Introduction
Unity Analytics offers many powerful features to help you track player behavior and game performance. However, you may notice that Standard Events in Unity Analytics cannot be edited or customized. This article explains why this limitation exists and how you can work around it using Custom Events to meet your game’s analytics needs.
Understanding Standard Events in Unity Analytics
Standard Events in Unity Analytics are predefined events with fixed names and parameters. These events are designed to track common game actions or milestones, such as starting a game session, completing a level, or making a transaction. Their predefined nature ensures consistency across games, which is essential for comparing performance metrics and generating reliable benchmarks within the Unity ecosystem.
Why Can’t I Modify Standard Events?
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Data Consistency: Standardizing events across all Unity games helps ensure that the data collected is comparable across different projects and platforms. This is important for benchmarking and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), as it ensures all developers are measuring similar actions in a consistent way.
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Performance Optimization: By keeping the structure of Standard Events fixed, Unity Analytics can optimize how data is processed and stored. This helps the service handle large volumes of data efficiently, making it scalable across thousands of games.
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Simplified Event Structure: Predefining these events simplifies the analytics process for developers, particularly those new to game analytics. It reduces the complexity of setting up events, allowing developers to focus on more specific analytics tasks using Custom Events.
Working Around This Limitation
While Standard Events cannot be customized, Unity Analytics provides support for Custom Events, which offer flexibility in tracking the specific behaviors or milestones that matter to your game. Here’s how you can make the most of them:
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Use Custom Events for Additional Data: If a Standard Event does not capture all the data you need, you can create a Custom Event to record the extra information. For example, while the
transactionStandard Event tracks basic purchase details, you can send a Custom Event with additional parameters like player actions leading up to the purchase or details about the specific items purchased. -
Link Custom Events with Standard Events: You can link a Custom Event to a Standard Event using a common identifier, such as a
transactionID. This allows you to analyze data from both events together, ensuring you have all the context you need for deeper insights.
Limitations of Data Types in Custom Events
It’s important to note that Unity Analytics supports only basic data types in Custom Events, such as integers, floats, strings, and booleans. More complex data structures, like arrays or objects, are not supported. If you need to track multiple items (such as a list of products received in a transaction), consider breaking the data into separate Custom Events or parameters.
Tips for Managing Your Analytics Setup
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Create Clear Custom Event Structures: To ensure your Custom Events provide valuable insights, carefully design the structure of your events. Make sure to include meaningful parameters that allow you to capture the specific information you need.
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Use Unique Identifiers: Using unique identifiers (e.g.,
transactionID) to link Standard and Custom Events is essential for stitching data together during analysis. This will help you maintain a clear understanding of how different data points relate to each other.
Staying Updated with the Unity Analytics SDK
Unity Analytics is continually evolving to meet the needs of developers. Be sure to stay updated with the latest SDK versions, as they often include new tools and improvements. For instance, in version 6.0.1, Unity introduced a debugging tool in the Editor to help developers test event structures and ensure that data is being tracked correctly.
Conclusion
While you cannot modify Standard Events in Unity Analytics, this limitation exists to promote data consistency, optimize performance, and simplify event management for developers. The flexibility offered by Custom Events allows you to track additional data and tailor the analytics setup to your game’s needs. By designing clear event structures and linking related events using unique identifiers, you can capture valuable insights without the need to modify Standard Events.
If you need more advanced tracking, take advantage of Custom Events to collect the specific data that matters to your game, ensuring you don’t miss any critical metrics during your analysis.