Watch the full video where our UX team walks through how we structure longitudinal studies at Antidote
How can you test the retention and engagement of your game beyond first impressions?
Longitudinal studies track players over multiple days or weeks, revealing how engagement shifts over time. At Antidote, we’ve organized longitudinal studies across every type of game, from narrative adventures to competitive multiplayer titles.
Our UX team breaks down when longitudinal studies make sense for your game, what insights they reveal and how to structure them for maximum impact.
What is a Longitudinal Study?
A longitudinal study is a playtest that takes place over multiple days or sessions rather than a single sitting. Players might test for 2-3 days, a full week or even longer, depending on your research goals.
During this time, players complete specific tasks or play for set hours while you track their progression. As they gain knowledge of your game and improve their skills, you capture how their experience changes, so:
- where they stay engaged
- where they drop off
- which mechanics are liked (or disliked)
The key difference from a First Time User Experience (FTUE) is that you’re measuring lasting impressions, not the first.
Which Games Benefit Most?
Longitudinal studies are applicable to games that offer different difficulty levels or things to test over time, allowing for progression to be seen. While the genre doesn’t matter, a game must have enough variety to be tested for more than two or three days.
Validating Retention or Engagement
For games with repetitive core mechanics, like League of Legends or Counter-Strike, longitudinal studies check if a game remains engaging after the initial session. Even when the core gameplay loop stays the same, you can measure whether players stay motivated to return day after day.
Walkthrough Playtests
For games that are long (e.g. 15 hours), players might have a week to complete the whole game. This allows you to see where players have issues, find parts that are boring or engaging, and make edits to ensure smooth progression in difficulty throughout the entire experience.
Narrative or Progression-Heavy Games
For story games like The Last of Us, the study helps understand engagement over a longer duration, identify any pain points during progression, and validate how knowledge is taught and shown to the player. You can track whether tutorials and onboarding are intuitive or if players forget critical mechanics hours later.
Key Elements for an Effective Longitudinal Study
Organization and Coordination
Longitudinal studies require significantly more coordination than standard playtests. The key is having great prior organization to ensure participants are available for multiple days or hours without distractions from work, studies or personal obligations.
Coordinating people, especially across different time zones, requires careful planning. You need systems to track individual players across multiple sessions while also enabling day-by-day comparisons across your entire player group.
Recruitment Strategy
It’s important to recruit the right people for the test, often those with previous experience testing games for extended periods. The goal is selecting the type of players who represent the largest percentage of those who will play your game (your main target audience).
For longitudinal studies specifically, reliability matters. Based on our experience, players with proven track records for multi-day testing who show up consistently and provide quality feedback throughout are ideal candidates.
Clear Communication and Instructions
Players need clear instructions and communication because they must adhere to all rules, track their playing time and often complete surveys or challenges between sessions.
Effective longitudinal studies provide dedicated communication channels where players can report issues immediately, clear milestone tracking so players know exactly what’s expected and real-time support when players hit bugs or blockers.
Data Collection Methods
At Antidote, we use multiple methods to collect data during longitudinal studies:
Surveys and Diaries
- Session-Based Surveys: Completed after specific session lengths (e.g., every two hours of play)
- Daily Surveys: Structured to allow for comparison throughout the study, tracking how perceptions change day by day
- Milestone Surveys: Triggered when players reach certain points like boss fights, chapter completions, or difficulty spikes
- Final Retrospective Survey: At study end, asking players to reflect on the entire experience differently than daily survey
Antidote’s Platform
Our platform simplifies the complexity of tracking multiple players across multiple sessions:
- Individual Player Views: See every session organized chronologically per player
- Day-by-Day Comparisons: Compare all players’ Day 1 performance, then Day 2, Day 3, etc.
- Emotion Detection: Facial tracking captures engagement levels throughout sessions
Transcripts and Annotations: Automatic transcription of player commentary with timestamped annotations for efficient review - AI Insights: Get key summaries and talking points per session or project-wide, helping you quickly identify patterns without manually reviewing all data
Post-Game Interviews and Focus Groups
After sessions, interviews or focus groups can provide deeper qualitative insights. Can be done remotely or at our Game UX Lab located in Barcelona.
Case Studies: Real-Life Applications
1) Narrative Adventure Game (Tomb Raider/Uncharted Style)
Challenge: A studio needed to validate that their story-driven game maintained engagement across all chapters and that difficulty progression felt fair.
Approach:
- Players completed the game chapter by chapter over multiple days
- After each chapter completion, they filled out chapter-specific surveys
- Boss fights triggered special surveys to evaluate difficulty spikes
- Daily wrap-up surveys tracked overall enjoyment and progression expectations
Results: Episode 3 consistently rated very low and created a major pain point for players. The client used this feedback to rework that section before launch.
2) Driving/Taxi Simulator Game
Challenge: Unlike narrative games with clear chapters, this title was open-ended with ongoing tasks and no obvious milestone divisions.
Approach:
- Daily surveys asking about specific tasks completed that day
- Freedom for players to set their own session lengths
- Tracked session duration patterns to identify organic engagement levels
Results: Players who loved the game naturally played 4-hour sessions. Players who weren’t engaged logged only the minimal required time. This session length data, combined with survey feedback, gave clear retention signals without needing artificial milestones.
3) 9-Hour Gameplay Study with Multiple Checkpoints
Challenge: A studio needed structured feedback at specific intervals across 9 hours of total playtime.
Approach:
- Players completed 9 total hours split into sessions: 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 hour blocks
- Maximum 2 sessions per day to prevent burnout
- Same survey repeated after each 2-hour block to track changing perceptions
- Final different survey at study end for retrospective insights
- Dedicated Discord channels for each player with direct client access for immediate issue reporting
Results: Real-time Discord support meant bugs and blockers were resolved immediately. The consistent survey structure across sessions provided clear comparison data showing exactly how player perception evolved from hour 2 through hour 9.
Need Help Organizing a Longitudinal Study?
If you’re wondering whether players will stay engaged past the first session or if your progression systems work as intended, a longitudinal study provides answers that single-session testing can’t.
Antidote can help you organize and manage these studies with two options:
- Managed Research Service: Our UX team handles the entire research process for you, from initial recruitment to running the test.
- Self-Service Platform: Organize the study yourself with your own players using our Antidote platform
If you need more information or want to discuss which approach works best for your game, feel free to contact us. We’re happy to help 😊
