Good Game Research

Good Game Research operates globally, providing consumer insights and user research for the video game industry. We work in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodologies. Our aim is to give you the quality insights you need and to get them to you quickly because we know the games industry moves fast. GG!

SERVICES

There are so many ways to slice and dice services. Below is a list of the basics. We customize our services based on your needs and do not just copy paste to get it done. We put real effort and care into every project we work on. Contact us, we are happy to give a price quote or have a casual business chat. 

Market Research

Focus Group: Get your target audience in a room to ask them questions, discuss topics, pitch them ideas, in a group think environment. Understand the why behind their sentiment. 

Survey: Get your target audience to answer a survey that ask questions on a high level to determine game direction or receive quick feedback on subjects. Understand where the numbers point based on ratings. 

Playtests

Playtest: Put your audience in front of your game to ask questions, receive feedback, make key decisions on your game going forward. 

User-Test: Put your audience in front of your game to observe how they interact with the user experience, tutorial, menus, controls, and UI. 

Analysis

Expert Review: Receive feedback on your game from an expert who works with consumers regularly. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats categorized and explained. 

Review Analysis: Analyze player feedback publicly or privately from review sites, Steam, App Stores, refund data, community feedback. Then see a clear summary of what players are saying about your chosen game.

Consultation

Advisory: Have an expert advise on consumer insights or user research matters. Maybe you need a games veteran on your board to provide consumer perspectives or game industry knowledge. 

Contract Work: Do you need extra help on your team for a short period? Is a manager or researcher going on paternity leave, vacation, leaving the company, then bring on our experts as a temporary hire. 

PRICING

Our prices are below the market standard and we provide higher quality work than most agencies. Why is that? We have skilled experts who handle each project individually from end-to-end. They know how to get the service done quickly and efficiently to save costs. Below are the rates for 2024. 

Researcher Rates

Fixed daily rate, $750.

Whatever service you need, we will quote you on the number of days it will take to complete the project.

Participant Rates

$25-$200 per-hour, per participant.

There are a few factors that determine participant price per-hour.

  1. Service Type
  2. Length of Participation
  3. Difficulty to Recruit
  4. Country

Currently, we use third-party vendors we trust or a studio’s community, which can be very cost effective.

Examples

A 10 participant playtest, playing 3 hours of your game.
= ~$9,000

An expert review, playing the game and providing a UX report.
= ~$3,750

A survey, crafting to report.  
= ~$3,750.

Tips

  1. If you want to do a playtest and have your own player database or community of players, then have a researcher help recruit from there to save significant costs.
  2. An expert review of your game’s controls, tutorial, menus, comprehension, and  UI can discover most surface level UX issues for approximately $3,750.
  3. Always ask for the raw data of a research project and where the data is coming from.

WHO WE ARE

Jonathan Bonillas is a user research consultant with over a decade of video game industry experience working in consumer insights and user research, leading research projects globally. Jonathan has worked for Activision, 2K, Paradox Interactive, Nordisk Games, and helped on more than 60 shipped video games, some of which are billion-dollar franchises.

His personal favorite genres to play are Horror, Stealth, RPGs, Survival, and Strategy video games. But he plays all genres. He is super proud and feels fortunate to have worked on some of his favorite franchises. Hopefully, he can work on yours next. Let’s chat about video games!

Some of the Video Games Worked on:

Borderlands The Pre-Sequel
Call of Duty Black Ops II
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Call of the Sea
Cities Skylines II
Civilization VI
Crusader Kings III
Evolve
Mafia III
Sable
The Dark Pictures: Switchback
theHunter: Call of the Wild
The Quarry
XCOM 2

OUR VALUES

Communication

If you can’t understand our reports or the research we are doing, we have failed. Transparency and honesty, no sugar coating. We believe in collaboration and feedback. We want to build a relationship with you because we know it takes time to trust outside help, especially when critical feedback is necessary. 

Speed

The video game industry moves quickly, we know this. Which is why we pride ourselves on conducting research fast. Do not settle for market research quotes that are 3 or even 6 months long, let’s do it in 1 month or less. Need feedback on your recent game build? Receive a report within 5-8 days of giving us the build.

Knowledge

Unlike most third-party agencies, we know how the sausage is made. Our experts have worked directly for game publishers and developers. Games from many different genres and platforms. We know the pain points, budget, and timeline concerns when conducting research. We do our best to mitigate those concerns and provide a perspective that comes from experience. 

Quality

We provide a premium service and make sure the insights you are paying us to investigate are meaningful and actionable. We won’t just sell you the most expensive service because you can afford it. We will challenge and think how best to provide the insights you need; with the budget and time you have. 

CONTACT

Don’t hesitate to reach out! Whether it is to ask a question, get a price quote, or just have a chat about video games. Send an email, we love networking and making new industry friends. 

Email: jb@goodgameresearch.com