Games Industry Leaders Shaping What Comes Next

The future of the games industry is in a state of disruption and uncertainty. So much will change in the next few years, and while there are many unknowns, one thing remains certain: the people and studios working to build engaging player-centric experiences are the leaders who will navigate these changes with success.

In October, we invited these leaders to join us in Berlin for three days of IRL discussions, knowledge sharing and connection from studios including Mojang, Netflix, PlayStation, and Tencent. The theme? How the best studios in the world leverage player insights to drive creative and strategic decisions.

A Day Built on Shared Curiosity

In his opening, Michael Duning, PlaytestCloud’s CRO, captured what inspired the event in the first place:

“For years, we’ve had those lean-in conversations. People asking what others are doing, how often they’re playtesting, how they’re scaling their teams. There’s a genuine desire to learn from one another.”

That curiosity became the foundation of Insightful: a space where senior researchers and insights leads could step back from delivery mode and compare notes with their peers.

Lessons from the Industry’s Research Leaders

The day’s lineup reflected how far games research has come, and how its leaders are now driving studio-wide impact.

Unn Swanström from Mojang shared how the Minecraft team rebuilt onboarding around evidence and iteration, balancing accessibility with discovery. Her approach to player experience was grounded in data: watching where players churned in their first 15 minutes, separating “good struggle” from bad friction, and building a framework for continuous improvement.

“Good friction is challenge; bad friction is annoyance.”

Natalie Gedeon from Netflix Games described how her team scaled playtesting across the organization through a standardized, self-serve system that relied on guardrails (rather than gatekeeping). This helps keep research consistent and empowers non-researchers to benefit from player insights, without creating a bottleneck.

“Democratize playtesting, without sacrificing rigor.”

Kristie Fisher, PhD from PlayStation Studios explored leadership itself — from defining success explicitly to preventing team burnout. She encouraged research leaders to treat leadership as a craft, invest in culture as deliberately as methods, and build frameworks that align research goals with business outcomes.

“Without explicit success criteria, what you get is churn, not progress.”

And from Tencent, Cyril Rebetez and Dani Borghini showed how research culture can be codified and sustained at scale. Their team operates on a “studio-first” philosophy: giving partner studios ownership of their data while maintaining shared principles for collaboration, confidentiality, and trust. Their model proved that culture isn’t static; it’s a living system that must be maintained, measured, and iterated on.

“Clarity of mission + lived behaviors = trust.”

Each talk added another layer to the same idea: the new shape of research leadership is built on systems, culture, and influence.

Making the Hard Calls

A standout session came from Antti Hattara (Starberry Games), Teppo Soininen (Metacore), and Jean-Luc Potte, who offered three perspectives on one of the hardest realities of development — knowing when to stop.

Across leadership, product, and research viewpoints, their message was the same: successful studios make kill decisions early and intentionally.

They shared how clearly defined stage gates, market-fit validation, and framing data in creative terms help teams avoid emotional bias and “just-one-more-iteration” thinking.

“A weak core hidden by shiny stuff is the most expensive mistake.”

It was a timely reminder that great insight isn’t only about proving what works, but also about giving teams the clarity and confidence to move on when it doesn’t.

 

From AI to Strategy: Expanding the Research Role

Moderated by PlaytestCloud’s VP of Research Operations Jack Dunne, the AI in Games Research panel tackled one of the biggest questions facing the field right now: how automation is changing the way insights teams work.

The consensus was clear: AI accelerates, but it doesn’t replace. It frees experts to focus on strategic decisions, creative interpretation, and stakeholder alignment.

“Automate what we’re certain is right; reserve humans for the ambiguous.”

The best studios are already using AI to speed up qualitative coding, cluster review data, and draft first-pass summaries — tools that free up researchers to think, not just process.

But the panel also warned against overreach: fully synthetic users and unsupervised, player-facing AI can undermine trust, misrepresent player behavior, or even risk brand safety if not carefully constrained.

Later, PlaytestCloud’s Head of Research Operations Hannah Mattil closed the sessions with a panel on evolving consumer behaviors featuring experts from Zynga, Wooga, and Microsoft Gaming.

The conversation connected macro trends with practical implications for research leaders:

• Indie innovation, mass-market scale: Player expectations are increasingly shaped by indie design principles — creative risk, narrative experimentation, emotional honesty — which major studios now adapt for broader audiences.

• Cross-device is the new normal: Players move seamlessly between platforms. Research teams must think in ecosystems, not channels.

• Community as core system: Long-lived titles invest in community as a feature, not an afterthought. Understanding social connection and belonging is now as critical as usability.
• AI and personalization: Players are open to AI-driven systems when they deliver visible value — like personalization or smarter NPCs — but reject “content for content’s sake.”

The discussion reinforced a shared belief: player-centric design is a leadership responsibility.

“Community is the system that makes games last.”

A Forum for Collaboration and Connection 

In their closing remarks, PlaytestCloud CEOs and co-founders Marvin Killing and Christian Ress brought the day back to its purpose.

Marvin reflected on how PlaytestCloud began with a failed indie game and the realization that better player feedback could change everything.

“We wanted to take some of the risk out of making games. And now we get to help the people who make the industry less of a gamble for everyone else.”

Christian added:

“We created Insightful so the leaders driving this change can learn from each other. There are many shared challenges — but few spaces to truly compare notes.”

That’s what Insightful delivered: a rare, direct exchange between the people defining the future of games research.

What’s next for Insightful?

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