To celebrate 10 Years of PlaytestCloud, we spoke to Florian Steinhoff and Antti Hattara (formerly of Wooga) to reflect on the early days of mobile game testing our humble beginnings.
In 2014, PlaytestCloud officially registered as a business and set out to help mobile game developers test with players in other parts of the world. What began as a pile of iPhones and a stack of pizzas has grown into a sophisticated Player Insights Platform™ supporting game industry giants and indies alike.
In the early days of mobile gaming, playtesting was a challenge. For companies like Wooga, whose hit game Jelly Splash was gaining traction in the early 2010s, in-person testing was the norm.
Florian Steinhoff, who was at Wooga during that time, reminisces: “In the early mobile game days, we would just invite people to the office and give them a movie ticket or cash for playtesting. Remote playtesting wasn’t even an option.”
The limitations of this approach were clear: playtesting was confined to those available during work hours, who could physically come to the office. This was particularly problematic for EU based studios like Wooga, when their target audience was largely based in the United States.
So when PlaytestCloud co-founders Christian Ress and Marvin Killing pitched their new concept, early adopters were intrigued.
“We had already run in-person tests with Jelly Splash in Berlin, but our target audience was more focused on the American market,” says Florian. “We had never tested with them before, and that was exactly what PlaytestCloud was offering us—remote playtesting with the US audience.”
Antti Hattara, also formerly of Wooga, recalls, “The idea of remote playtesting at the time really did not exist on mobile. But we were really excited about the possibility. Since the players would be playing on their own device in their own home, it seemed like their results would be much more authentic.”
PlaytestCloud offered a solution that allowed Wooga and other studios to conduct playtests with US audiences remotely, providing a crucial tool for expanding their reach and improving game quality.
The initial playtests run by PlaytestCloud were far from the seamless, automated experiences they are today. Florian recalls learning, years after the fact, that the first remote playtest wasn’t exactly as automated as it seemed.
“I was really surprised when I found out later just how much of it was actually a prototype,” he said. “From our side, things were delivered very smoothly, and we were really happy with the results.”
Marvin, one of PlaytestCloud's co-founders, reflects on those early days: “We were so early stages at that point. We knew what we should be able to deliver, and we had a clear idea of what it looked like from a technological standpoint. It was just weeks away from being able to run fully automatically, and we needed this customer validation for a clear idea of how to build it.”
There were moments of intense effort, with the team ordering pizzas and working at all hours to manually manage what is now (thankfully) an automated process.
“I was always really impressed with how [Marvin and Christian] approached the fairly major technical hurdles of what we needed,” reminisces Antti. “How they navigated a lot of the topics, what was possible or not possible, and getting things organized from Berlin. It was very, very cool to see, and it’s been very cool to see the company grow from there.”
Fast forward to today, PlaytestCloud’s Player Insights Platform™ has automated most of the roadblocks that once made playtesting cumbersome. Using the platform, studios are able to quickly, efficiently and affordably run more playtests and scale their research efforts, with less time spent on logistics and operations.
“One of the reasons we never did player interviews or moderated playtests is because of the scheduling. It’s such a hassle, and there are always no-shows. PlaytestCloud makes that easy; we order it the same as an unmoderated test and all we have to do is show up,” explains another customer.
Over the last decade, PlaytestCloud has built a diverse pool of North American players and also expanded its reach globally. Early panel members were recruited via Reddit’s r/beermoney, but now word of mouth and referrals have hundreds of new players applying every week.
The size of the panel (more than 1M) allows studios to recruit players based on highly specific criteria. Christian highlights the importance of diversity: “Diversity in our panel has been an important focus for us. We know from gaming demographics that it’s not just 25- to 35-year-old white men buying and playing games, but if you look at the typical group of playtesters most people are able to recruit, they are disproportionately represented.”
"If you look at the typical group of playtesters most people are able to recruit, {25-35 year old white men} are disproportionately represented."
In the past two years, PlaytestCloud has more than doubled the enrollment of female-identifying players and included non-binary participants, expanding the diversity of their panel significantly.
This inclusive approach extends to young players as well. With over 20,000 children aged 3-15, PlaytestCloud is also the only remote playtesting company COPPA, GDPR and UK Children’s code compliant, ensuring the safety of young players and their data.
The introduction of AI analysis marked another leap forward for PlaytestCloud. Florian notes, “The hardest part of research for my team is that, if we run 20 playtests, that’s 20 videos we have to watch. And then from there, it’s time to pull out the insights and create summaries.”
With AI analysis, much of this work is now automated, allowing teams to make quicker decisions and focus more on game development rather than manual analysis.
Another customer recently said “The AI analysis has been a real time-saver for our team. When we first tried it out, we compared the themes to what we had done manually and it was a surprisingly close match. Now we are flying through the insights part and we’re able to make decisions much faster.”
Now, playtest summaries, keywords, themes and transcripts are automatically compiled, and the Reel Builder allows a quick export of a highlights reel to showcase key moments in the playtests.
The platform’s ability to provide both unmoderated and live playtesting has proven invaluable for studios looking to gain quick insights without the logistical challenges of traditional methods.
“There’s nothing more depressing than watching someone who hates your game play it for 40 minutes,” Florian jokes, “But with the right audience and the ability to filter for specific player types, PlaytestCloud helps avoid that scenario and makes playtesting a more constructive process.”
“There’s nothing more depressing than watching someone who hates your game play it for 40 minutes.”
Antti expands on finding the right audience. “With the other remote research solutions that have popped up over the years, the panel of testers tends to be mostly researchers, or other UX designers, or people who don’t play games. Their feedback is always going to skew towards game experience and design. What you need is more ‘is this fun? Do you like it? Will you play it? Why?’ and that’s what you get from PlaytestCloud’s panel.”
With the 10 year anniversary coinciding with the company’s biggest update in history—the addition of PC playtesting late last year—PlaytestCloud’s journey over the past decade with the Player Insights Platform ™ has been one of continuous growth and relentless innovation.
As they look to the future, the company remains committed to helping game developers make games players love through accelerating game user research feedback loops, providing better access to target players, and delivering player insights that—literally—change the game.