QuestMetrics

Drop-in revenue and retention analytics for indie game and gaming-marketplace apps, showing cohort churn and monetization benchmarks against peers. · Gaming Analytics Platform

DEAD SLOW · CAUTIOUS

5.8 ShipScore / 10

Strongest: productized time-detachment. Weakest: entry — free GameAnalytics-class tools everywhere.

Condition: Ten indie or marketplace studios pay $49+/mo for peer benchmarks free tools cannot show.

Part I — The Verdict what the instruments read

01 — The ShipScore breakdown

Control

C6 — own SDK and data, but store/ATT reporting APIs constrain revenue pulls

Entry barriers

E4 — SDK analytics is cloneable; no tracked incumbent proven strengthening

Need

N5 — only $13k/$3k tracked MRR; indie devs default to free tools

Time-freedom

T8 — self-serve SDK plus dashboards, no per-customer manual labor

Scale

S6 — global dev audience but indie ARPU thin, benchmarks need volume

What the five commandments measure

C — Control	Do you own the customer, or does a gatekeeper stand between you and revenue?
E — Entry	How hard is this to copy once it works? A rival's existence isn't the question — the durability of their advantage is.
N — Need	Is demand proven with money rather than vibes?
T — Time	Can income detach from your hours, or did you buy yourself a job?
S — Scale	How far does it reach without linear cost?

Scored on the evidence below, against CENTS as we've adapted it plus a Buffett-style moat reading of every rival — the same referee for every idea, including the ones we generate ourselves. The verdict follows the arithmetic: we never relabel a score to make it read better, and the weakest commandment is always named. The exact rubric stays in-house so the scale can't be written for.

02 — The pace test — $1M/yr

At $49/mo (assumed category price), you need 1,701 subscribers for a $1M/yr pace.

Nearest tracked rivals on that curve:

Glamour

$13k 16%

Apogee

$3k 4%

Part II — The Evidence the receipts, good and bad

03 — Rival scan — corpus tracks 2 similar

Glamour	verified MRR $13k (trustmrr)
Apogee	verified MRR $3k (trustmrr)

Glamour — Highest verified MRR ($13k) in the tracked adjacent set — proves paid traction exists nearby.
Apogee — $3k verified MRR shows a functioning but small paid niche you'd split.
Gamstat — X chatter praises its retention/cohort UI and data depth — already owns the benchmark narrative.

04 — Demand evidence

Corpus verifies paid spend: Glamour $13k MRR, Apogee $3k MRR.
Only 2 similar products tracked; 0 with verified revenue stall under $2k MRR.
X shows repeated reliance on Amplitude/Mixpanel for cohort analysis — existing analytics budget behavior.
Reddit signals: none found — direct indie-dev pain for this exact product is unproven.

05 — Risks

Indie devs are the lowest-WTP buyer segment; free GameAnalytics/Unity tooling anchors price at zero.
Peer benchmarks are worthless until enough studios integrate — hard cold-start.
Carbon Arc and Gamstat already publishing cross-title revenue/retention data.
Store and privacy policy shifts (ATT-style) can gut monetization attribution.

06 — Kill switches — what kills this with one decision

App Store / Google Play / Steam reporting API access — Losing revenue-data access removes the monetization half of the product.
Platform privacy rules on device/player identifiers — Cohort tracking breaks, churn analytics lose fidelity overnight.
Unity or GameAnalytics shipping free peer benchmarks — Your only differentiator becomes a bundled default feature.

Part III — The Plan if you insist on proceeding

07 — What this scan can't tell you

Cannot confirm Glamour or Apogee actually serve game studios versus adjacent niches.
No data on indie-dev price ceilings or churn for analytics subscriptions.
Unknown whether enough studios would consent to pooled benchmark data sharing.

Scores judge the market and business model — not your ability to execute. Verified MRR = independently tracked revenue; reviews/upvotes = platform-reported. Judged 2026-08-11.

08 — The wedge & the next step

Pooled cross-studio benchmarks — churn and ARPPU percentiles no single-tenant analytics tool can show.

Cheapest next step: Hand-build one free benchmark report from public data and pitch it to 20 indie studios for paid preorders.

Not quite it? Spin the model

Business-model variations of this idea, engineered to beat 5.8 — different vertical, audience, model, or wedge. Same harsh scale. Pro feature.

One evidence-backed gap a day, free

Close — but conditional. Every morning the engine files one mined gap, scored on the same harsh scale as this one. Free at 7am AEST, unedited.

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Monitor this idea

Weekly re-scan against the live corpus. If the market moves this ShipScore by a point, or flips the verdict, you hear about it. Free while we're small.