user feedback

If your game is the body, then your players are its lifeblood—and user feedback keeps it all flowing. Yet, many developers overlook its power. When you’re creating a game for others, it only makes sense to value their thoughts. But how can you gather user feedback to truly improve your game? How do you sift through the noise to prioritize the most pressing feature requests and bug reports? Let’s explore why user feedback matters and how you can use it with actionable tips.

The importance of user feedback in game design

There are many reasons why game developers must take user feedback seriously. Here are some key examples:

  • Finetuning gameplay mechanics: A user’s opinion on whether a game is working as intended is what matters most. You can use player insights to enhance many aspects of gameplay. These include faulty controls, strange character movements, and problematic features.
  • Optimizing a game‘s UI and UX: Aesthetics and gameplay significantly impact a player’s feelings about a game. With user feedback, game developers can make user interfaces and experiences more accessible.
  • Detecting and fixing bugs: Some bugs fall through the cracks, regardless of how much testing was done. Players can quickly highlight when they have encountered technical issues in a game. No matter how big or small the glitch is, reporting it helps developers optimize quickly.
  • Adjusting game difficulty: It’s difficult to find that fine balance between making a game too easy or too difficult. If it’s the former, players can become disengaged, or frustrated if it’s the latter. User feedback helps developers pinpoint what game stages cause an imbalance in difficulty.
  • Building new content and features: User feedback can help developers build future content game updates. Player requests can indirectly create new features, levels, and expansions. The result? Old and new players stay engaged for longer.

Sure, now you understand how user feedback contributes to long-term game design. But what tangible ways can you leverage your players’ voices?

3 Tips for leveraging user feedback in game design

Whether building your player community or utilizing feedback channels, consider these tips for leveraging user feedback.

1 — Prioritize and analyze user feedback systematically 

It’s not practical to address every single piece of user feedback. The key is to work out the most common sentiments and requests about your game. Then, determine which changes would bring the most value to your players’ experience. 

Here are some ways to prioritize and analyze your user feedback effectively:

  • Categorize feedback: Break down feedback into categories like feature requests, bug reports, and gameplay suggestions. Then, identifying the most repeated complaints will help you understand what’s most urgent.
  • Set prioritization criteria: Measure key game metrics that align with the game’s main objectives. Examples include the number of affected players and opportunities for player retention.
  • Analyze quantitatively and qualitatively: This refers to gathering numerical data and player insights such as comments/complaints. Opinion and data-based analysis helps you make more balanced decisions for game optimization.
  • Use a feedback management platform: According to this study, it’s difficult to obtain quality user feedback without a quality gaming assessment tool. Streamline your user feedback with a project management system. Then, you can oversee recurring issues, create feedback loops, and resolve requests.
  • Communicate with players: Once you have analyzed and prioritized feedback, communicate your choices to players. This shows you’re actively considering their insights. You can also provide clear reasons why some user feedback is prioritized over others.

2 — Build a strong player community

It’s easy to underestimate just how important community building is around a game. Having players talking about your game helps generate all kinds of valuable feedback. These communities can share their experiences (positive and negative) through the following channels:

Surveys

A well-designed survey can provide you with many useful insights from your players. This is a great way to collect both quantitative data and qualitative insights.

Survey pros: 

  • Generate detailed feedback
  • Can be cost-effective
  • Attracts less spam

Survey cons:

  • Users might not understand what you’re doing with the feedback
  • Not the best community-building tool
  • Can be difficult to prioritize feedback.

Word of advice: To not be overwhelmed by a wide range of answers, start by surveying a small number of players. Start with about 200 respondents. You can still generate reliable statistics while adjusting your testing budget at scale.

Feature request boards with in-built voting

This is a great way to collect, centralize, and prioritize user feedback from feature requests. With in-built voting, players can upvote or downvote requests submitted by other players.

With a feature request board, you give users a clear, public location to submit their requests. Also, you can keep them up to date with each request’s status over time. 

Feature request board pros:

  • Generally straightforward to moderate.
  • Shows players how integral their feedback is to the game’s development.
  • In-built voting makes it easy to prioritize feedback.

Feature request board cons:

  • Can be quite expensive.
  • Specific for feature requests, so not great for cultivating all user feedback (i.e. bug reports, gameplay feedback, design issues).
  • High-voted requests can put pressure on developers to build features that aren’t in line with the game studio’s vision. This can also cause player frustration.

Forums

Forums have been used since the dawn of the internet for users to discuss virtually any topic.

Popular game forums can have thousands of threads. Here, players may discuss key areas like features, levels, characters, and updates.

Forum pros:

  • An obvious platform for building a community around a game.
  • Forums can generally be very cheap to set up and operate.
  • A centralized channel for feedback – where news, discussions, and updates can all be found in one place.

Forum cons:

  • Forums notoriously constitute an information overload. Therefore, they can be challenging to moderate, with no clear way to prioritize discussions for collecting feedback. 
  • There are transparency issues, as it’s difficult to show users how you’re utilizing their feedback.
  • Forums are traditionally hotbeds for toxic online behavior, as well as voting manipulation.

3 — Iterative game design/development

Some game studios overlook the power of leveraging feedback at every stage of a game’s design and development. By gathering insights at every stage, you can develop your game based on clear data and insights.

Here’s how to leverage feedback during the early stages of a game’s development:

  • Conceptualization: It helps to get feedback on your game’s idea from the get-go. Learn what the target audience thinks of your game’s name, storyboards, and premise.
  • Design: Once you’re confident in your idea, gather the audience’s thoughts on design elements. These include character art and user interface.
  • Development: During this process, get a general idea of how your audience reacts to your game. Share samples of the game mechanics, animations, voiceovers, music, and sound effects.
  • Pre-launch: Make sure all marketing assets (screenshots, trailer, description, app icon) appeal to your target audience. Test ad creatives on social media to know if they’re effectively communicating the game’s message before your official launch.

Leverage user feedback = Keep players engaged for longer

By prioritizing, iterating, and using multiple feedback channels, you can effectively leverage user feedback to boost game longevity.

When you take player feedback seriously to enhance your game, fix bugs, and add features; you unlock a powerful tool for player retention.

Players appreciate when their opinions are valued. So build a community around your game, listen to their voices, and use their input to create a better, longer-lasting experience.

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