Do I need both synthetic and real-user monitoring?

For games, real-user monitoring is essential and often the priority, because it captures the real device and condition diversity you could never script, surfacing the crashes and performance issues players actually experience. Synthetic monitoring complements it by proactively verifying specific critical paths (like login or server health) in controlled conditions, catching issues before users hit them. They're complementary: use RUM to see the real experience and synthetic to proactively guard known critical paths.

Why is real-user monitoring important for games?

Because games run across enormous device and condition diversity, thousands of hardware configurations, OS versions, and situations, that you can't replicate in scripted synthetic tests. Real-user monitoring captures crashes and performance from actual players in those real conditions, surfacing the device-specific issues and real-world problems synthetic tests miss. For games, this real-world coverage is essential, which is why RUM (automatic crash and performance capture from real players) is the foundation, complemented by synthetic monitoring for proactively checking known critical paths.

Synthetic vs Real-User Monitoring

Quick answer: Synthetic monitoring runs scripted tests in controlled conditions to check behavior proactively; real-user monitoring captures data from actual players in the field. Synthetic catches issues before users; RUM reflects real conditions.

Synthetic and real-user monitoring are two approaches to watching your game's health, scripted tests versus real player data, and they catch different things. Knowing the difference helps you cover both. Here's the comparison.

What Synthetic Monitoring Is

Synthetic monitoring runs scripted, automated tests in controlled conditions, simulating actions to check that things work, proactively and on a schedule. Its strength is catching issues before real users hit them: a synthetic test of a critical path can detect a problem even when no player is currently using it, and it tests consistently.

Synthetic monitoring is good for verifying specific known paths (is the login flow working, is the server responding) continuously and proactively. Its weakness is that it only tests what you scripted, in controlled conditions, so it misses the real-world diversity and unexpected conditions actual players encounter.

What Real-User Monitoring Is

Real-user monitoring (RUM) captures data from actual players in the field, real crashes, real performance, on real devices and conditions. Its strength is reality: it reflects what players actually experience, across the full diversity of hardware and situations you could never script, surfacing issues synthetic tests miss.

Bugnet is real-user monitoring: it captures crashes and performance from real players with context. RUM's weakness is that it's reactive, it sees problems as players hit them, not before. But it captures the real, diverse conditions that synthetic monitoring's controlled tests can't replicate, which is essential for games.

Why You Use Both

They're complementary: synthetic monitoring proactively tests specific known paths in controlled conditions (catching issues before users), while real-user monitoring captures the real, diverse experience of actual players (catching what scripts miss). Synthetic tells you if known critical paths work; RUM tells you what's actually happening to players.

For games especially, real-user monitoring is essential because of the device and condition diversity you can't script, while synthetic can proactively guard critical paths. Bugnet provides the real-user side, crashes and performance from real players. So use both: synthetic to proactively verify critical paths, and real-user monitoring to see the real, diverse experience, since together they cover both the known and the unexpected.

Synthetic monitoring runs scripted tests in controlled conditions (proactive, catches issues before users, but only tests what you scripted); real-user monitoring captures real players' data in the field (reflects real conditions and devices). Complementary, use both.