Analytics- Important for indie devs? Thread

I read an article recently arguing that analytics are important for indie devs. While some of the stuff it argued for made sense, such as using playtesting to identify problems with balance and level design, others seemed to be a bit much, such as using analytics to identify target audiences, finding out what they like, and steering the game in that direction.

I was under the assumption that the rise of indie games was due partly to indies stepping away from target markets, demographics, and the like? Aren't AAA games are a mass of design-by-committee focus-tested sludge because they rely on that kind of data to decide the direction of a project? Fuse was a great example of how a focus testing can kill a promising idea.

On the other hand, I can understand being torn on certain decisions, and the appeal of having a helping hand on the wheel that is backed by data, and not just some guy's opinion.

Was reluctant to say it, but some marketing effort can actually benefit indies. Yes, being indie (truly indie, not fake indie like those bigger upstart companies popping up everywhere and claiming to be indy) means you want to be independent from all that pointless AAA crap and just make what you want to make, yet in the long run, if you are serious about professional game development, then you still got to have some kind of plan and that would include some analytics/market/audience digging. However, because indie games are mostly experimental, it is much harder to just use any data collected by others. Following pioneers and eating crumbs may not turn out to be a good idea either. In the end it would defeat the point. So? Analysing markets and audiences may only help in very few cases and should not be deemed important by indies that prefer to stay fully indie.

I agree completely with feillyne, development is a delicate balance between a lot of things and marketing unfortunately is just another one of those things.