Make games players love

Making video games is hard. Making successful games is harder still.

It requires making a game that players understand and enjoy, in order to achieve commercial or critical success – and to ensure players are experiencing the game as intended.

But traditional playtesting methods are ineffective. They rely too much on what players say, which we all know is different from what players actually do. The conclusions seem vague and obvious, and usually come much too late in development to have an impact.

This means playtesting is never a development priority, and gets forgotten – and games launch with significant player experience issues unresolved. This leads to poor reviews, upset players and ultimately a failed game.

Most games fail to reach their potential.

A new way of playtesting

UX and player-centred development has exploded in popularity in the last decade, as professionals apply scientific approaches to run reliable and robust playtests – focused on objective behaviour rather than subjective feedback.

Games user research has become recognised as essential to de-risk game development. Understanding players, and focusing on their behaviour will ensure that your game is understood, enjoyed and that you’ve created a fun experience for players.

Three principles of this new approach are:

1. Reliable, behavioural based methods – focusing on player’s actual behaviour, rather than subjective opinions.
2. Data at the right time – Applying lean methodologies to make gathering player data efficient, unlocking iterative development.
3. A collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach – understanding the player experience makes everyone better at their job. Our approach is open and collaborative, and empowers every game developer to gather and use player data themselves.

This isn’t focus groups, or ‘market research’ – it’s a new approach of running professional quality UX studies to generate player data that game developers can trust and take action on.

There’s a reason why top game studios now invest millions of dollars each year into games user research.

The home of games user research

I’m Steve Bromley – a recognised games user research expert, who has worked on many bestselling games.

I want to make games user research, and better playtesting, accessible to everyone who makes games.

My monthly newsletters are read by UX researchers & designers at AAA game companies, solo game designers, and thousands of world-class researchers, designers, community managers, producers, game developers, academics, students, and more. Why? Because it is the authority on games user research.

Whether you are looking to do this as a career, or just need to run a better playtest, I will ensure you can use scientific methods to run reliable and rigorous playtests, and make games that players love.

Pick from the options below to get started.