We help you combine insights from real-player playtests, surveys, interviews, and gameplay data refined by AI and expert researchers to craft unforgettable player experiences.
A mobile RPG studio noticed that 43% of players were quitting before reaching the first boss fight, but internal telemetry didn't explain why.
Through a focused First-Time User Experience (FTUE) study combining playtests and player surveys, within 48 hours, they uncovered key friction points:
Players struggled with unclear tutorial objectives
Navigation felt unintuitive, especially on smaller devices
Ability mechanics were complex and poorly explained
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Get insights that truly reflect your target audience
Seasoned game user research experts lead our team with deep genre know-how. They understand the quirks of every development phase and deliver the clarity and direction that studios need to build exceptional player experiences.
Use raw footage or structured insights to refine onboarding, adjust mechanics, and boost retention.
Tell us what you want to learn and upload your build. We set up the entire playtest, targeting players, tasks, surveys, and study design based on your goals.
Your dashboard updates as soon as sessions start. AI flags friction, hesitation, aha moments, and comprehension gaps, while expert researchers turn them into clear themes and recommendations.
We handle everything - from screening, recruiting, coordinating, scheduling, and incentivising players to securely distributing your build. Each session captures gameplay, voice, and emotional reactions. Our team reviews everything, and AI transforms raw reactions into measurable insights.
Protect your creative vision with enterprise-grade security, data compliance, and IP control, while delivering insights at unmatched speed and scale.
Lysto's Player Experience (Px) platform helps game studios run structured playtests with the right players and turn feedback into actionable insights.
Studios recruit playtesters from Lysto's 1M+ verified player panel, filtering by age range, gender, region, gamer profile, genres played, and experience level. Alternatively, they can bring their own players from existing communities like Discord or social channels.
Instead of manually reviewing hours of gameplay footage, Lysto's AI structures and analyzes the sessions, surfacing key moments, player reactions, and patterns. The AI identifies where players struggle, what engages them, and how behaviour changes over time.
All session data is organized in a collaborative workspace where teams can review recordings, access AI-generated insights, analyze survey responses, and invite team members to collaborate. Lysto does the heavy lifting by handling recruitment, scheduling, data capture, and analysis, allowing teams to solely focus on understanding player behaviour and making confident decisions.
Lysto offers two main methods for recruiting playtesters.
The first is through our player panel of 1M+ registered users. These players are verified for their gaming profile and experience before being invited to participate in a playtest. You can filter playtesters by age range, gender, region, gamer profile, genres played, and experience level to ensure feedback comes from players who closely match your target audience. Additional targeting requirements can also be added if your study requires more specific player criteria.
The second method is Bring Your Own Players (BYOP), which allows you to recruit from your existing gaming communities such as Discord groups, social channels, or live game audiences. This method works well when you want to test with players who are already familiar with your game or when you need community-specific feedback.
Both methods ensure your playtests include relevant, verified players for relevant feedback.
Yes. Our Bring Your Own Players (BYOP) recruitment method allows game studios to run playtests with their existing gaming communities.
This approach works well when you want to test with players from Discord servers, social channels, in-game audiences, or any other community you've already built. You maintain control over who participates while still benefiting from Lysto's structured testing environment, session management, and insight analysis.
You can also combine your own players with Lysto's global player panel if you need to expand to new audience segments or supplement your community with additional targeting criteria.
The number of players depends on what you're trying to learn.
For usability, onboarding, and clarity testing, 5–10 playtesters are typically sufficient to uncover most major issues and friction points. For behavioural validation, feature evaluation, or progression tuning, 10–20 playtesters provide stronger confidence by revealing consistent patterns across sessions.
The ideal number ultimately depends on your playtesting goals and the complexity of what you're evaluating. Lysto's Expert User Researcher team can help determine the right sample size based on your specific objectives.
Yes. Lysto supports both moderated and unmoderated playtesting approaches.
Unmoderated playtests allow players to interact with your game naturally, without observation, making them well suited for capturing authentic behaviour, identifying usability issues, and testing at scale. These playtests work well for Single-Session, Multi-Session, and Longitudinal studies.
Moderated playtests involve live observation and real-time interaction with players. A moderator watches gameplay, asks follow-up questions, and can pause sessions to explore player reasoning and decision-making. These sessions provide deeper qualitative insights and are effective for understanding motivations, clarifying confusion, and investigating complex mechanics or early prototypes.
The choice between moderated and unmoderated depends on your research goals. Get in touch with our Expert User Researcher team (contact@lysto.io) can help determine which approach best fits your objectives.
Depending on how your study is structured, Lysto provides several types of deliverables.
You receive gameplay recordings from each session, think-aloud player commentary, and audio transcripts that capture what players say as they play. Session completion data shows how players progressed through tasks and where they encountered friction.
If surveys are included, you receive post-playtest or post-session survey responses that capture player reflections while the experience is fresh.
AI-generated insights help surface patterns across sessions, identifying key moments, player reactions, and areas of confusion or engagement. Depending on the chosen deliverables, Research Reports are also provided that synthesize findings into actionable recommendations, helping teams understand what needs to change and why.
Together, these deliverables provide both granular session-level detail and high-level patterns, making it easier to make confident product decisions.
Lysto focuses on understanding player experience and behaviour, not just technical functionality or isolated data points.
Traditional QA testing identifies bugs, crashes, and technical issues using trained testers who follow predefined test cases. Lysto playtests involve real players interacting with your game naturally, helping teams understand usability, onboarding, engagement, and the reasons behind player behaviour.
Survey tools capture self-reported data in isolation, often after the experience. Lysto combines gameplay observation with surveys, capturing what players do alongside what they say. This provides context that surveys alone cannot offer, showing where players struggle, what they find engaging, and how their behaviour changes over time.
Lysto also structures all feedback within a collaborative workspace, making it easier for teams to review sessions, share insights, and translate findings into design decisions.
Yes. Agencies and external research teams can use Lysto's Player Experience (Px) platform for their client projects.
The platform allows user researchers to find real players to playtest their client's games, run structured studies, and deliver actionable insights. User Researchers can recruit from Lysto's 1M+ player panel with precise targeting criteria or bring their own players, and access all the same features including AI-generated insights, gameplay recordings, and reports (if any).
Role-based access controls allow agencies to manage permissions for their team and clients, deciding who sees builds, who accesses insights, and who gets platform access down to the permission level. This ensures client work remains secure and organized within the agency's workflow.
For more information on using Lysto for agency projects, please contact your Games Partnership Manager or reach out to us at contact@lysto.io.
