Game Analytics goes publisher with Runway

    Game Analytics, the region’s most SEO friendly startup company, has been doing free analytics for games since late 2011. This comes at a cost to the company, of course, who have raised $8 million over two rounds, and our casual and interview discussions with the company have usually brought up “so, what’s going on with the business model?”

    Game analytics are a tricky business, as we wrote in CoFounder Magazine. Small gaming startups are too poor to justify paying for analytics on their trickle of downloads, and there are plenty of venture backed competitors providing free analytics that works good enough. The real money comes in with the rapidly-growing up and comers that need to optimize like crazy, while the entrenched winners that have been leading the app store charts since Game Analytics was founded have built their own custom data tools by now. It’s a tricky middle ground to shoot for.

    But now, Game Analytics announces its starting their own publishing program, taking their knowledge of how games grow and throwing that towards up and coming games, hoping to pave the way to that middle ground themselves.

    Runway

    As explained in a blog post, the program uses Game Analytics’ understanding of metrics to “level the playing field” for smaller studios in their new publishing program called Runway. Right now they can’t sell game developers a track record of making games take off, so instead they’re selling deep know-how of the soft launch to worried developers.

    As Keith Andrew, former editor of PocketGamer.Biz puts it in their blog post, they’re helping indie developers soft launch like the big guns.

    After all, this is exactly what the Supercells and the Kings of this world are doing, taking their games and testing them out in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Ireland, finding out how they perform, and then refining – or even canning – them as they fit.

    A huge focus on analytics won’t turn a bad game good, but there’s at least a little special sauce in Game Analytics’ publishing program.

    What do you think about the program? Hit me up on Twitter.