Gaming Platform New Player Onboarding Research

Optimize Your Gaming Platform's New Player Experience

Getting new players through those crucial first minutes and hours can make or break a gaming platform. This Gaming Platform New Player Onboarding Research Form helps you understand exactly what works—and what doesn't—during that critical window when players decide whether to stay or leave.

Why new player onboarding research matters

In gaming, you have roughly 15 minutes to hook a new player before they bounce. Tutorial pacing, UI clarity, early progression rewards, and community touchpoints all play a role in whether someone becomes a regular player or churns immediately. This research template captures feedback across all those dimensions, so you can identify friction points and double down on what's working.

Whether you're running a mobile game, PC platform, esports community or multiplayer service, understanding your players' first-hour experience is essential for improving retention, reducing drop-off and building a loyal player base.

What this template helps you discover

This form is designed to capture actionable insights from new players while their experience is still fresh:

• Tutorial effectiveness: Find out if your onboarding sequence is too long, too short, confusing or just right. Identify which mechanics need better explanation and where players get lost.
• First-hour retention factors: Understand what keeps players engaged—or frustrated—during their first session. Discover the hooks that work and the pain points that drive people away.
• Community integration paths: Learn how new players discover guilds, clans, voice chat and social features. Identify barriers to community participation and opportunities to connect players earlier.
• UI and navigation clarity: Get direct feedback on whether menus, controls and key features are intuitive or overwhelming for first-time users.
• Progression and reward pacing: Assess whether early-game progression feels rewarding and motivating, or grindy and slow.

Built for gaming and UX teams

This template is perfect for:

• Game studios and developers conducting user research during beta testing, soft launches or post-launch optimization
• UX researchers and designers in gaming companies running structured feedback sessions with new players
• Product managers tracking onboarding metrics and qualitative feedback to inform roadmap priorities
• Community and player experience teams looking to improve social onboarding and early community touchpoints
• Marketing and growth teams seeking to understand drop-off reasons and improve activation rates

How Paperform makes UX research faster and smarter

Paperform is built for teams that need professional, on-brand research forms without the dev time. You get a doc-style editor that lets you format questions, add images or video clips from your game, and apply conditional logic to ask follow-up questions based on player responses—like diving deeper into tutorial confusion if someone rates it poorly.

Once responses start rolling in, use AI Insights to automatically summarize hundreds of player comments into clear themes, pain points and feature requests. Instead of manually reading and tagging open-ended feedback, you get instant reports that highlight patterns and prioritize what to fix first.

Connect your form to Slack, Notion, Airtable or your project management tool via Stepper (stepper.io), Zapier or webhooks, so player feedback flows directly into your team's workflow. Trigger follow-up emails to players who had poor experiences, tag high-priority issues for your dev team, or update your research dashboard in real time—all without code.

Design a research experience players want to complete

Generic survey tools feel like homework. Paperform lets you create a research form that feels like part of your game's brand. Match your game's color palette, add character art or UI screenshots, embed a trailer or tutorial clip, and write in the same voice your players hear in-game. You can even use Guided Mode to ask one question at a time, making longer surveys feel less overwhelming and increasing completion rates.

Send your form via email after a player's first session, embed it in your game client or launcher, or share it in Discord and social channels where your community hangs out. Track completion rates and use conditional logic to keep the form short and relevant for each player's specific experience.

Keep player data secure and compliant

Gaming platforms handle player data from around the world, so privacy and security matter. Paperform is SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliant, with data residency controls, encrypted submissions, and the ability to anonymize responses if needed. You can collect feedback confidently, knowing your player data is handled with care and meets regulatory standards.

Pricing and getting started

Start collecting player feedback today on Paperform's free plan, or upgrade to Essentials, Pro, or Agency+ for advanced features like conditional logic, integrations, AI Insights, and team collaboration tools. All plans include generous submission limits and no surprise fees, so you can scale your research as your player base grows.

Trusted by gaming studios, SaaS companies, UX teams and researchers worldwide, Paperform gives you the flexibility, insights and automation you need to understand your players and build better onboarding experiences—no code required.

Ready to level up your new player onboarding? Use this template to start gathering actionable feedback and turning first-time players into long-term fans.