User Journeys
See the most common paths players take before, after and between the events you care about, drawn as a flow chart.
A user journey shows what players actually do around an event: the most common paths that lead to it, and what they do next. Pick an event, say a player's first purchase, and Gamebeast maps the events before and after it, so you find the routes you never designed, the detours, and the points where players drop off.
Journeys are built from the markers your experience already sends, so you can explore any period you have data for without adding new events.
Journeys or funnels?
Use a funnel when you already know the steps and want a conversion rate: "how many players who start the tutorial finish it?". Use a journey when the question is open: "what do players do right after the tutorial?" or "how do players get to the shop?". A journey often shows you which funnel to build next.
Creating a journey
Open a dashboard, click Edit, then Add panel → Query, and select User Journeys from the query types at the top of the query setup.
A journey is built from one or more steps. Each step is an anchor event, plus how many events to show before and after it:
- Choose the anchor's event, such as
Purchase. - Set steps before and steps after: how many events to show on each side, from 0 to 5. A journey with a single anchor needs at least one step on one side.
- Optionally, add a filter to the anchor with the filter icon. It appears on the step's Where line.
The chart updates as you go. Steps count events, not time: "3 steps after" means the next three events each player sent, however far apart they were.
Which occurrence is the anchor?
Each player is counted once. The first anchor, A, is the player's first occurrence of that event in the time range that passes its filters. Everything before and after is read from that point in the player's own sequence of events.
Chaining steps
Click Add step to add another anchor, up to four (A, B, C and D). Each later anchor is the player's first occurrence of that event after the previous anchor, so a journey from QuestStarted to QuestCompleted follows each player from starting a quest to the next time they complete one. Using the same event twice (A = Login, B = Login) means "the next login".
- Each anchor has its own steps before and after. The events between two anchors are only shown once: the "before B" steps start where the "after A" steps end.
- Players who reach B within A's "after" steps show as a → B node in that column, and their path jumps straight to B.
- Players who never reach B count as Drop-off at B and in every column after it.
Drag a step by its grip to reorder the anchors. Remove one from its row's actions.
Reading the chart
The chart has one column per step. Column headers name the anchor and how far from it the column is: A Login is the anchor, A +1 the event right after it, B −2 two events before B.
- Each column shows its top 3 events by number of players. Everything else in the column is grouped as Other events.
- Ribbons show how players move from one column to the next. Their width is the number of players.
- Counts are unique players. Percentages are of the players at the first anchor, A.
- Hover a node or ribbon to see its players and share, and to highlight the paths through it.
Some nodes aren't events:
| Node | Means |
|---|---|
| Journey start | The player had no earlier event in the time range. A real share of players, not missing data. |
| Drop-off | The player sent no more events, or never reached the next anchor. |
| → B … | The player reached the next anchor inside this column and skipped ahead to it. |
| No other events | Between two anchors, the player had fewer events than the steps you asked for. |
| Other events | Any event outside the column's top 3. |
Every player who enters a node also leaves it, so each column adds up to the players at A (fewer only where some players jumped ahead to the next anchor).
Hiding noisy events
Frequent markers such as clicks, heartbeats or UI pings can fill every column and push the real steps out of view. Hide them, and the journey skips them as if they never happened: "3 steps after" with MouseClick hidden shows the next three events that aren't clicks.
- Everywhere: click Hide events at the bottom of the step builder.
- On one side of one anchor: hover a steps before or steps after line, open its ⋮ menu and choose Hide events. For example, hide
MouseClickbefore A but keep it after A.
Hidden events show as N hidden; click it to change them. Show all clears the list. Hiding never hides the anchors themselves, and doesn't change who is in the journey, only which events fill the columns.
Filters
Filters on a journey belong to the anchors, on each step's Where line. They never apply to the events around the anchors: the path always shows everything players did.
- A filter on A decides who is in the journey at all, such as "first purchase on iOS". It accepts argument, property and user filters.
- A filter on a later anchor decides which of that event's occurrences count as reaching it, such as "the next
PurchasewhereItemNameis Starter Pack". New User and First Occurrence only apply to A.
Journeys don't have global filters. Filters locked on a dashboard apply to anchor A.
Breakdowns
A breakdown splits the first anchor's bar into one bar per value, such as one per Country, and each value keeps its colour through the rest of the journey. Values are read from each player's anchor A event, so every player is in exactly one group. A journey shows the top 5 values; the rest are grouped as Other.
Click a value in the legend to hide or show its paths, or hover it to highlight them.
Refining a single step
To dig into one event at one point in the journey, right-click its node on the chart (any event except the anchors and Other events):
- Filter this step: keep only the occurrences that match, such as purchases of one item. The node becomes "Purchase (filtered)"; players whose event didn't match move to Other events in that column.
- Break down this step: split the node into one node per value of an argument or property, such as "Purchase · Starter Pack". The top 3 values get their own node; the rest are grouped as "Purchase · Other", and players with no value as "Purchase · (none)". Use the arrow on the group's header to collapse it back into one node, or × to remove the breakdown.
- Add as a step: make this event an anchor of its own, keeping any filter you gave it.
- Exclude from journey: hide this event everywhere in the journey.
- Clear this step: remove the step's filter and breakdown.
Only that one column changes: who is in the journey, the anchors and the other columns stay the same. A step's refinements are listed under the chart, where you can edit their filters and breakdowns. Reset steps removes them all. You can refine up to 10 steps per journey.
Right-click only works in the query builder. On a dashboard, a journey is view-only.
Saving and dashboards
Save a journey like any other query; see Saving a query. On a dashboard it shows as a chart you can hover and read but not edit; open it in the query builder to change it.
Tips
- Start with one anchor and 3 steps after it, then add steps before or a second anchor once you see what's there. Keep journeys to about 8 columns: longer ones get hard to read.
- If one event shows up in every column, hide it.
- Use the anchor's filter to pick the players you care about, and a step filter to ask about one specific event in the path.
- When you find a path worth tracking, build it as a funnel to measure its conversion over time.
With the assistant
Ask the assistant things like "what do players do after their first purchase?" or "how do players get from starting a quest to finishing it?". It builds the journey, shows the chart in the chat, and can open it in the query builder or add it to a dashboard. Agents connected over MCP can build, run and save journeys too.