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 you 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 priority, and gets forgotten – and games launch with significant player experience issues unresolved. Poor reviews, upset players and failed studios follow.

Most games fail to reach their potential.

A new way of making games

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 from ideation to launch.

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 player-centred approach are:

1. Reliable, behavioural based research methods – focusing on player’s actual behaviour, rather than subjective opinions.
2. Data at the right time – Applying lean methodologies from ideation to launch 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 product approach of running professional quality UX studies to generate player data that game developers can trust and inspire creativity.

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 thousands of world-class product leaders, researchers, designers, community managers, producers, game developers, academics, students, and more, from AAA studios to solo devs. Why? Because it is the authority on integrating player data into the game development process.

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 inspire creativity, and make games that players love.

Pick from the options below to get started.