When developing a new game experience, studios have many choices for partners to provide valuable user research and player insights. Three firms at the forefront are Solsten, Player Research, and Immersyve — each bringing unique methodologies and specializations to the table. As studios weigh their options, they must carefully weigh each firm’s strengths and differentiation across key factors like research scope, precision in audience targeting, and data-driven methodologies.

In this article, we’ll evaluate each games user research firm through three lenses: main use cases, key differentiators, and methodologies and tools each firm uses. With this information, game developers, studios, and publishers will have all the information they need to choose the player research partner that best suits their needs.

Why Studios Choose Solsten:

Studios choose Solsten to minimize risk and ensure their games resonate with their intended audiences. Solsten provides two unmatched advantages:

1. The most comprehensive suite of player research capabilities, covering every need from concept to launch to live ops.
2. Proprietary psychological profiles that enable the recruitment of research subjects who truly represent a game’s actual player base and motivations, providing insights with unparalleled precision.

While many research firms promise psychological and motivational insights, their methods are scientifically invalid, behavior-based, qualitative, and based on small sample survey data. These methods produce results that are difficult to trust, and do not accurately reflect human psychology.

Only Solsten combines comprehensive research tactics with psychologically validated data to ensure studios get feedback from subjects mirroring the motivations and personas of their real-world players and audiences. This distinction is critical, as it significantly increases the ROI of a studio’s research investment.

Main Use Cases:

Solsten provides comprehensive, scientifically-valid research that reliably optimizes games at every stage of the development cycle. Early on, they validate new concepts, features, and art from a player-centric perspective. They also evaluate live events prior to their launch to ensure audience resonance.

Mid-production, Solsten playtests prototypes while recording physiological signals to identify engagement peaks and pain points. And for live games, Solsten conducts lapsed player research — locating and profiling churned players to understand retention issues and regain their investment.

Key Differentiator:

Solsten’s key advantage is their proprietary psychological database — the largest of its kind globally after evaluating millions of players for over six years with the top gaming companies. This database is representative of 3.4 billion people globally, from every continent, country, state, and territory in the world. Powered by a proprietary adaptive psychological assessment, this database gives Solsten the unique ability to recruit research subjects psychologically aligned with a game’s actual audience for unparalleled research precision.

Methodologies and Tools:

Solsten employs a wide range of research methods — from resonance studies with recorded verbal feedback, to in-lab and remote moderated sessions, to embedding surveys within games at predicted churn points. Uniquely, their psychological database informs all recruitment to ensure representative samples.

Only Solsten combines robust research tactics with the power to align research subjects to target motivations and personas.

By integrating psychological data into their services, Solsten guides game experiences towards achieving the key trifecta of motivation, satisfaction, and retention from initial concepts through launch and beyond — reducing risk while maximizing long-term player engagement and value.

Why Studios Choose Player Research:

Studios work with Player Research for access to its advanced playtest labs. These labs provide environments for players’ true impressions of works-in-progress. Equipped with recording and streaming technology, teams can observe or stream playtests globally. Player Research partners with studios to generate player insights throughout development, understanding target audience experiences, and habits.

Main Use Cases:

The main use cases Player Research assists with include competitor analysis, concept testing, core mechanic testing, experiential playtesting, usability playtesting, narrative testing, and engagement diaries for post-launch games. Their services span the full development lifecycle from validating initial concepts to ensuring compelling narratives and identifying usability issues prior to launch. After release, studios can leverage Player Research’s engagement diaries to gain insights into highlights, lowlights, and ongoing player experiences.

Key Differentiators:

A key differentiator for Player Research is their Advancing Accessibility program focused on enabling inclusive gaming. This includes training courses, workshops, collaboration with disabled players, and consultants to overcome accessibility barriers. They also provide strategic consultancy services to help devise comprehensive UX strategies tailored to each studio’s needs. Furthermore, Player Research offers user research training to empower internal teams to conduct their own research projects effectively.

Methodologies and Tools:

Player Research conducts small lab sessions zeroing in on ensuring the core gameplay experience is engaging and fun. Their lab facilities allow for quantitative testing with meaningful sample sizes to gauge attitudes, opinions, and emotions. Usability expert analysis taps into psychology and UX principles to identify issues. For narrative-driven games, they use unique approaches like detailed feedback on scripts and storyboards before assets are finalized. Engagement diaries provide live insights after launch.

Why Studios Choose Immersyve:

Video game studios partner with Immersyve to better understand how to achieve key goals like maximizing player motivation, satisfaction, and deeper engagement with their games. Their methodologies allow studios to create experiences that maximize long-term value and engagement for every player.

Main Use Cases:

Immersyve provides training on motivational principles and how to apply them to game development. They share proven best practices for satisfying core player needs to drive sustained engagement. Immersyve collaborates with studios to optimize gameplay systems, narratives, economies, and retention strategies. They also conduct motivational research and player experience studies tailored for games.

Key Differentiators:

A key advantage for game studios is Immersyve’s founding team’s expertise in Self-Determination Theory — one of the most proven motivational frameworks regularly applied in games research. Immersyve uniquely combines these motivational science principles with leading games user research. They can measure player motivation and experience at scale across a studio’s player base.

Methodologies and Tools:

Immersyve uses core Self-Determination Theory principles and best practices for satisfying player needs like autonomy, competence, and relatedness to drive engagement. Their methodologies optimize games for both attracting new players and retaining them long-term. From prototyping phases, Immersyve embeds motivational science into a game’s core progression systems, narrative design, monetization strategies, and more.

Conclusion

While Player Research excels at playtesting labs and Immersyve leverages select psychology frameworks, only Solsten combines comprehensive research tactics with proprietary psychological profiles — ensuring unparalleled precision in aligning research subjects with a game’s actual target motivations and audiences. This level of scientific rigor across all stages of the development lifecycle can provide studios the confidence to create experiences optimized for engagement, retention, and maximizing long-term value.