Retention Research and Sentiment Mapping

ROLE: End-to-end UX research | TEAM: Production, Product, Data Science | DURATION: 2.5 months

CONTEXT

Post-launch game feedback across social & community platforms revealed unmet player expectations and dissatisfaction, which led to missed commercial targets and churn. Under pressure to react, rebuild player trust, and recover after a rocky launch, the team pursued a set of solutions. However, we had a gap in the player perspective, and were uncertain whether these solutions would address the root problems. We sought to build a holistic understanding of the gameplay journey across our audiences to make sure that our time is spent pursuing the right problems and building the right things.

OBJECTIVES

  • Identify drivers of early retention & churn in the core loop

  • Map the 5-day player journey across audience segments

  • Explore the connection between Steam reviews, telemetry, and player sentiment to understand reasons behind observed trends

IMPACT

  • Successfully pitched, partnered on, executed, and socialized 2K’s first post-launch foundational research study, which helped the team understand the different player audiences and their gameplay journeys. This research brought together qualitative and quantitative data, telemetry, and new collaborative partnerships, which helped to connect all the disparate pieces together and directly informed the team’s new product strategy.

  • Introduced the idea of foundational, iterative, and evaluative research to the product team and executive leadership, and where each type of research best fits in the production & development lifecycle. This expanded the research team’s toolkit and paved the way for more foundational research at 2K.

APPROACH

Remote diary study, inclusive of a long playthrough paired with touchpoint surveys and telemetry tracking.

150 participants who have never played this game, evenly split across three key segments (n=50 per segment)

  • Participants played over two weeks. Surveys were incentivized and gameplay was voluntary, to naturally engage audiences without forced participation.

  • A smaller sample (n=30) participated in a 5-day digital diary where they reflected on their initial gameplay experience. Participants took a pre-survey, midpoint survey, exit survey, and had the opportunity to take a churn survey if they self-churned (only taking it once and then removed from the study).