As a Roblox developer, I find myself having to rely more on third party tools as the scale of my game grows. Analytics is a crucial part of maintaining and providing for a large user-base, however the current developer statistics simply do not cut it. Ever since their release in 2014, there have not been many meaningful updates. Developers have access to limited data which includes basic historical visits, live statistics and revenue information. Front page places now consistently peak at over a hundred thousand players, something not seen in 2014. The provided analytical data has failed to scale up to the point that users are now creating their own analytics platforms or using third party ones, such as blade for static data (cc @IntegerUnderflow) and GameAnalytics for custom analytics logging.
I propose a total revamp of the current statistics page to meet the growing demand of professional analytics on a professional game development platform, which reaches 1.2 billion hours of engagement per month and has paid over 150 million dollars to developers.
My proposition includes the introduction of an AnalyticsService, allowing developers to easily create, graph, display and perform further data science on data they find necessary to collect, with the desired result looking something like this:
AnalyticsService rough draft/throw around ideas.
| Functions | Details |
|---|---|
| :CreateGraph() | Creates graph, maybe like :CreateGraph(string Name, table data). |
| :AppendGraph() | Appends to created graph, maybe like :AppendGraph(enum Graph, table data). |
| :LogMessage | Logs analytics message, maybe like :LogMessage(enum MessageType (i.e alert, warning, etc), string Message). |
…etc, with the desired outcome of data being exposed to developers in a manner similar to GameAnalytics, replacing the already existing developer stats page:
The above is a bit of conjecture and creativity, however exposing additional functionality to developers (even if it's not similar to the proposed AnalyticsService above) is a step towards the scalability a growing platform should provide its growing developer community.
If Roblox is able to address this feature request, it would give developers much more control over the data they store and use without having to rely on third party services and tools.
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