With PlaytestCloud's survey tools, you can create powerful surveys for every playtest, but using your own survey tool together with our playtests is possible as well.
We support most survey tools, including Alchemer (formerly known as SurveyGizmo), SurveyMonkey, Question Pro and Limesurvey. The integration is not specific to these survey tools and we are happy to help you integrate PlaytestCloud with your favorite software.
Once you set up your survey as outlined below, you'll add your external survey link directly to the Survey section of the order form under 'Use a 3rd party survey tool'. There you'll be prompted to test your survey to make sure it's set up properly.
Integration Overview
In playtests that use surveys hosted by your own survey tool, we redirect players to your surveys whenever it's necessary for them to fill out a survey, for example after they have played for the required amount of time.
We need to track which players complete the surveys, so we pass tracking data along whenever our players access your surveys that your survey tool needs to send back to us. How that works is described in the integration section.
To give you background information on each player, we also pass the following data along for each player:
First name
Age
Gender
Nationality
Country of Residence
Hours they play games per week
You can also find this information in the player profile section of your playtest videos.
To avoid unnecessary data collection, it's required that you don't ask for personal data (email address, last name, address, ...) in your survey and prevent tracking of IP addresses, if possible.
Integration Steps
The specific steps to integrating your own survey tool with PlaytestCloud depend on the tool that you use.
Alchemer (formerly known as SurveyGizmo) Integration Guide
SurveyMonkey Integration Guide
See our SurveyMonkey Integration Guide.
Qualtrics Integration Guide
See our Qualtrics Integration Guide
Typefrom Integration Guide
See our Typeform Integration Guide
Forsta (formerly known as Decipher) Integration Guide
General Integration Guide
Each integration requires the following steps:
Store the tracking information that PlaytestCloud passes when the player visits your survey
Store the demographics information that PlaytestCloud passes when the player visits your survey
Redirect the player back to PlaytestCloud upon survey completion, passing the tracking information along
Step 1 & 2: Store Tracking and Demographics Information
The tracking and demographics information is passed to your survey using URL variables. For example, a player called Mike, Age 37 from the US who plays for 10-20 hours per week would access your survey via this URL:
https://www.example.com/game-survey?age=37&country=United%20States&nationality=United%20States&first_name=Mike&firstname=Mike&gender=male&hours_playing_per_week=10-20&hoursplayingperweek=10-20&bucketid=1234&bucket_id=1234&participation_info=BAhJIhIyMzYwNjoxNzM3MDYzBjoGRVQ%3D--f197222adb6fe5196d6be1739cd48301fa7469c3&participationinfo=BAhJIhIyMzYwNjoxNzM3MDYzBjoGRVQ%3D--f197222adb6fe5196d6be1739cd48301fa7469c3
The URL variables for the demographics data are:
age: Tester's age (Number, e.g. 37)country: Tester's country of residence (Text, e.g. United Kingdom)nationality: Tester's nationality (Text, Nationality is written like a country, e.g. Canada, not Canadian)gender: Tester's gender (Text, either male, female, or other)first_name: Tester's first name (Text, e.g. Mike)firstname: Same asfirst_name, may be included for compatibility with survey tools that don't support underscores in variable nameshours_playing_per_week: Tester's estimate for their weekly playtime (Text, e.g. 10-20)hoursplayingperweek: Same ashours_playing_per_week, may be included for compatibility with survey tools that don't support underscores in variable names
The following URL variables are for tracking and diagnosis purposes:
participation_id: Unique player identifier. We can use this to correlate survey responses with videos and players in our database. (It's strongly recommended that you track this value)participationid: Same asparticipation_id, may be included for compatibility with survey tools that don't support underscores in variable namesparticipation_info: Tracking identifier used by PlaytestCloud to track which players completed the survey (Text, contains special characters and must not be modified)participationinfo: Same asparticipation_info, may be included for compatibility with survey tools that don't support underscores in variable namesbucket_id: Internal identifierbucketid: Same asbucket_id, may be included for compatibility with survey tools that don't support underscores in variable names
Integrating your survey tool with PlaytestCloud is possible without using or storing any of the demographics URL variables. If you are considering asking players for data that is already passed through our URL variables, we suggest that you omit that question and use the already provided demographics data instead.
Step 3: Redirect Players to PlaytestCloud
Upon finishing the last page of your survey, redirect players back to PlaytestCloud and include the participation_info URL variable in the redirection URL.
Note: It's crucial that players are automatically redirected upon reaching the last page. Players must not be asked to press a button that isn't the Next Page or Submit Survey button. This is to avoid a situation where players think they're done with the survey (having seen the Thank You page) without PlaytestCloud being notified of this.
The URL players need to be redirected is to:
https://app.playtestcloud.com/process_steps/external_survey_complete?participation_info=[Content of participation_info]
or, if your survey tool does not support underscores in URL variables
https://app.playtestcloud.com/process_steps/external_survey_complete?participationinfo=[Content of participationinfo]
You must pass the content of the participation_info variable captured in Step 1 exactly, without modification.
Using the example shown in Step 1, the correct redirection URL is:
https://app.playtestcloud.com/process_steps/external_survey_complete?participation_info=BAhJIhIyMzYwNjoxNzM3MDYzBjoGRVQ%3D--f197222adb6fe5196d6be1739cd48301fa7469c3
Survey tools we do not support
We currently do not support survey tools that aren't able to pass variables to us when the player finishes the survey and is redirected to the success page, which is needed to track who filled out the survey. Google Forms is one such tool that is not supported.
Questions?
We can help! Send us a message and we'll help get your survey tool connected with PlaytestCloud.