Q&A with CEO of Jest on How AI is Speeding Up Mobile Game Development & Testing

Manual playtesting has long been a massive time constraint for game development. For marketplaces that process thousands of game submissions, the traditional review process is a grueling bottleneck: a human must open each app, manually tap through core flows, verify SDK initializations, and catch UI bugs. This manual approach is not only slow, often taking days for a single build, but it is also prone to review fatigue, where human testers miss critical edge cases after a long afternoon of repetitive playthroughs. As the volume of games explode in the AI era, this manual review has become an unsustainable barrier to scale.

Now Jest, a company building the world’s first marketplace for messaging games, is pioneering an agentic approach to game quality assurance with Player 01, an autonomous AI agent designed to play and test games exactly like a human would. 

Led by CEO and Co-Founder Deyan Vitanov, the San Francisco-based startup is leveraging the global adoption of RCS to build a frictionless marketplace where games live directly in the messaging thread. By bridging Anthropic’s computer-use capabilities with browser automation, Player 01 can independently navigate a game, verify technical integrations, and condense a full playtest into a concise, 2-minute summary for human review. 

We spoke with Vitanov about how this AI-driven infrastructure is enabling Jest to replace the outdated app store model with a faster, smarter, and more developer-friendly ecosystem. 

Here’s what he has to say: 

Q: How does Player 01’s ability to see and reason about game UI differentiate it from traditional, rigid automated testing scripts?

Traditional automated testing relies on rigid, rule-based scripts: tap here, check this button, verify this field. While effective for narrowly defined cases, this approach falters with games and interactive apps, where real user behavior is unpredictable and unscripted.

Player 01 differs by approaching testing like a human reviewer. It navigates each game on Jest, evaluating technical soundness, audience-appropriate content, and platform integration. By interpreting on-screen elements and reasoning through the experience, it identifies what feels broken, confusing, or poorly built. Instead of checking boxes, it assesses the actual user journey.

This distinction is critical for us. While the App Store employs many reviewers to achieve quality control at scale, our small team cannot support such overhead. Player 01 lets us maintain consistent standards across every game on Jest, without the unmanageable manual burden.

Q: What does condensing a 20-minute manual playtest into a 2-minute review mean for your ability to scale as submissions reach the thousands?

It fundamentally changes our approach to scale. If every submission demanded a lengthy manual review, we’d be forced to design processes around bottlenecks, not growth. The cost and staffing required to handle thousands of submissions would be prohibitive for a small company.

Reducing review times from 20 minutes to two lets us handle far more submissions without sacrificing quality. Developers benefit from faster turnaround, quicker iteration, and a platform that scales with the ecosystem. We’ve already run over 5,000 tests, an unthinkable feat before AI.

For a startup, that efficiency is not just about saving time but also about enabling entire categories of work that would otherwise require a massive headcount from day one. We are a small team, and AI lets us operate with the rigor and consistency of a much larger organization.

Q: How will opening these autonomous AI reports directly to developers accelerate their ability to squash bugs and polish integrations?

Speed is essential for developer iteration. If creators wait days for vague feedback, momentum stalls. Immediate, detailed reports pinpointing friction, broken flows, integration issues, or UI confusion, enable rapid diagnosis and fixes.

Our goal is to turn the approval process from a black box into a collaborative loop. Developers deserve clear, actionable feedback, not just a “rejected” or “needs changes” verdict. Understanding what to improve, why it matters, and how to fix it directly accelerates development.

The impact is substantial: shorter feedback loops lead to faster build cycles and higher quality outcomes. Studios can focus on creating and refining, rather than guessing and resubmitting. As we scale to thousands of submissions, the compounded efficiency strengthens the ecosystem for everyone.

Q: Why is the messaging thread a superior distribution channel for developers compared to the traditional “monopoly” of mobile app stores?

The App Store was a historic innovation, but it’s now a saturated market. Discovery is hard, user acquisition costly, and incumbents dominate attention.

Messaging inverts that model. Rather than requiring users to search, download, and install an app, you meet them in their everyday Messages app. Games launch instantly via links, and re-engagement happens naturally through trusted conversation threads.

This approach reduces friction, lowers acquisition costs, and fosters a direct developer-user connection. With RCS now on both Android and iOS, the potential audience nears four billion, no new downloads required. We see this as a once-in-a-generation chance to reset the playing field.

Q: How did Apple’s 2024 adoption of RCS provide the universal standard necessary for Jest to finally emerge from stealth?

Before Apple adopted RCS, messaging was fragmented. Android and iPhone followed separate paths, making universal rich experiences difficult to build.

Then iOS shipped with RCS support exactly as promised. Modern messaging features, buttons, carousels, rich media, suggested replies, became available across both major mobile ecosystems, no downloads required. This finally created a true universal foundation for interactive messaging apps.

For us, cross-platform RCS was our unlock. What was once a niche protocol became a global distribution layer for four billion users, making it real enough for us to launch Jest out of stealth.

Q: Beyond the technology, how does allowing developers to keep 90% of their revenue fundamentally change the math for indie game studios?

For indie studios, margins are everything. Every percentage point of revenue share affects profitability, hiring, and the ability to fund the next title.

Traditional app stores take 30% off the top, which is a significant hit, especially for small teams. With developers keeping 90% of earnings, the math shifts: more room for experimentation, runway for slow launches, and resources to reinvest in content and growth.

Healthier economics create better ecosystems. When studios build sustainably and not just survive, they take more risks, innovate, and deliver superior products for players.

Q: To what do you attribute the 3-4x higher retention rates seen in messaging games compared to their standalone app counterparts?

Messaging is the stickiest surface on any phone. It’s where people connect daily with friends and family, an environment of familiarity and trust. Games inside this space leverage existing habits, avoiding the friction of new installs, forgotten app icons, or push notifications. By living in threads users already visit, re-engagement happens naturally.

There is also far less friction in the experience. There is no install barrier, no forgotten app icon buried on a home screen, and no need to actively remember to come back. The game is already present in a thread that users return to constantly, so re-engagement happens naturally rather than through push notifications that get ignored or dismissed.

Q: What specific qualities is the Jest Games Fund looking for when deciding which titles deserve a $1M investment?

We look for teams that understand strong gameplay and the unique dynamics of new platforms. Messaging isn’t just another screen; it’s a distinct medium. We value robust core loops, clear social potential, quick onboarding, and teams willing to rethink distribution. Curiosity, speed, and product instinct matter most. Top founders recognize new platforms create new winners and adapt accordingly.

Q: While Player 01 acts as a force multiplier, do you envision a future where the game approval process is 100% autonomous?

AI excels in scalability, consistency, and initial review. Yet, platforms still require human judgment, nuance, and accountability.

I see a future where AI is primary but human-supervised. AI should handle repetitive reviews, flag risks, and accelerate decisions, while humans address edge cases, policies, and developer trust. The best systems blend machine efficiency with human judgment, not replace it.

Q: How is Jest capitalizing on the broader cultural shift where users increasingly prefer interacting with technology through a chat interface?

People are increasingly comfortable doing everything through conversation, whether with AI, customer support, shopping assistants, or each other. Chat is now a natural interface.

We believe apps will move further in this direction. Rather than navigating menus or downloading separate software, users will expect lightweight, instant experiences within their existing conversations.

Jest is built for this shift. We’re creating infrastructure for apps and games that feel native to messaging, not bolted on. As conversation becomes the default interface, developers need a platform designed for that future.

Learn more at https://about.jest.com/.