We invited the industry leaders in player experiences to Berlin for roundtables, talks and knowledge sharing. Here's a recap of Insightful: 2025!
On October 1, games industry leaders from all over the world gathered in Berlin to share how they approach player-centric development and the real-world strategies behind making great games.
Here are highlights from every session:
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How Minecraft modernized onboarding for a massive, diverse player base—without killing the magic of open-ended play.
"Players make the best arguments—bring the [gameplay] clip.”
Spend time on what only you can do, teach others the rest. Automate, offload, and avoid becoming a single point of failure.
"The best leaders teach their team how to become them, then go do something else.”
Creating guardrails and systems to standardize playtesting to meet massive, distributed demand internally, especially with non-researchers.
"Democratize playtesting—without sacrificing rigor."
In a sprawling, multi-studio, multi-stakeholder company, explicit foundations + intentional culture let a small research team stay trusted, effective, and resilient—even when org tides shift.
"We didn't want something that would live in a pretty PowerPoint in a forgotten folder. It had to be impactful and measurable."
CEO, Starberry Games
Game Lead, Metacore
UX Researcher + UI Prototyper
John: “People will put up with a lot for instant results.”
Henry: “Transcripts aren’t enough—you still need to watch players play.”
It was an honor to be invited and you all did amazing work, looking forward to the next one!
Thank you very much for such a wonderful experience! The PlaytestCloud team presented a new standard of networking and knowledge events 🤩
It was a pleasure to participate! Fantastically well organized, good talks, pleasant and relaxed. One of the best conference experiences I've ever had. More of this!
