Game play and consumer engagement testing

Identify engagement...

Our games research identifies emotional and behavioural states during play to understand what drives consumer interaction and what compels your customers to pursue a game further. These valuable insights help you to optimise game sequences for player experience and in turn build brand loyalty and advocacy.

We use eyetracking and bio-physical measurements (e.g. heart rate, muscle tension, skin conductance) to feed into our emotive engagement model - this correlates emotional dimensions such as boredom, joy, anxiety, fear, surprise, disgust, and achievement with specific points in a game and specific elements on the screen.

Our unique methodology differs from traditional consumer testing procedures. We don't interrupt them by questioning or asking them to narrate whilst playing - our approach is to observe and record natural and realistic game play - once they have finished playing we then replay events to them (with eyetracking traces and the other measures) and gather qualitative details.

...to create emotional and engaging game play

Our analyses will enable you to understand aspects such as:

• how to capture consumer attention within the first 10 minutes of game play
• how to focus on innovative game play that compels the consumer to keep playing and come back for more
• how to develop a sequel that matches the quality and game play of your first hit game
• how to optimise the frequency and duration of downtime v high adrenalin sequences within a game to create the most excitement
• how to control the "flow" of a game without disengaging users, or losing impact
• how to adapt current generation titles to next generation controllers

We offer you tailored research to deliver essential insights...

Our bespoke research will deliver to you both quantitative and qualitative results detailing how your game engages players. We will work with you to develop appropriate testing protocols that deliver exactly what you need to know in a format that will be best consumed and acted upon in your organisation.

Bring us in at any point during a game's development - from initial concept, through green light builds, prototypes... right up to final submission.

We are flexible and responsive and can work on and off site so can help you meet those impending milestones crucial to the game's development.

As part of our wider testing services we can also look at:

• Game play mechanics
• Mapping and manipulation of control features and gamepad commands
• UI elements
• Functionality testing
• Balancing

...plus testing and enhancement of related media

We can apply our expertise and the technology to surrounding game assets, such as TV/cinema trailers , magazine and tradeshow demos, box covers, editorial, magazine articles/advertising and websites!

See also: In-game advertising and product placement