DOJO Madness, an esports technology company based in Germany, has unveiled its next tool for the industry—Shadow.gg—a Counter-Strike analytics platform that its creators claim will cause a significant leap in how esports professionals currently approach preparing for a match by giving fast and easy access to a large number of in-game statistics for any match in the platform’s library.

According to DOJO Madness’ CEO, Jens Hilgers, many esports professionals are still recording in-game statistics using pen and paper.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Shadow.GG pushes Esports analytics further and enables professional teams and coaches to become much more effective and data driven. Esports should not be lagging behind traditional sports tech.”[/perfectpullquote]

That’s exactly where Shadow.gg steps in. Shadow.gg is essentially a library of professional matches with full statistics. Unlike other sites and wikis with statistics, Shadow.gg has a proprietary replay parser that timestamps and locates every single event, giving users details they’d have to actually load up the replay to access, let alone record. It will also generate a 2D tactical replay that lets you quickly see any match in the platform’s library.

The platform also features heatmaps that can be generated for individual teams, allowing analysts a chance to get a general sense of how any specific team approaches a map.

Data in any sport can be a deadly tool if used right. Teams with access to Shadow.gg could realistically build counter-strategies to abuse player tendencies in a much faster amount of time than replays currently require. There’s no way to know exactly what an opponent will do—but being able to make an educated guess is a substantial part of any competition, and Shadow.gg is aimed at giving analysts data to make those guesses.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Shadow.GG is one of the most important tools in a CS:GO team’s arsenal. The added scouting efficiency ensures that our players can maximize the time they spend in the server. We look forward to working with the DOJO Madness team to further improve Shadow.GG’s competitive analysis capabilities,” says Noah Winston, CEO of Immortals, one of two teams that have been using the platform’s beta, along with G2 Esports. The tool is “one of the most important” tools in Immortals’ arsenal.[/perfectpullquote]

Next up for the Shadow.gg team is enhancing the tool, along with making inroads into providing similar statistics for other games. With League of Legends’ replay system on its way, I’d imagine that’s a likely target for the next phase.

Note: The CEO of DOJO Madness, Jens Hilgers, is also a founding partner of BITKRAFT Esports Ventures, an investment company that provided seed funding for The Esports Observer. Additionally, the author of this piece worked on a team with several current DOJO Madness employees to develop an early iteration of Shadow.gg prior to that team’s acquisition by DOJO Madness.