Moderate your first Live playtest The first time I sat down for a live playtest, I was petrified. I was unsure how to build rapport, when ... »
When to use moderated and unmoderated research PlaytestCloud has recently added moderated tests to its toolkit, in addition to traditional unmoderated research. However developers I speak to are often unsure which is appropriate for them, or how best to use them to test their games. ... »
Analyzing player interviews - Making sense of the data Playtests generate a lot of data. From interviews alone, you may have hours of players' thoughts and opinions to wade through. This can feel overwhelming, and it’s easy to get bogged down. How do we make sense of that, and work out what really matters? ... »
Running great player interviews - Making the most of your time with players Running interviews as part of your playtesting can offer a direct view into what is happening in players’ brains. This allows us to diagnose exactly what they are thinking, and understand the behavior we see in games - helping us make good game design decisions. ... »
Overcome the fear - preparing for your first player interview How to be confident that you’re deploying interviews at the right time, ensure you’ll learn useful things to improve your game, and remove the risk of catastrophic failures during your interviews. ... »
Screener Surveys: Design surveys to find reliable playtesters While they may seem straightforward, player recruitment surveys are actually very easy to get wrong. This article has one objective: giving you the tips and resources to design your next screener that will get results you can rely on. ... »
Building Better Playtests in 6 Steps Elie Mouraud and Steve Bromley write about the best ways to playtest—and the mistakes to avoid when you’re just starting out. ... »
User Research Throughout the Game Development Process As the prominence of user research in the tech industry continues to rise, more and more game development companies are looking ... »
Steps to Research Goal Alignment Learn all you need to know on how to effectively communicate and design your user research for the development team. ... »
Cue-Behavior-Understanding: A Tool for End to End Evaluative Games User Research Game user researchers often talk about the importance of measuring design intent. What does this actually mean, though? Simply put, the ... »
Cross-Functional Collaboration in Games User Research The ability to deliver great user research within an organization is a team effort. Finding allies of support beyond the research discipline will elevate a good practice to an outstanding one. ... »
Learning Plans for Games User Research Roadmaps The first time I had to put together a research plan to thus inform a year’s worth of budgeting was ... »