This guide is intended to serve as a sort of checklist for easy implementation along with some tips and tricks for setting it up quickly and painlessly. The official home page for GameTracker are here. You can get everything from there, but here’s some quick links: download here and API docs here.

What’s New in v1.2:

Version 1.2 was just released, so if you’ve used GameTracker before, here’s what’s new:

• GameTracker now has Singleton support! Call GameTracker from anywhere with a simple call to: GameTracker.api
• alert( ) and customMsg( ) now support single String parameter calls, for example:
  • customMsg(enemy.name+“ destroyed!”);
  • alert(”Super Awesome achievement awarded!”);
• The score and gameState parameters are now optional and the last recorded values will be used if new ones are not passed in with the function calls.
• GameTracker Documentation has been updated and is now available here!

Important Functions:

• alert(customMsg:String = null , currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null):void
• beginGame(currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null, customMsg:String = null):void
• beginLevel(newLevel:int, currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null, customMsg:String = null):void
• checkpoint(currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null, customMsg:String = null):void
• customMsg(customMsg:String = null, msgType:String = “custom”, currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null):void
• endGame(currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null, customMsg:String = null):void
• endLevel(currentScore:Number = NaN, currentGameState:String = null, customMsg:String = null):void

Places to consider implementation:                                                  – function call:

• UI Components (buttons, levelSelect, upgrades, etc)            – customMsg();
• Game Starts                                                                            – beginGame();
• Level Begins                                                                           – beginLevel();
• Enemies Defeated                                                                   – customMsg();
• Common Events                                                                     – customMsg();
• Checkpoints Reached                                                           – checkpoint();
• Level Ends                                                                              – endLevel();
• Game Over                                                                              – endGame();
• Score Submitted                                                                     – alert();
• Achievement Awarded                                                           – alert();
• Upgrades/Item Purchases/other important actions                – alert();

Step 1 – Make A List: Before taking time to implement an analytics API, like GameTracker, it is important to first figure out exactly what kind of information you would like to track and analyze. To do this, I find it best to play through your own game and think about where it would be helpful to see how the player is interacting with your game. For example, do you know how many players press that mute button? Or how about where most players are struggling with your content? Or how long your players (FI’s, devs, sponsors, etc) are actively playing the game before moving on to another? Sprinkle some GameTracker function calls into your code and you’ll have answers to all of those questions in no time!

Step 2 – Initialize The API: Once you have a list of the data that you would like to collect, the next step is to initialize the API to make it ready to use. Start by creating an instance of the GameTracker class somewhere in your code. GameTracker v1.2 now has Singleton support so it no longer matters where the instance is created.

Step 3 – Implement The API: Use the list that you created in Step 1 to locate the best places in your code to add the GameTracker calls that will report the data that you seek. For each location decide which GameTracker function fits best (check the above Important Functions section) and add the calls to your code.

• Call GameTracker from anywhere with a simple call to: GameTracker.api
  • ie. – GameTracker.api.customMsg(“Player died!”);

Step 4 – Collect The Data: Once the GameTracker API is implemented, collecting the data is as easy as uploading your game to FGL and finding players to play it. Here are a few ideas for finding testers for your game:

• Request and/or Trade Feedback with other developers in the FGL forums<http://www.flashgamelicense.com/choose_forum.php>
• Order First Impressions to have randomly selected players anonymously play your game for at least 5 minutes, rate it (or record it with Video First Impressions), and then hopefully leave some kind of useful feedback<http://www.flashgamelicense.com/manage_firstimpressions.php>
• Create Fan accounts for your friends and family and ask them to play your game on FGL<http://www.flashgamelicense.com/manage_fans.php>

Step 5 – Analyze The Data: Every time someone plays your GameTracker enabled game on FGL, the data from their gameplay is recorded and stored in the FGL database. To access this data, all you have to do is go to your game’s Views page and find the GameTracker column. If you implemented GameTracker correctly then just about every game view (there may be a few exceptions) should contain a link labeled ‘view’. Following the link will take you to the GameTracker Analysis page for that gameplay’s data, which contains an overview of the gameplay, a link to view all of the data in detail, and a link to download the detailed data in an easy to analyze csv file.

• Sample data file: www.edugamedev.com/FGL/Garblactic_session_2231515.csv
• If GameTracker was not set up correctly or if the player only stayed for a short period of time then the column will read ‘N/A’ with no link.
• Download the csv file and use all of your favorite Data Mining tools to help determine trends, averages, and more interesting information!

Tips / Tricks:

• Use Existing EventListeners – Drop a customMsg( ) call inside existing EventListeners to easily track all events that pass through them:

public function mouseDOWN(event:MouseEvent):void {
    // -- filter out unwanted noise: ie. “instance####”
    if(String(event.target.name).search("instance") != 0){
        GameTracker.api.customMsg(event.target.name + " pressed in Main");
    }

    … // the rest of your mouseDOWN code

}

• First Impression Quality Assurance – One of the major side benefits of using GameTracker in your game is being able to identify when a FI reviewer is trying to game the system by playing less than 5 minutes and then leaving feedback that is just vague enough to be believable. With GameTracker you can easily see what they did while playing and how long they were actively playing your game, which can then be used as evidence to have bogus FI’s replaced with new ones.
• Sponsor Activity – Curious to know what the sponsors were doing in your game for over an hour? With GameTracker you don’t have to wonder anymore! Since sponsors are players too, GameTracker will tell you when they actually started playing your game, how far into the game they got, what options they selected, and whatever else you decide to track.

Are you writing a PM asking a sponsor to look at your game(s) or place a bid? Don’t do that. That’s spam! (Think about it: if you get a message from someone you don’t know asking you to buy something, that’s the definition of an unsolicited message, also known as spam.) Don’t be a spammer. Even one spam message is enough to get you kicked out of FGL.

You cannot pester a sponsor just because they looked at your game once or twice. That’s still spamming.

The only time you can contact a sponsor about your game is:

• If they have bid on this game, or have asked you questions about the game.
• If you have licensed a different game to that sponsor in the past (and you have a good working relationship).
• If the sponsor has shown significant interest in your game: they have played it on three separate days for a total of 30 minutes or more.

Once again, if you break these rules we will suspend or delete your account. Thanks for your understanding!

Also remember that if your game uses the Flash 3D apis, you need to check the box that tells us to use wmode=direct when displaying the game. Otherwise you are likely to get errors and weird behavior when you view it.

While these things might feel as if they’ve been around forever, the fact is a vast majority of your Christmas associations are owned and protected. Now what exactly does “protected” mean? Well, at the core, it means you can’t use it without a license. Period.

Here are some examples of protected music:

• Frosty The Snowman
• Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Carol Of The Bells
Jingle Bell Rock
Winter Wonderland
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
White Christmas
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
The Little Drummer Boy
Sleigh Ride
It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree
Silver Bells
Feliz Navidad
A Holly Jolly Christmas
Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)

and some examples of protected characters:

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman
The Grinch

Now before you go all Grinch.. err.. I mean Scrooge, there are both music and characters in the public domain.

Public Domain music:

Public Domain Characters:

• Santa
• Scrooge
• Reindeers without red noses

Also note that while even if songs are in the Public Domain, you can not use any recording of those songs (unless the owner of the recording has put it in the public domain). Recordings are covered by a separate copyright. For more info about Public Domain music, you can visit: http://www.pdinfo.com/.

When you next log on to the site you will be asked to change your password. Please do this right away! Furthermore, we highly recommend that if you use the same password on any other site, you change it there too. While they didn’t gain access to your actual password, given time they can reverse the hash and possibly gain your password.

We are truly sorry for this intrusion, and we’re taking every step possible to ensure that your data is safeguarded better in the future. We can’t discuss too much more about this hacking attempt at the moment because our investigation is still ongoing, but it seems to have been a very interesting attack with an unusual motivation. We’ll give you more info when we can.

Yours,

FGL Team.

Here’s what we DO know so far:

- it will include an FGS ticket

- it will include all meals during the event day

- it will include at least 2 nights in a hotel

There’s much more, of course, but that’s what we have worked out so far.  So stay tuned!  And also, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.

If you previously attempted to save a new SWF file and saw a blank white screen or a message about Encryption Failure, you were affected by this problem. To fix it, just go back to the Edit Game screen, re-choose the Kindi encryption option (because it will have turned itself off), and press Save.

I’ll update this post when the issue is addressed.

We’ve also added a checkbox that lets you indicate that your game needs “wmode” set to “direct”. This is needed by some browsers if your game uses the StageVideo or Stage3D APIs. Please make sure to check the checkbox if you need it.

Remember: Your Code Should Detect wmode Problems!

On a more philosophical note, we’re a little worried about the new “wmode” requirement. Some Flash portals don’t have a way to set this yet, and many smaller Flash portal owners are not tech-savvy enough to easily modify their site on their own. This is likely a problem that will work itself out in time, as portal owners realize they need to add this. But right now, most portal owners don’t even know about this requirement at all!

For the first generation of Stage3D games, we highly recommend that you detect when wmode is set incorrectly and display a helpful message explaining what needs to be done. Thibault Imbert on ByteArray.org has a good explanation of how to do this. He also shows how to detect when the game is running with the software renderer, meaning that performance is likely to be extremely poor: in those cases you may want to warn players so they don’t think the game is bugged!

(Edit: thanks to Chribbe in the comments for the link!)

If your game is still in development, and you’re willing to work with us to make big changes to the game (if necessary), we would be happy to pre-review it. We’ll play your game and send you a video of the experience, so you can see exactly how we played the game, where we got stuck, what we liked and didn’t like.

To request a pre-review, click on “Edit Game” for your game and look for the Prereviews box.

Note that we anticipate a turnaround time of approximately a week. Also, in order to keep the queue from getting too long, we no longer give two pre-reviews: for now, the limit is one per game.

This is an experimental service we’re offering to the community. It’s still new and it needs your feedback. Please let us know what you like and don’t like about this service!

Other Changes

We’ve been bad about remembering to blog when new features are added! Here are some recent updates (including some just added tonight):

• Co-Author Permissions: Developers can now decide whether their co-author has permission to edit the game or not. By default, co-authors can edit anything about the game, just as before. If you un-check this box, co-authors won’t have access to the Edit Game screen for your game. However, they will still be able to see bids, use First Impressions, and view feedback.
• “Bidding Notes” Changed: We are repurposing the “Bidding Notes” field so we can show it elsewhere (for instance, when your game is in the Game Shop). We moved it to the General Description tab and renamed it “Notes to Buyers”. We also converted it from HTML to plain-text. If you used fancy formatting in your bidding notes, please go check it now to see if it looks acceptable.
• Preview Players Have Levels: Preview players now earn “levels” when they give good feedback (much like developers earn levels when they sell games). If you’re a developer who receives great feedback from a preview player (or anybody else!), please take a moment to mark the feedback as “Great Feedback”. This gives a little pat on the back to the person doing this favor for you.
• Game Agents Powered Up! Thanks to new back-end tools and new team members, our game agents are now working closer than ever with sponsors. Sponsors, we know your time is precious, so we’d be happy to help you find the best games for your specific needs. If we haven’t reached out to you yet, please feel free to drop us a note directly!
• EasyLicense Payment Info: If you go to the “My Account” page, you’ll see a new option: Payment Info. We use this information to pay developers when they sell a game through EasyLicense. When you have an EasyLicense deal pending, we’ll ask you to fill this information in. (You can also fill it in early, of course! If you fill it in  now, it will save a step in the process so you get your money to you a day or two faster.)
• Forum Signatures Capped: Forum signatures are capped to 250 pixels in height. If your forum signature is longer than that, scroll-bars will appear. But even 250 px is extremely large, and should be used sparingly. Please keep your forum signature under 200 px if at all possible!