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What is the best way to analyze my Long form study results?
What is the best way to analyze my Long form study results?

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by a longitudinal or multi-session. But, if you plan ahead this momentous task can be efficiently achieved.

Alex Flint avatar
Written by Alex Flint
Updated over a week ago

When the time comes for you to analyze the results of your long-form study (longitudinal or multi-session playtest) many game studios are surprised or shocked at the sheer amount of data that they will have to sort through. In some cases it could be 20 hours of video - that's the same amount of time as watching all of the Harry Potter films in order! 

But as with everything in life, major accomplishments come with major planning. We recommend making a plan of how playtesting will fall into your design sprint schedule. You should also figure out how many players, gameplay days, and time you and your team will have the capacity to watch. We recommend making a schedule - such as watching one player a day until all of the videos have been seen.   

When your videos arrive you will be bombarded with a lot of information to go through. We recommend making a plan of what you will be looking for, before you dive deep into watching the videos. You should make a goal of what you are wishing to study (such as player retention, or interaction with a new game mechanic) then you should develop some checkpoints or key performance indicators that you can measure the success of your goal by. Once you begin to watch your playtest videos you should watch for the completion of these checkpoints or goals and use that to rank the performance of your video. You can even watch your videos at a higher speed such as 1.5X or 2X times speed in order to expedite the process. 

You should not allow scope creep to enter your analysis however. Yes, there will be additional interesting information and player behavior that you will discover - which can be important. But we recommend just noting the behavior and the timecode then continuing to research your original goal. Once you have a conclusion for your original goal then feel free to return to your notes and investigate further. Who knows, you might realize something that could warrant an additional test. 

Perhaps this sounds like a lot, and perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed at the moment. As the case may be, a lot of our game studio clients do not have a major team of researchers ready to watch and analyze hours of videos. But, no need to worry, we have a team you can hire who would love to work with you to quickly give an analysis of your players behavior and give recommendations on what changes you will need to implement in your next sprint cycle. 

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