Crash Reporting for Netflix Games

Netflix Games distributes mobile games through the Netflix app, included with a Netflix subscription, reaching the service vast and often casual audience on iOS and Android. These are mobile games at heart, subject to all the device fragmentation of mobile, but distributed through Netflix with its own integration and reaching a broad audience that may not be traditional gamers. Setting up crash reporting for a game on Netflix Games means capturing crashes with the full mobile device context, at the scale and breadth the Netflix audience brings, with the Netflix integration as an additional consideration.

Netflix Games is mobile distribution at scale

Games on Netflix Games are mobile games distributed through the Netflix app on iOS and Android, included with a Netflix subscription rather than purchased individually, which gives them access to Netflix enormous subscriber base. This means these games can reach a very broad audience, at scale, and an audience that is often casual, drawn from Netflix general subscribers rather than dedicated gamers, who may have different expectations and behaviors than a typical game audience.

Fundamentally, these are mobile games, subject to all the realities of mobile crash reporting, the device fragmentation, the memory constraints, the iOS and Android differences, but reaching a broader and more casual audience through Netflix distribution, and at the scale the subscriber base allows. Understanding that Netflix Games is mobile distribution at scale to a broad, casual audience frames the crash reporting: capture mobile crashes with the full device context, prepared for the breadth and scale the Netflix audience brings, with the Netflix integration as an additional layer.

Capture full mobile device context

Because Netflix Games are mobile games, capture the full mobile device context on every crash, the device model, OS version, available memory, and GPU, since these games face the same Android and iOS fragmentation as any mobile game, and crashes cluster by device and memory tier. The broad Netflix audience likely brings an even wider range of devices than a typical game, including many lower-end devices from casual players.

The device context is essential for the same reasons as any mobile game, to cluster crashes by hardware and identify the device-specific and memory-related failures, but the breadth of the Netflix audience makes it even more important, since you reach more device variety. Memory especially matters, since a broad casual audience includes many budget devices where out-of-memory crashes occur. Capturing the full mobile device context, as for any mobile game but with awareness of the extra device breadth the Netflix audience brings, is the foundation of Netflix Games crash reporting, letting you diagnose crashes across the wide device range.

Account for the Netflix integration

Games on Netflix Games integrate with the Netflix platform, launched through the Netflix app and tied to the Netflix account and subscription, and this integration is an additional layer that can be a crash source. The launch flow through the Netflix app, the account and entitlement handling, and any Netflix-specific integration can have issues, much like the store integration of any platform.

Capture context around the Netflix integration where relevant, the launch flow, any account or entitlement interaction, so integration-related crashes are identifiable as distinct from your core game crashes. A crash in the launch from the Netflix app or in the account handling is an integration issue, not a game-logic bug, and capturing the integration context lets you tell them apart. Accounting for the Netflix integration, capturing its context so integration crashes are distinguishable, covers the platform-specific layer of Netflix Games crash reporting, beyond the mobile game crashes that are the bulk.

Prepare for a broad, casual audience

The Netflix audience is broad and often casual, drawn from general subscribers rather than dedicated gamers, which has implications for crash reporting and the experience. A casual audience is even less likely to report bugs manually and more likely to simply stop playing if they hit a crash, which makes automatic crash capture essential, since you cannot rely on this audience to tell you about problems.

The broad, casual audience also means the scale can be large and the device variety wide, so your crash reporting must handle the volume and breadth, with deduplication into occurrence counts to manage the scale and the device context to handle the variety. Prepare for the broad casual audience by relying on automatic capture, since they will not report, and by being ready for the scale and device breadth the Netflix subscriber base brings. Preparing for the broad, casual audience, with automatic capture and scale-ready crash reporting, is what lets you support a Netflix Games title across the large, varied, casual audience the distribution reaches.

Setting it up with Bugnet

Bugnet captures crashes from your Netflix Games title with the full mobile device context, model, OS, memory, GPU, automatically, deduplicating them into occurrence counts to handle the scale of a broad audience, with custom fields for the Netflix integration context where relevant. Reports flow into one dashboard where you can see the crashes across the wide device range the Netflix audience brings.

Because the capture is automatic, you get crashes from the casual Netflix audience that will not report manually, and the deduplication and device context handle the scale and device breadth. For a game on Netflix Games, this mobile crash reporting, prepared for the breadth and scale of the Netflix audience and accounting for the Netflix integration, is what gives you the crash visibility to support the title across the large, varied, casual audience the distribution reaches, which automatic, scale-ready capture is essential for since the audience will not tell you about problems themselves.

Test the device range and the integration

Because Netflix Games reach a broad mobile audience, test across the mobile device range, especially the lower-end and budget devices a casual audience brings, since the memory and performance issues that affect casual players on modest hardware are where many crashes occur, as with any broad mobile game. Testing across the device range catches the device-specific issues before the wide audience hits them.

Test the Netflix integration too, the launch flow through the Netflix app and the account handling, since these integration points are platform-specific and can have issues that only appear in the real Netflix-distributed build. Pair the device-range and integration testing with your captured crash data, which surfaces the crashes across the full breadth of devices and the integration the broad audience exercises. Together they let you support a Netflix Games title across the wide, casual mobile audience the distribution reaches, with the device-fragmentation crashes and the integration issues kept under control at the scale the Netflix subscriber base brings.

Netflix Games are mobile games to a broad, casual audience at scale. Capture device context automatically, since they will not report.