6.7. Play TestingΒΆ
One aspect of evaluating and iterating on any kind of design project is getting outside feedback. You, as the game designer, know too much about how things are supposed to work to see that the game play is confusing; you are so used to the bugs in your game that you subconsciously avoid them and have forgotten they are there; you are too good at your own game to accurately judge if it is well balanced for a new player.
The ways to reveal these issues with your project is to get other people to play your game. Courtesy of Extra Credits, here are some tips about how to handle play testing:
Important rules to remember:
- Your game is not perfect. There will be problems. The goal of playtesting is to find and eliminate those problems.
- If one of your playtesters finds a major problem in your game, they have given you a great gift. Do not be hostile or defensive; be gracious.
- When a problem is identified by a playtester, your goal is not to verbally defend your game or to explain why the playtester is wrong. Your goal is to understand why the playtester feels the way they do and what it says about your game design.
- You can’t please all the people all of the time. Maybe a tester does not like the genre of your game or greatly enjoy the aesthetics you were shooting for. Never dismiss criticism out of hand, but make sure to worry less about critiques of what you were shooting for and focus more on critiques of how well you achieve what you were shooting for.