What events should you track first in your game analytics? A starter guide by KPI, platform, and genre

Once your SDK is installed, the next question is always the same: what should we actually track?

The right answer is not “everything.” The right answer is “the events that explain your primary KPI.” GameAnalytics supports several core event types, including design, progression, business, resource, ad, and error events, and each one maps to different product questions. If you anchor your starter taxonomy to a KPI, your implementation stays manageable, and your reporting becomes immediately more useful.

Start with the KPI, not the event menu

If your north-star goal is retention, you need events that explain whether players come back and what first-session actions predict return. If your goal is monetization, you need events around store exposure, item views, purchase attempts, business events, and soft-currency flows. If your goal is progression, you need structured progression events and funnel steps that show where players start, fail, and complete content. GameAnalytics’ event model supports all three, but the implementation emphasis should differ depending on what you are trying to improve first.

If your KPI is retention

Retention questions usually sound like this: do players come back after the first session, and what did they do before deciding to return or churn?

For retention-focused teams, the first events to track should be:

• first session start
• tutorial or onboarding step completion
• first core action
• first session end
• progression start / fail / complete for the first playable unit
• meaningful design milestones like loadout choice, squad creation, first social interaction, or first match result

This is especially important because GameAnalytics retention tooling is not limited to install-based return behavior. Our docs explicitly frame retention as the ability to understand return after a specific action, not just after install. That means your early event planning should capture the actions that might predict return, not just the existence of a session.

In genres like puzzle, hypercasual, action, or Roblox social/UGC experiences, retention often depends on whether the player reaches the first “aha” moment quickly. That is why onboarding and first-session milestones usually matter more at the start than deep late-game event trees.

If your KPI is monetization

Monetization-focused analytics starts with clarity around real-money purchases, soft-currency generation and spending, and ad behavior.

GameAnalytics business events are used for real-money purchases and support server-side receipt validation. Resource events track the flow of virtual currencies, including sinks and sources. Ad events capture interaction with ads, and the A/B testing and live-ops tooling can later connect monetization changes to outcomes such as ARPU, ARPPU, conversion rate, or purchaser rate.

A strong starter monetization event set usually includes:

• store opened
• offer viewed
• offer clicked
• purchase started
• purchase succeeded
• business event
• resource source event for granted currency
• resource sink event for spend
• rewarded ad offered / viewed / completed if ads are part of the model

On Roblox, there is a useful twist: business events use Robux amounts, and the Roblox SDK can automatically convert the specified amount into the format expected by GameAnalytics servers. The SDK can also automatically send business events for developer products and in-game game pass purchases when configured to do so. For Roblox developers, that means your first monetization setup should include both purchase tracking and the surrounding design events that explain intent, for example, what store context, upgrade prompt, or progression gate triggered the purchase.

If your KPI is progression

Progression events are ideal when the biggest question is whether players are successfully moving through content. GameAnalytics defines progression events as tracking a player’s journey through structured gameplay such as worlds, levels, missions, and quests, and explicitly notes that they are ideal for funnel views, completion rates, and drop-off analysis.

A basic progression starter taxonomy usually includes:

• progression start
• progression fail
• progression complete
• score or completion value where relevant
• checkpoint reached
• boss or milestone reached
• retry triggered
• quit or return-to-menu after fail

The exact structure should change by genre. In level-based mobile games, a world-stage-level hierarchy is often right. In a roguelike, run-floor-room or biome-wave-room may be more useful. In PvP or session-based experiences, the progression layer may be “matchmaking → match start → objective reached → win/loss.” On Roblox, where engagement and session quality often matter more than classic long-tail campaign progression, the equivalent could be “join → tutorial complete → first interaction → first reward → first repeat loop.”

Best starter event taxonomy for most developers

If you want the shortest practical answer, most teams should begin with five buckets:

1. session and lifecycle
2. onboarding milestones
3. core gameplay loop
4. monetization touchpoints
5. errors / technical issues

Inside those buckets, your first pass should stay intentionally small. A lean taxonomy beats a noisy one. The goal is to answer:

• where do users drop off
• where do they succeed
• what do they repeat
• what do they buy
• what breaks

What data to track in Roblox game

For a first Roblox experience, I would usually prioritize:

• join / session start
• avatar or spawn completed
• tutorial step completed
• first core interaction
• first reward claimed
• first progression completion
• first store view
• first purchase or purchase prompt accepted
• first session end
• one or two custom design events that represent your game’s unique hook

That gives you enough signal to answer the most important Roblox question: are new players understanding the experience quickly enough to stay engaged? Then you can layer in resource and business events to understand economy and monetization.

How to instrument onboarding, progression, and monetization together

A mistake many teams make is tracking these as separate systems. In reality, they are one journey.

A good first analytics map is:

• onboarding: tutorial_started, tutorial_step_completed, tutorial_completed
• progression: level_start, level_fail, level_complete
• monetization: store_opened, offer_viewed, purchase_started, purchase_completed, business_event
• economy: currency_source, currency_sink
• confidence layer: error_event for failed purchase flow or broken progression blockers

This structure makes it much easier to build funnels that show not only where players stop, but what happened immediately before they stopped. Funnels in GameAnalytics are meant exactly for that: visualizing multi-step conversion and drop-off across progression, tutorials, IAPs, ad watches, and more.

Why your events are not showing up

If you have installed the SDK and still do not see events, the first troubleshooting step is not to add more events. It is to validate the plumbing.

GameAnalytics recommends using SDK logs and Realtime for implementation checks. Realtime surfaces player-event activity in near real time and is explicitly useful for validating integrations. On Roblox, the docs say to enable the Info Log and remember that testing in Roblox Studio uses the sandbox API rather than live production. On other SDKs such as JavaScript and Flutter, the docs recommend enabling verbose logging, firing a known event, and checking Realtime after a short delay.

In practice, missing events usually come down to one of these:

• wrong credentials
• event validation failure
• testing in the wrong environment
• not waiting for the short processing delay
• only defining events conceptually without actually calling them in code
• expecting automatic coverage for events that require manual implementation, such as business or progression events

The fix is usually simple: reduce the setup to one known event, confirm it in logs, confirm it in Realtime, then add the next layer of your taxonomy.

FAQ: Choosing your first game events

What events should a game track first?
Most teams should start with a small set of events tied to their main KPI. A practical starter set usually includes session and lifecycle events, onboarding milestones, core gameplay loop events, monetization touchpoints, and error tracking. GameAnalytics supports design, progression, business, resource, ad, and error events to cover those needs.

Should I start with retention, monetization, or progression events?
Start with the KPI that matters most to your current stage. If your goal is retention, focus on onboarding, first-session actions, and return behavior. If your goal is monetization, focus on business, resource, and store interaction events. If your goal is progression, use progression and funnel-aligned event structures.

What is the best starter event taxonomy for a new game?
A strong starter taxonomy is usually small and structured around outcomes: what players start, what they finish, what they buy, what they repeat, and what breaks. The most useful beginner mistake to avoid is creating too many unique event names too early. Roblox docs specifically warn against generating excessive event hierarchy combinations.

What should I track in my first Roblox game?
A practical first Roblox event set includes session start, spawn completed, tutorial completion, first core interaction, first reward, first progression completion, first store view, first purchase or purchase prompt interaction, and session end. Roblox also supports automatic business-event sending for some purchase types when configured to do so.

How do I instrument onboarding, progression, and monetization together?
Treat them as one player journey, not three separate systems. A clean setup connects onboarding milestones, progression events, monetization interactions, resource flows, and error events so you can build meaningful funnels and understand where players drop off. GameAnalytics Funnels are designed for step-by-step conversion and progression analysis.

Why are my events not showing up in analytics?
Usually because of one of a few issues: wrong credentials, validation failures, testing in the wrong environment, not waiting for the short processing delay, or not actually calling the event in code. GameAnalytics recommends using SDK logs and Realtime to validate the setup. Roblox Studio testing also routes through sandbox, not live production.

Are business and progression events automatic?
Not always. Some event types need to be manually implemented. Roblox has some automation options for business events, but in general you should assume key gameplay, progression, and monetization events need intentional instrumentation.

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