accountNumber: "XX-1234567890", //(* Required)
trackCheaters: true, //(Default: false),
trackPageView: true, //(Default)
});
</script>

//Elsewhere in your game, where you know someone trying to access is trying to cheat
<script> v3._trackCheater(true, 0-10 (severity), 'Log Description'); </script>
...the cheat logging and tracking code requires the cheater to run the code? Wouldn't a cheater use NoScript or GreaseMonkey to just turn this off?

Yes, of course. This is why in the future, we plan to provide alternative methods for accessing our tracker. Developing libraries to interact with it using a multitude of different languages, such as PHP for example.

[V3RTEXGaming]

Sorry, but your software would not be useful to me.  I am only one voice, but I don't believe it would help the majority of bbg designers either.

Sorry I skipped your message, but would you like to elaborate on how this will be of no assistance?

[V3RTEXGaming]

Sounds like a cool idea, but most of the analytics stuff is already possible with normal analytics software.

Tracking cheaters across all games sounds pretty good though, and tracking the economy and spending/earning also sounds good.

I suggest you get a professional design for the website.

I designed the site myself using the default layout from HTML5 Boilerplate for the time being, but I do plan on having it done in time for the launch date.

Also, I understand the core features of this tracker can be done using other analytic software (visitors, transactions, etc.), but for the following example, I will use Google Analytics.

When you're receiving visitors, and you want to differentiate visitors and players, using GA to do so requires campaign variables, which isn't what that was made to do. While it's possible, it wasn't made to track players, or targeted traffic (users), let alone logged-in versus not logged-in. Doing such things with this tracker, will be done for you, granted you pass in the data you want to be associated with that visitor. Sure, it seems like something you'd just do with GA, but our tracker will use that associated data to help you grab either data pertinent to logged in users as a whole, or a single user. Not just any data, but all data associated with that user. This gives additional benefits, such as, when someone clears their cookies. Sure, we lose our tracking cookie, however once they login, they're re-associated with all their previous sessions.

Providing you with the core functionality of any-old tracker is going to happen, but it's what that tracker does with that core functionality, by either expanding it, or using the data in a way that gives it more value over another.

In another note, to go into further detail about Harkins' comment, we understand JavaScript has it's limitations when it comes to analytics, and they're not just small issues. The benefits of using it are simplicity, but there are drawbacks. Which is why I stated we do plan on releasing alternative methods to use the tracker, and to retrieve/add data into the system. Yes, I said retrieving. It's your data, not ours, you're entitled to it more-so than we are. Locking your data down, and not giving you access to it other than arbitrary methods is not our goal.

Providing frameworks, and libraries to make sure you enjoy the simplicity of using analytic software, while not incurring complications along the way, is our goal. Extending past JavaScript is on our plate, but for initial launch, that's all we're going to have, and it will let us build upon, and improve it, so that we can continue forward with more advanced features, and really become a solid tool, before we start introducing multiple avenues for integration.

Hope this answers some more questions others may have, including the ones posted here.

[CygnusX]

Sorry I skipped your message, but would you like to elaborate on how this will be of no assistance?

Well, while I'm sure you're putting a lot of work into your product, and you by all means sound like an intelligent person, I see things in the following manor:

1) It appears you wish me to place javascript on my site.  Unless you're google, or another major company that I have a very high level of trust in, this is a huge security risk to my users.  Also, you will probably want all their email addresses, usernames, or passwords.... something I promise in my ToS that I will not give out.

2) I roll my own in terms of game design.  I code with php/mysql, and I'm not using a package invented by another developer.  If users make transactions inside my game, I can easily generate a database table and track it myself.  It would probably be as much work integrating your software as it would be to customize my own.

3) Tracking Page Load Time?  I can get a good feel for this by playing my own game and listening to feedback from users.  The data here would not be interesting, but not very significant to me.

4) Tracking emails?  I don't send many/any emails for my game.  If I ever did, perhaps this would be a nice feature.  But, going to point 1, I don't give out player's emails due to ToS.

5) Tracking cheaters?  This is actually a nice concept, and may be valuable in terms of banning users based on my own collection of data along with data collected by other game owners.  However, I would never be able to take action against a user if I didn't have evidence from my own internal data collection that the user was cheating.  Very interesting idea though that I want to see how it plays out.  But, again, what sort of personal data would I have to reveal about my users to actual track them across multiple games?

In short, there are not many benefits your software could give me, but there are numerous security risks I would be taking by implementing it.  In addition, I would have to pay monthly for such a product.  My games generate little income as it is, so this makes things 3x less attractive. 

[V3RTEXGaming]

1) It appears you wish me to place javascript on my site.  Unless you're google, or another major company that I have a very high level of trust in, this is a huge security risk to my users.  Also, you will probably want all their email addresses, usernames, or passwords.... something I promise in my ToS that I will not give out.

Completely understandable, and not something I expect people to jump at with first sight. The form of data of which you want to associate with the user when using the tracker is entirely dependent upon you. If you want to use usernames, go ahead, want to simply use player ID's, go for it. Anything that is used to associate one person to multiple entries will be hashed, no matter what is given (string, integer, or even a hash). There are ways to circumvent the issue of security when it comes to passing data like this, such as instead of passing a player ID or username, pass an MD5 hash from the get-go of their username, there are ways this can be handled internally. The point of this is to provide something unique to each user, so that you can use it to associate previous visits, events, transactions, etc.

2) I roll my own in terms of game design.  I code with php/mysql, and I'm not using a package invented by another developer.  If users make transactions inside my game, I can easily generate a database table and track it myself.  It would probably be as much work integrating your software as it would be to customize my own.

In all honestly, and I'm not trying to be condescending in anyway, but I once used to have the same attitude toward things other people had done. So, with that in mind, I can say I completely relate with you on this. It is up to you whether you trust, or want to use, said packages someone else has developed. The aim of using this tracker, is to simplify processes which are entirely possible to create internally, and let you focus your abilities and time on features and not have to worry about such things.

3) Tracking Page Load Time?  I can get a good feel for this by playing my own game and listening to feedback from users.  The data here would not be interesting, but not very significant to me.

Implementing page load time on a page using PHP is as simple as 'Hello World', this is just what I consider feature-bloat. Listening to user feedback is of utmost importance, though the implementation of this has not yet reached it's full potential, and is something I have a feeling will become more useful than just a figure later on.

4) Tracking emails?  I don't send many/any emails for my game.  If I ever did, perhaps this would be a nice feature.  But, going to point 1, I don't give out player's emails due to ToS.

Using this feature requires no use of player e-mails. We're not offering to send your e-mails for you, although it is something that could potentially be released later on as an additional feature set, it is not related to using this feature at all. This is simply to track opening of emails, to provide you with the ability to respond to your players actually reading your content, and giving you the ability to respond to it as an event, and perhaps give players an incentive (Open our July 4th Newsletter and receive the Sword of a Thousand Truths!).

5) Tracking cheaters?  This is actually a nice concept, and may be valuable in terms of banning users based on my own collection of data along with data collected by other game owners.  However, I would never be able to take action against a user if I didn't have evidence from my own internal data collection that the user was cheating.  Very interesting idea though that I want to see how it plays out.  But, again, what sort of personal data would I have to reveal about my users to actual track them across multiple games?

This feature is to not necessarily to give you concrete evidence of which you can use to ban a player of yours. It's simply to give you essentially a heads-up that this person is on your website. Of course, this feature has a lot of potential, and could be further expanded on in the future, but as of now, this is simply an alert.

In short, there are not many benefits your software could give me, but there are numerous security risks I would be taking by implementing it.  In addition, I would have to pay monthly for such a product.  My games generate little income as it is, so this makes things 3x less attractive. 

There are currently 3 packages, 1 of which is entirely free, with no cost at all. Though, it is missing 2 features (In-Game Economy Reports, and E-Mail analytics), you still enjoy the vast amount of other features that it comes with, or will come with down the road. The current limitations are not final, and will be adjusted so that people, such as you, can enjoy the benefits of using it, while not having to incur the costs at the same time.

[Marek]

I don't think I've seen an analytics service targeted directly at browser games before; you have an interesting business here.

Don't take the criticism in this thread too seriously; those who say "I wouldn't pay for this" aren't your target customers anyway, and you can't do anything to change that.

Now, if you could figure out how to do extend your services to platforms like Facebook games, there could be a lot of money there.

[V3RTEXGaming]

I don't think I've seen an analytics service targeted directly at browser games before; you have an interesting business here.

Don't take the criticism in this thread too seriously; those who say "I wouldn't pay for this" aren't your target customers anyway, and you can't do anything to change that.

Now, if you could figure out how to do extend your services to platforms like Facebook games, there could be a lot of money there.

Expanding into multiple platforms, such as Facebook, are exactly what's on our horizon.

[footyfish]

How do you compete with http://www.kontagent.com? Will your analytics package be more advanced? Itd be hard for it to be easier to use.

"Track Cheat Attempts - 50 per month" not sure this should be limited, by tracking cheat attempts the developer is helping your system (all developers), these should be unlimited for free in my opinion as everyone benefits and thus you. Is this a backend API where a developer can search by IP and/or username/email to see if a user is a known cheater? Or does this rely on getting a cookie and seeing if its present in another game? Interesting idea. Privacy issues involved with this, I probably wouldnt go near it myself.

"Economy report"? what does a developer get out of that? you need data from the game? you act as a consultant?

For me i wouldn't use your service as I could get most of what you offer for free (with much larger limits) from bigger (reputation/size/history) companies or open source. However if you open sourced it and offered paid support this could change - assuming it remained social game specific. Throw in some free webinars that show you know what your talking about and itd be a big plus - should do this anyway.

[V3RTEXGaming]

How do you compete with http://www.kontagent.com? Will your analytics package be more advanced? Itd be hard for it to be easier to use.

I haven't personally looked into Kontagent, but will soon. So for now, I can't really comment on how exactly we can compete with them. There are features that have yet to be published for this tracker. They're not even listed on the website. We're hoping to expand them into something very useful, in fact, one of them could potentially be the best feature of our tracker yet.

"Track Cheat Attempts - 50 per month" not sure this should be limited, by tracking cheat attempts the developer is helping your system (all developers), these should be unlimited for free in my opinion as everyone benefits and thus you. Is this a backend API where a developer can search by IP and/or username/email to see if a user is a known cheater? Or does this rely on getting a cookie and seeing if its present in another game? Interesting idea. Privacy issues involved with this, I probably wouldnt go near it myself.

You raise a valid point, and as I've said many times in this thread, the limits imposed on the packages are not final, they're something I threw together. They will change when we launch on August 1st.

As for accessing the data, there will be a multitude of ways later on, but for now it will remain simply an alert for the website. Accessing it to see who exactly this person is on your game will be possible.

I wouldn't jump to privacy issues so quickly, there is nothing different with this, than simply tracking a user visiting your page. All you're doing is telling our system that they've tried to do something on your game, that is against your ToS, or attempted to access an area that they shouldn't have. Really, using this feature is at the discretion of the game owner. Though, we will have algorithms in place to prevent abuse of this feature.

"Economy report"? what does a developer get out of that? you need data from the game? you act as a consultant?

This is for visualization of your in-game economy. If you use our transaction tracking for all in-game transfers of money (purchases, sales, etc.) whether it be to an NPC, or another player, we can use that data to generate reports for you.

For me i wouldn't use your service as I could get most of what you offer for free (with much larger limits) from bigger (reputation/size/history) companies or open source. However if you open sourced it and offered paid support this could change - assuming it remained social game specific. Throw in some free webinars that show you know what your talking about and itd be a big plus - should do this anyway.

Webinars are actually a great idea, I may throw some together for our Beta launch in August, to properly demonstrate the power of our tracker. However, going open-source is not something on our table at the moment. While we want to be open when it comes to your data, our software will remain proprietary for the time being. Like I've said, your data is your data, not ours.

[Chris]

How do you compete with http://www.kontagent.com? Will your analytics package be more advanced? Itd be hard for it to be easier to use.

Yay! They have ARPU!!! It looks delicious, but it is only for Facebook apps, right?


V3RTEXGaming, you designed your tool without asking game owners first what they want and it shows. You included tons of completely useless extravagant features but not even one that is really useful for a professional game owner (not even basic DAU or retention rate). Why don't you make something we want instead of something you think we might need?

[V3RTEXGaming]

V3RTEXGaming, you designed your tool without asking game owners first what they want and it shows. You included tons of completely useless extravagant features but not even one that is really useful for a professional game owner (not even basic DAU or retention rate). Why don't you make something we want instead of something you think we might need?

Not once have I stated that I am opposed to suggestions. In fact, that's exactly what I'm looking for. I've yet to receive a suggestion. I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the current feature set is completely useless, as they will be the base for future features.

If you have suggestions, I am completely open to them, as stated above.

[Chris]

If you have suggestions, instead of opinionated attacks

Sigh... I seem to have a talent to offend people Sorry, it was not my intention. I'm keeping my mouth shut now, I promise

[V3RTEXGaming]

If you have suggestions, instead of opinionated attacks

Sigh... I seem to have a talent to offend people Sorry, it was not my intention. I'm keeping my mouth shut now, I promise

I removed the comment after you replied .. I felt perhaps I was overreacting.

If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

[Chris]

First, I doubt I would ever use your service no matter what you do, because my system would go down when you go bankrupt (and you will go bankrupt, it's just a matter of time ). But it might be just me, so let's ignore it

What I want right now are scripts. The only things I ever considered buying (several times) are various Facebook/Bigpoint integration scripts and payment scripts (daopay, moneybookers). These are the only things that would make me part with my money
As for analytics, I don't know. If these are cheap, maybe...

The crucial thing to inderstand is that game owners want more players and more money. That's the only things they need. That's the only thing worth measuring. The analytics are to privide one (or both) of these. If they don't no one will use them. So all retention rate, ARPU, ARPPU, etc are what counts.

[V3RTEXGaming]

First, I doubt I would ever use your service no matter what you do, because my system would go down when you go bankrupt (and you will go bankrupt, it's just a matter of time ). But it might be just me, so let's ignore it

What I want right now are scripts. The only things I ever considered buying (several times) are various Facebook/Bigpoint integration scripts and payment scripts (daopay, moneybookers). These are the only things that would make me part with my money
As for analytics, I don't know. If these are cheap, maybe...

The crucial thing to inderstand is that game owners want more players and more money. That's the only things they need. That's the only thing worth measuring. The analytics are to privide one (or both) of these. If they don't no one will use them. So all retention rate, ARPU, ARPPU, etc are what counts.

I'm currently not able to give a large digest on this subject, so please give me some time, so later tonight I can respond with perhaps some additional ideas for different things that need priority over other features currently being developed. As of right now, we're not really in the middle of feature dev on a specific feature, so we can cut somethings down in priority, for others.

I will have a response here tonight though for you.