Why Indie Game Studios Need Advanced Analytics As Much As AAA Developers

There’s no denying that indie game studios can be unforgiving places. You’re limited on resources, you don’t have all the funding in the world, and you have a small team of people wearing many different hats. 

And yet, you put all that hard work into your game and guess what…it got negative reviews (at least a few). And you don’t know even know why.

And even if they liked your title, you have no idea what they liked about it. But those days are over.

Indie game studios: The current climate

In the indie game dev world, every decision is absolutely critical. This is especially true when you consider the oversaturation of games today. 

In 2024, close to 19,000 games were launched on Steam.

And yet, AAA titles Fortnite and Call of Duty dominated a whopping 92% of playtime.

Small game studios notoriously work under tighter deadlines and budgets. 

Up until this point, they are forced to collect a ton of data and find whatever traditional tools they can afford to understand their players’ behavior. 

Why are they churning? Why are they paying here? And this is certainly the case in free-to-play games.

Not finding accurate answers to player behavior makes indie game studios suffer. They are forced to make layoffs, and ultimately close down. 

Why small studios can’t afford to ignore analytics

Indie game developers typically have much smaller player bases than AAA developers (normally in the thousands). Even then, it’s crucial to be able to spot if just a handful of players are churning at certain points. That can still indicate major game issues.

Whether you’re an indie game developer or any other kind, the early stages of your product’s lifecycle are essential.

Let’s say you are in the pre-release stage. You have to dive deep into your beta testers’ data. In reality, though, beta testers are not so responsive to qualitative feedback tools like surveys and polls. 

And even if they do, these tools aren’t likely to capture any substantial, actionable insights. That’s where advanced analytics tools come in…

The power of granular data and AI for small game studios

The idea that only large, AAA developers benefit from zooming in on all their player data is an absolute lie. 

To give their titles the best chance of success, indie game studios can’t just work on aggregations or assumptions. They need to scan all their user behavior. This means having access to every single event at any time.

No tool has been designed to track every single button press…until now. The latest line of AI-driven analytics solutions, like Keewano, can answer questions that developers maybe didn’t even consider asking before.

And while AI and analytics tools might sound intimidating, they don’t need to be. Indie game studios should have the same oversight of their player data as any AAA developer.

Keewano automates insights, making them accessible even for smaller teams. 

It’s basically like having thousands of game analysts at your disposal, constantly making hypotheses, testing, and providing conclusions.

Real-life example

We previously hinted at the issue of not understanding player reviews.

One player might give your title five stars, even though your game has tons of performance issues. Another player might give you one star, but (basically) everything’s working just fine. It can go either way.

Keewano’s AI analytics agent can read the reviews, summarize them, and find correlations between data to pinpoint recurring issues.

Doesn’t it take ages to implement these tools?

Historically, yes. Analytics tools can be notoriously expensive, complicated, and time-consuming to implement, especially for indie game studios. 

But not Keewano. Its implementation time, along with its SDK, is very low. It is designed to be accessible to all teams and company sizes. 

Therefore, both indie game and AAA developers alike can easily install Keewano pretty quickly, regardless of their indie game’s complexity.

Advanced analytics are a necessity for all studios

While AAA developers use advanced AI analytics tools to scale, indie game studios actually need them to survive. 

The idea is simple. Anyone, from designers to testers and engineers, regardless of technical expertise, should have instant access to the information they need to improve their game. 

That’s why Keewano’s so powerful. Due to its simple implementation, ease of use, and ability to automate game analytics, this AI analytics agent helps indie game studios get the accurate insights they need to get over their biggest challenges…and grow.