Expert Playtesting For game studios & publishers
Understand what’s working, where players struggle and prioritise where to focus development effort next.
We run lab-based and remote playtests with players who match your intended audience.
Every playtest is personally led by Steve Bromley, from the initial design through to findings your team can act on.
Experience across leading game studios and publishers
Bringing together in-house research experience at PlayStation and independent playtesting for studios and publishers.
An essential part of plotting our course towards launch
Player insight for the decisions ahead
Whether you’re exploring a new concept, preparing a milestone build or refining a game before launch, we help you answer the questions that matter:
Is the core experience working?
Understand whether players discover and enjoy what makes your game distinctive.
Where do players get stuck?
Identify barriers to understanding, progression and enjoyment.
What should we prioritise?
Understand which issues most disrupt the intended experience.
Have our changes helped?
Build confidence that design changes have addressed the biggest issues for your game.
We work with publishers and developers to identify the most important questions your team needs to answer and design a research approach that fits your game, build and decisions.
Our signature milestone playtest
Reach your next milestone with confidence
Designed to bring publishers and developers together around clear player evidence and practical priorities.
Our milestone playtests are planned around your production schedule, with live observation, daily debriefs, key findings within 24 hours of testing ending and a full report. An optional action workshop helps your team agree what follows.
A research partner who understands your game
Work directly with a leading researcher
Steve Bromley personally leads each engagement, bringing more than 15 years of games user research experience. Trusted research, recruitment and lab partners support delivery where needed.
Test with your intended players
We focus on bespoke recruitment, and carefully screen participants gaming history, so the study genuinely reflects the audience you’re trying to reach.
Plan around production realities
We align on the scope, build requirements and timing with your team, targeting findings on the decisions you can still influence.
Choose the right testing environment
Secure labs support one-to-one and multi-seat studies, including multiplayer sessions. Remote testing is available where it suits your research needs.
From uncertainty to clear direction
1. Understand your development priorities
We discuss your game, intended audience, development stage and upcoming decisions, then propose a study with a clear scope and quote.
2. We organise and run the playtest
We handle study planning, participant recruitment and research delivery. Your team can observe players directly throughout.
3. Use the findings to move forward
Receive clear findings, supporting evidence and an action-focused debrief to help your team understand the implications for development.
An essential part of plotting our course towards launch
SEGA Europe have partnered with Steve on a number of different projects where our core questions have centred on getting a deep understanding of player experience and expectation. Despite the variety in genre and audiences, Steve brings a level of expertise across all projects that is invaluable.
These in-lab playtests are an essential part of plotting our course towards launch, and Steve’s synthesis of insights along with his presentation within workshop-style debriefs have led to an actionable output for our studio teams to move forward with
validate key features before moving into production
I’ve done several multi-seat tests with Steve over the years, across different types of projects, from PlayStation to CI Games, and they have invariably produced very useful results.
A key ingredient, in my opinion, is Steve’s willingness to dig into the project and understand the game’s direction and needs, extracting key insights from the players. This was even more valuable in the earlier stages of development, when those insights allowed us to uncover issues that would likely have surfaced later down the line, as well as validate key features before moving into production.
Vital to us improving our game
I was fortunate enough to be able to work with Steve on our project and he was incredibly professional through two sets of playtests. His approach and engagement from helping us put together the questionnaires to organising the playtests, through conducting them, being on hand for support and hosting the discussions is first class. Between him and Emma, the playtests went smoothly and we got some great information and data back.
It was an absolute joy to watch Steve hosting the post-playtest discussions with players as he is able to work the group, pull on threads, make everyone feel included and get to the core of what each individual was saying. I have never seen someone do this as well as Steve and our team watched in awe as he conducted the room in the most inclusive and attentive way. Everyone felt heard and listened to and even the quietest in the group spoke up under Steve’s encouragement.
The final reports we received were well put together and considered and have been vital to us improving our game. I recommend Steve and Emma to any team looking for playtests and player insights to improve their games.
fast, actionable insights to help us develop a strategy
When we approached our game’s positioning, we had several gameplay features we could focus on, but we needed to figure out how significant each was to the player. We sat down and discussed the problem with Steve, who devised a plan. The result was a series of in-depth player interviews that delivered fast, actionable insights to help us develop a strategy, putting the most compelling game elements at the centre of our campaign.
produced strong insights
Steve is an absolute professional. Working with him was a great experience from start to finish.
He brings positive energy to every conversation and delivers real results. The user test he ran for us produced strong insights, and everything was delivered on time with personalized & thoughtful support. As a small team, his responsiveness and efficiency made a huge difference.
I’d confidently recommend working with him, no matter the size of your company.
Allowed us to move forward with confidence
Steve supported us in conducting research for one of our competitive studies across our portfolio. Working with him has been an absolute pleasure.
He was able to take on most of the work independently, based on the briefs we provided, and was extremely thorough throughout both the study design and execution. His support took a significant load off the team’s shoulders and allowed us to move forward with confidence.
In addition to the excellent work he delivered, we also greatly appreciated the mentoring and perspective he brought to the team. During one of our on-sites, we invited Steve to share his point of view on how the industry has evolved over the many years he has been active in it. Hearing his stories, experiences, and reflections as such a seasoned researcher was highly valuable and very much appreciated by our research team.
We would gladly work with Steve again at any time and highly recommend him.
Confident in the direction we needed to take
We asked Steve to consult on the state and structure of our User Research team at Paradox Interactive. He was warm and wise in providing insights into what ways would best help accommodate our developers. He pointed us in the right direction to focus on improving our craft. Steve was extremely timely and available for us whenever we needed a consultation. We felt more confident in the direction we needed to take to improve the user research work at Paradox Interactive.
I encourage anyone, no matter their position, to seek for Steve’s guidance in bring the player perspective to game development.
improved overall quality and player comprehension
We approached Steve in the middle of our dev cycle to validate our controls and difficulty on a platform that we were unfamiliar with.
Working with Steve was incredibly easy and very useful, watching the testing and reading the breakdown gave us great insight into how players were reacting and what they were learning. This led us to make great strives, improving overall quality and player comprehension.
shaped our future roadmap
Steve ran a study for one of our games to understand the impact that usability and accessibility issues were having on our players. Steve’s work was excellent.
He made a huge positive impression with our team and helped shape our future roadmap for game improvements.
Steve’s support throughout the whole project was amazing and we’re looking forward to possible future collaborations
Introducing Steve Bromley
I am an experienced user researcher, specialising in games user research and building new user research teams.
I work with publishers, platforms and studios of all sizes from indies to AAA to run playtests, and integrate user research into the game development process. I’ve spent over 25,000 hours with players!
Prior to this I was a senior user researcher for PlayStation and worked on many of their top European titles, including Horizon Zero Dawn, SingStar, the LittleBigPlanet series and the PlayStation VR lineup.
Building your own research capability?
We also help studios and publishers establish research processes, plan their research programme and develop their team’s skills.
Learn more about research consultancy & training
Looking to learn games user research?
Explore our guides, books, courses and career resources in the learning section.
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