Playtesting
Playtests are an incredibly important tool during any game development. However, contrary to popular belief, playtesting isn’t as easy as simply making people sit down and play your game.
This article will empower you to get the most out of your playtests.
Playtest with an objective
If there’s only one point you remember from this article, it should be this one: before doing a playtest, establish what are your objective(s) for it. What information do you need to help you be more confident with your design decisions and your overall work on the game?
Examples: Do players understand how to use a mechanic? Can they complete a puzzle within the intended time? How does the sprinting mechanic feel?
There are usually 2 main types of objectives that generates different issues:
Usability, i.e. do players notice (eyes), understand (mind) and use (hands) the different game elements? Usability issues are unnecessary interruptions or pain points that have not been designed by the developers, but impacts the player experience; whether players like the game or not.
Example of issues: players don’t understand the text objective, a prompt is never noticed, trigger sensitivity is too high.What players think of the game, their perception and appreciation of it.
Example of issues: jumping feels clunky, a specific enemy type is too easy.
Before doing a playtest, be aware of the state of your build (any bugs, missing features, or feedback, etc.). Verify if there’s anything that could affect what you wanted to learn with your objectives and adapt your plans accordingly.
Focus and frame your questions
When preparing questions to interview the participants of your playtest or creating a survey for them ask yourselves why do I need this question? Will it help me answer my objectives?
Questions that do not at all, should not be asked.
While it's perfectly acceptable to have some broad questions to break the ice or get more spontaneous answers, you’ll want to have focused questions at some point. This will allow you to directly assess for each objective if there are any issues impacting player experience.
Example: If you want to assess how easy it is to use a character ability, you could start with ‘’What did you think of this character?’’. However, if it doesn’t come spontaneously, you will still need to ask them at some point: “How easy is it to use its ability?”
Also, when there is an issue, you will want to know ‘’WHY is it occurring’’, so you can have actionable feedback for your objective.
Example: If the ability is not easy to use, why is that? Is it related to the condition to trigger it? The cooldown? The speed? The outcome of combat?
Gathering data
When possible, it's a good idea to record playtest sessions. Especially the voices and screens of the players.
Looking at how people play and what they communicate will give you additional insight into how they experience the game, what caused them issues or what was understood and how quickly.
Report your findings
After the playtest is over, analyze what you have learned and for each objective assess whether it is a success or a fail. Justify the WHY it's a success or failure by using the feedback you got from players, as well as any observation you have made by watching them.
Present your findings and make sure that, as a team, you decide on where to go from there.Each issue in your report should be composed of 3 main components, whenever possible:
A short description of the issue: what happened, where, how often, etc.);
A cause: the WHY of the issue, which is related to the design);
The consequence on player experience.
