Unity support

[haacked]

Copied from: PostHog/posthog#25705.

Feature request

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Currently, PostHog lacks native support for Unity game development, making it challenging for game developers to integrate PostHog's powerful analytics capabilities directly into their Unity projects. This gap limits the ability of game developers to easily track player behavior, analyze game performance, and make data-driven decisions to improve their games.

Describe the solution you'd like

I am proposing adding native Unity support to PostHog through the following steps:

• Develop a PostHog Unity SDK that seamlessly integrates with Unity projects.
• Create Unity-specific event tracking methods for common game events (e.g., level completion, in-app purchases, player deaths).
• Implement automatic collection of Unity-specific metadata (e.g., game version, device information, graphics settings).
• Provide Unity-friendly documentation and examples for easy integration.
• Add Unity-specific visualizations and dashboards in the PostHog UI for game analytics.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Using RudderStack as a middleman to send Unity data to PostHog [https://www.rudderstack.com/integration/posthog-analytics/integrate-your-unity-app-with-posthog-analytics/]. While this works, it adds complexity and an extra dependency.
• Implementing a custom solution using PostHog's API [https://posthog.com/docs/api].
• This requires more development effort from game developers and may lack Unity-specific optimizations.

Additional context

Unity is a widely used game development platform, and native support would open up PostHog to a large market of game developers.
This integration could include:

• Automatic tracking of common Unity events (e.g., scene loads, object instantiation).
• Unity Editor plugin for easy PostHog configuration.
• Performance optimizations to minimize impact on game frame rates.
• Support for offline event caching and batch sending to handle intermittent internet connections common in mobile games.

[haacked]

So here's what I think this entails:

1. New project PostHog.Unity which will be published as a new package of the same name.
2. PostHog.Unity would build on top of PostHog.csproj and target netstandard2.1.
3. New sample project in the samples directory. Ideally this would be a dirt simple Unity app/game so we can test out the native Unity support.

What does native Unity support entail? Here's some ideas from the original issue:

This integration could include:

• Automatic tracking of common Unity events (e.g., scene loads, object instantiation).
• Unity Editor plugin for easy PostHog configuration.
• Performance optimizations to minimize impact on game frame rates.
• Support for offline event caching and batch sending to handle intermittent internet connections common in mobile games.

[haacked]

Performance optimizations to minimize impact on game frame rates.

Note that as-written, PostHog does analytics capture synchronously. The actual processing of the events happens on a background timer. So the impact on game frame rates should be pretty minimal. However, with all things perf related, it would be good to do some profiling.

[marandaneto]

@haacked feel free to tag me for review, I've reviewed a couple of unity PRs in the past as well

[RishabhCSL]

I am good with unity and I am ready to help you with the same. Please feel free to ask anything related to unity

[madratzz]

@haacked I can also help with Unity PR reviews and anything Unity Related!

[haacked]

@RishabhCSL @madratzz - Probably the thing that would help the most is a PR that adds a sample Unity app in the samples directory with instructions on how to develop on it.

A sample app will enable me to test the PostHog client against a real Unity app and expose what issues we may have.

[Ananttah]

Could you please consider adding support for Session Replays as well for Unity mobile games?
I was looking to use Posthog for same but couldn't when I got to know about this limitation.