I posted about this a while ago but my blog was a lot less popular back then so I’d like to post it again as a better guide.

I don’t think many people know (don’t even know if google knows honestly), but with some work arounds, it’s possible to automatically submit data to google docs without the player even knowing (though letting the player know is probably a good idea). This can be used to track data, for balancing or testing purposes.

To start, go into Google Forms create a form with the data you’d like to collect.

As the player will (or should) never see this info, it doesn’t have to look nice or anything. From this, create a pre-filled link, again, it doesnt need to look nice.

To make things easier, its better to make the pre-filled replies something like “ANSWER_1″, again the player will never see this so it doesn’t really matter, this info will be taken out anyways.

Upon clicking “submit” you’ll get a link to the pre-filled form.

This link though, still brings the player to the form. The trick, and the reason why this works at all, is it is possible to get around this by tinkering with the link. Change viewform? to formResponse?. This changes the link from a form to a successful submission link, which bypasses the form altogether and automatically submits it.

From this point, based on whatever way you’re developing your game, you just need to replace ANSWER_1 with the data being sent, sending an http get request to this link will submit the data replaced without the player ever knowing.

I hope this is helpful, this is what I’m using right now and It’s pretty helpful for gauging whether or not changes are working as intended. Google forms even gives you the ability to send the information to a google sheets page, which is even more useful for grabbing averages.