Being prepared

As this is my second blog post on the topic of play testing, I will rather focus on preparing for playtesting, than the value of playtesting itself. If you want to read about that instead, check out this post. When working on a game it is very important to be prepared for things as Alpha and Beta presentations, but also for events like playtesting sessions.

This was unfortunately not the case when we had our first playtesting at university. Motivated, proud and confident about our product we went to show off our game and get opinions, but we were not really prepared for the playtesting session itself. We just thought bringing the game on a laptop would be enough, but we were proven wrong. As we only finished some of the assets, mechanics and game elements the day before, we did not really have the time to test the game ourselves. This seems a bit redundant, as the playtesting session is there for finding those issues, but there were some crucial problems that we did not fix before and that influenced how our game was perceived. Fixing up those obvious major issues would have allowed the playtesters to focus on certain design decisions, rather than big bugs in the game. Additionally, we just prepared a small survey right before the session on the same day, so it was not really thought out to well and just covered some basic questions.

The second time, we tried to do it better. We brought two laptops that the game can be played on, prepared headphones for the playtesters to have the proper gaming experience and our survey was well thought out, too. Unfortunately, there were still some bugs and issues in the code, but we got some valuable feedback from our testers.

All in all we realised how important it is to be well prepared when you want to show off a game, even if it is just for an audience of playtesters. You should have a playable version ready in advance. Even if it does not include all the recent features, a stable earlier version is way better than a broken recent one. Also take some time to write a proper survey that is tailored to your design decisions as well as the overall impression of the game. Bring some laptops for the testers to play and have fun with them enjoying your product!