Gamelight Interview Series: Jack Dunne

Welcome to a new edition of Voices of Mobile Gaming!

Today, we’re speaking with Jack Dunne, VP of Research Operations at PlaytestCloud, whose work focuses on how game teams gather and interpret player feedback throughout development and beyond launch. With a strong background in playtesting and player research, Jack has spent years looking at how studios identify friction, understand player behavior, and make better decisions around the overall player experience.

At a time when retention remains one of the biggest challenges in mobile gaming, understanding why players stay - or leave - has become more important than ever. While analytics can show what players do, playtesting can often reveal why they do it. In this interview, we explore how studios use playtesting not just to evaluate first impressions, but to spot deeper retention issues and improve the long-term player journey.

Hi Jack,
It’s great to have you with us! Retention is one of the most important goals for any game team, but the reasons behind player drop-off are not always easy to spot through metrics alone. Let’s start by looking at how playtesting can help studios better understand player behavior - and use those insights to improve retention.

There's often a huge gap between what analytics sees and what user research (and community teams) see. Analytics can tell you that players are dropping off on day three after losing a level. But it can't tell you how frustration has been quietly building across multiple sessions, or flag that an inconsistent UX pattern is slowly hurting the experience. Those things only become visible when you're actually watching someone play.

I often say that analytics can identify a point in time and drive a point home, but user research tells the story. Together, they give product teams the most informed view possible.

Unfortunately, it's very common for studios to rely solely on analytics after launch. The most successful studios I've seen are the ones with strong collaboration between analytics, research, and marketing bringing holistic player insight into every stage of development.

1. When studios try to improve retention, what do they most often miss if they rely only on analytics and not on real player observation?

2. From your perspective, what are the clearest signs during a playtest that a game may struggle with retention later on?

Honestly, game designers learn more from watching the first five minutes of a playtest than they do in eight hours of product meetings 😀 The initial experience, as seen by your target audience (not family and friends or other developers) is going to tell you more about your retention than anything else.

When a player stumbles in those early minutes, loses the thread, or disengages before the core loop has even had a chance to land, that's your signal. Those early moments are where first impressions are formed, in mobile there’s no coming back from a bad early impression.

Behaviour is one of the clearest indicators. If players are consistently playing longer than the session was designed to run, that’s a really strong indication that you’re onto something. People vote with their time, and when they overstay, it usually means the game is doing something right.

Beyond that, it's about using the right research methods. Multi-session or longitudinal studies, where players are asked to return across several days, give you a much richer picture than a single sitting can. Open-ended studies also have a role here when players have freedom to play naturally, without a structured endpoint, you start to see what genuinely holds their attention and what doesn't. Combining these methods gives you a much more honest read on whether retention is real, which helps ease tensions before going to market.

3. How can playtesting help studios understand not just first-session engagement, but whether players are actually likely to come back?

4. What retention problems tend to appear only in multi-session or post-launch playtesting, rather than in early one-session tests?

Several things only really surface once players have spent meaningful time with a game. Small UX frustrations that feel minor in isolation can compound into something genuinely off-putting across multiple sessions. Boredom is another one. A game can feel fresh and engaging in hour one, but if there's not enough to do by day three, you'll see players disengaging in ways that a one-session test simply won't reveal.

Feature use is also worth calling out. You might have depth in your game that players never discover, or features that sound good in a design doc but don't land the way you expected once people are actually in the rhythm of playing.

And monetisation gates: players tend to only see these after multiple sessions, it’s important to get their opinion on these after they have invested time in the game already.

5. What are the most common misconceptions studios have about why players churn, and how does playtesting help reveal the real reasons?

There are a few assumptions I see come up repeatedly that playtesting tends to challenge pretty quickly.

The most common is probably "the game is too hard." Playtesting often reveals that the real issue is somewhere else entirely: confusion, a UX friction point, or a motivation problem rather than a skill one, your game is not that hard.

Teams also frequently assume their FTUE (first-time user experience) is working because their team can make it through with their eyes closed and it’s similar to a competitors. Playtesting will show a much different outcome. The same can be said for the core loop.

And then there are surveys. It’s well documented that you cannot just rely on surveys at a smaller sample size. Players often rate something positively because they don't have a reference point for what better would look like (or they don’t remember). Watching the actual playtest sessions it’s a crucial part of forming a better understanding of what’s happening.

6. If you had to name the top retention issues studios most often uncover through playtesting, what would they be — and what usually causes them?

The issues we see come up most consistently tend to cluster around a few core areas:

Core loop problems. If the fundamental gameplay loop isn't “fun” nothing else in the game can compensate for that. This is foundational, and playtesting shows it fast.

FTUE problems. Onboarding is one the first big risks in any mobile game. Too much instruction, too little context, a tutorial that you can “lose” that throws you into a weird loop? It’ll kill D1 and you won’t have a chance to think about what happens afterwards

Poorly designed monetisation. When monetisation feels unfair, disruptive, or poorly timed, it creates friction that hurts the experience even for players who are otherwise enjoying the game. Getting the balance right between paying players and free-to-play players is harder than it looks, and playtesting helps reveal where that balance breaks down.

The game gets better later: Often we’ll see players have a really bad time on the second or third day, then they’ll unlock something (social features, a new weapon, the quadruple lightball or similar) and have a fantastic time again. It’s linked to the monetization and progression points

7. At which stages of the player journey do retention problems usually appear most clearly in playtesting, and what are the typical signs at each stage?

Two moments stand out

The first five minutes. This is where everything is on the line. If a player isn't having a good time within those early minutes, they're very likely to churn in the real world. In a playtest setting, the signs are things like visible confusion, players abandoning before the core loop has even completed, or struggling to understand what they're supposed to do or why they should care.

The second day. If a player doesn't come back for day two of a study they're being paid to participate in, that's a doozey. Life does get in the way sometimes, that's worth acknowledging, but a pattern of second-day drop-off points to a real motivation problem. It suggests the first session didn't leave them with enough of a reason to return.
Beyond those two, multi-session testing can surface issues at later stages too progression walls, content exhaustion, and monetisation friction tend to show up further down the journey. But if you're prioritising, the first five minutes and the second day are where I'd look first.

8. If a studio wants to improve retention, which areas should it review first — and why?

My honest answer is that almost nothing else matters until you've got day one right. If your core loop and FTUE aren't hitting their targets, fixing anything downstream is working around the problem rather than solving it.

So I'd start there: the core loop and the FTUE. These are the foundation. The core loop needs to be genuinely engaging something players want to repeat. The FTUE needs to get players into that loop efficiently and enjoyably, without overloading them or losing them before they've had a chance to feel the pull of the game.

Once those are solid, I'd turn to economy and monetisation. This often gets treated as a separate conversation, but it's deeply connected to retention. Do players feel like they're making real progress? Is there enough content to keep them coming back? Is the experience fair for free-to-play players alongside paying ones? Monetisation, when it's well-balanced, is one of the most powerful drivers of return visits. When it's not, it quietly undermines everything else.

9. What are the clearest player behaviours or reactions that usually signal a retention problem during a playtest?

There are a few things I'd flag as consistent warning signs:

Players who simply can't play the game - whether that's due to technical issues, crashes, or a control scheme that felt innovative in the design room but doesn't translate to actual players. If seven developers think a new mechanic is great, that's not sufficient evidence that it works.

Survey responses that paint a picture of dissatisfaction. Individual comments can be explained away, but when a pattern emerges across multiple respondents - frustration, confusion, boredom. You shouldn’t ignore that.

Open-ended playtests finishing early. When players in an unstructured session choose to stop before their time is up, that's one of the clearest behavioural signals you can get. They're not being asked to stop…

Whatever game designers think is wrong after watching players play

10. If a mobile studio wanted to build a smarter playtesting process specifically to improve retention, what would your ideal approach look like?

The starting point I'd always recommend is having a proper research roadmap. Which is something our team can help out with, if you have the first two days of gameplay in a place where you are happy then I would highly recommend running a longitudinal study in parallel to your soft launch to help pull together the why behind the numbers that you are seeing.