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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Self-Publishing   >   Marketing   >   Is Scoreloop shooting to be the Google Analytics of the iPhone?

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Is Scoreloop shooting to be the Google Analytics of the iPhone?

By on July 23, 2009

I’ve been thinking about smartphone gaming is going to develop, and from a business perspective, I think it’s going to become like the web.

And that means analytics will be critical.

Any modern web company spends vast amounts of time, money and resources on its analytics. It’s not just about demographics (although that matters), but about usage patterns, conversion rates, A/B testing and so on. Analytics for web games, for social network games, for mobile games will become a crucial part of the marketing functioning of any successful games developer.

Will developers get it?

Developers are not by nature marketers. Historically they’ve left that to publishers. And so publishers have learned how to throw cool parties, pull clever PR stunts and generate launch hype.

In the new world of web marketing, these skills are much less necessary. Analytics, data-processing, understanding what resonates with users and what doesn’t – that’s much more important than PR fluff and sending envelopes of offal to Fleet Street.

AndI think that developers are in a better place to take advantage of this new world, since they are more comfortable with numbers and analysis than many marketing types. (Wild generalisation, I know, but still).

Where does Scoreloop fit in?

Scoreloop

Scoreloop is a German developer of tools for iPhone and iPod Touch. It was founded last year, raised seed funding from Germany’s Target Partners in December, and is now building out its product offering.

Scoreloop basically offers developers a suite of tools that they need to manage the connected parts of their game better: high scores, Facebook integration, personalised profiles and, of course, analytics.

I am not recommending the service: from a technical point of view I am not qualified. But I am saying that these kind of third-party applications, offering networking applications and analytics, will be a critical part of the success of any iPhone app.

So all developers should start preparing to be marketers, and gathering data. Scoreloop looks as if it might just be a good start.

(If anyone has experience with Scoreloop, please let us know how it worked out for you in the comments).

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com