Run Games Research That Matters
Unlock confident studies from ideation to launch. Learn how to run the most effective playtests, improve the impact of your research studies, and influence crucial game development decisions.
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Stop Running Low Impact Research
Game development is a hectic environment – and it’s hard to cut through. Many research teams struggle to be heard, leading to…
- Game development colleagues who value their scrappy internal playtests over your research process
- Low trust in qualitative research, “how can we trust the opinions of just a few people”
- Push back and hostility to your research findings.
- Or worse… being left out of the conversation entirely.
Ultimately, your research studies are considered ‘just another opinion‘, low priority (and front of the queue during the next round of cuts!)
A trusted and Effective Research Team
Imagine being a trusted voice inspiring important game development decisions.
Running high quality, impactful studies that get heard and have huge impact.
Making the best use of your limited time, and pinpointing the exact opportunities to act on.
Creating an environment where your stakeholders actively engage with your research, seek out your support, and fund your team appropriately.
Ultimately – running research that matters.
Combining Process & Advocacy
You know how to run research. But how do we create an environment where it matters?
You need a combination of an iterative, quality-focused research process, with an active strategy for engaging your internal stakeholders.
I’ve led research teams and worked with many growing games user research functions, and understand the barriers you face:
- Getting buy-in from dubious stakeholders
- Developing a research process that is efficient and adaptable
- Identifying the key intervention points to steer game development
- Making the best use of our limited research resources
It’s a long journey, but you’re not alone…
Unlock Your Research Team Potential Today
I can help. I’ve led research teams, written the best-selling book Building User Research Teams, and work with many game studios to level up their research practice.
Start planning your playtest roadmap today – sign up below to get started today with my guide on essential playtests to run throughout development.
Then browse my free articles on how to apply games user research methods to make playtesting more efficient and easier.
When you’re ready to run better playtests, get the Playtest Kit (“the perfect tool for game development teams of any size”) to give yourself a head start, or book me to train your team, or coach you towards high impact research studies
Unlock your team’s potential today – build an effective and efficient games user research team, and run research that matters.
Top articles for increasing research maturity
How To Run A Games User Research Playtest
The comprehensive guide to planning and running professional quality playtests that inspire game development!
Scope your studies to increase research impact
How to scope games user research studies for impact – uncovering the context for decision making, and setting sensible objectives.
How to make time for games UX research
Immediate and long-term tactics to create the time for proper playtesting, research, UX design and iteration.
Meet Steve, Expert Games User Researcher
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.
I wrote the best-selling 5-star rated book Building User Research Teams.
I started the IGDA’s Games User Research mentoring scheme, which has linked hundreds of students with industry professionals from top games companies such as Sony, EA, Valve, Ubisoft and Microsoft. This inspired my bestselling book How To Be A Games User Researcher which shares the expertise needed to work in the games industry, and has over 50 5-star reviews on Amazon.
Kind Words From Past Collaborations
Steve Bromley has been instrumental in taking our user research to the next level.
As we approached the launch of our first big title, we had a lot of questions about what our long-term play experience was like. Steve helped us define a playtest method that could answer those questions, including finding suitable participants and figuring out the right questions to measure engagement.
He went above and beyond to assist us and has been incredibly important to our user research growth
Want to give Steve Bromley, UX Research extraordinaire, a giant shout-out.
Our Consumer Insights team is one team that runs a lot of market and ux research and over the last year we’ve had the pleasure of being able to tap into Steve’s brain on a number of occasions and he’s been incredibly helpful.
He has been extremely helpful as we work to support our various internal stakeholders with great research!
Chatting with Steve about sound strategies in the games user research area really helped me faciliate and set up proper playtests to be effective for our developers with as little participant bias as possible, culminating in a smooth and successful release of some of our recent content.
Working with Steve to help validate the marketing plan for our game was great!
Steve helped us nail all the details and his calming presence made establishing a new process for our team feel more manageable.
I appreciated that he really listened to our needs to find the best value for us resources-wise. An overall positive experience!
Steve ran games usability training for our entire game development team at MindForce Game Lab.
We all found the training extremely valuable, packed with practical guidance and it provided us with the tools and templates needed to run our own usability tests.
We’re looking forward to running more usability tests to ensure our game is usable and fun for players!
Our team of 7 participated in a half-day GUR remote workshop led by Steve. He taught us how to plan, conduct, and analyze the results of Games User Research studies.
Steve is highly knowledgeable on the topic, a fact our team knows first-hand from working with him on research projects, so we knew the information shared would be reliable and relevant.
He designed the workshop to be hands-on, which kept the team engaged throughout and fostered team building. Steve was great at accommodating our needs, quick to respond to requests and the information he shared with us brought value to all workshop attendees. It was also genuinely fun, as each attendee playtested a game themselves and moderated a playtest for another attendee. In summary, it was a worthwhile, enjoyable workshop and our team will benefit from the insights we gained.
As a company with no one who has formal training in user research and testing, Steve was able to train us to a level where we all feel comfortable and confident running our future tests.
Our work for hire studio struggles to convince clients of the benefits of including user research on projects, we couldn’t be happier with what Steve was able to teach us.
Knowing how to communicate to clients a clear and comprehensive process will make a huge difference in our sales!
A Research Process In A BOX
This toolkit is for game developers who need to run a playtest but have no time.
Made in collaboration with game designers, producers, community managers, UX designers, QA managers and solo game devs, it brings the expertise of over 25,000 playtest hours into one complete playtest toolkit – making playtesting accessible to all.
It’s a comprehensive & actionable toolkit packed with processes, templates, guides, and tools. Everything you need to be confident running playtests today.
“An absolute must-have for games UX, insight and research teams.”
Nathan Pana – UX / UI Director at Mighty Kingdom
“the perfect tool for game development teams of any size”
Jo Haslam – Design Director at Snap Finger Click
Level Up Your Research Process Today
Get my free Playtest Plus roadmap guide, then monthly new articles on integrating playtesting and user research into your game development process.
Join the most interesting conversations about games user research, learn new playtesting methods, and be introduced to new ways to think about developing games.