How To Make A Game: Playtesting Advice From Game Designers
How To Make A Game: Playtesting Advice From Game Designers
How To Make A Game: Playtesting Advice From Game Designers
By Angela M. Webber
April 11, 2018
Summary
Playtesting, the process of playing an unfinished game to get feedback on its design, is an important phase of designing a game.
We talked to designers of successful roleplaying, board and card games to get their best advice on playtesting your game.
"I think there is a common myth or misunderstanding that every game needs major playtesting as a part of its development cycle. Playtesting has different specific uses, depending on what you are trying to learn."
"I think that's really important, because when game designers often take a very leading/directing role in all their playtesting, they don't articulate in their text what they're doing. When other people try to play it, the game just fall apart," said Avery.
The rules as written may not include enough information to get the feeling of the game across without having the creator present, so sitting in on a session where you are not the one running a game is a good way to make sure you aren't "Filling in the blanks" without realizing it in your own tests, said Hayley.
How do you find people to playtest your unfinished game? Conventions like GenCon and Metatopia were mentioned by many designers as good places to find lots of players, and many tabletop-focused conventions have a system to help designers meet up with players to get tests together, whether formal or informal.
Marcus started a game developers group where he lives in Omaha, Nebraska, at a local board game cafe.
Many such meet-ups exist at game cafes and game stores around the world.
"You can't really measure fun. You can ask people how they feel about one aspect of the game," said Jon Ritter, Operations Manager of Lay Waste Games, who created the board game Dragoon.
You want everyone to love this game you made! How do you get over this fair, and how do you know what feedback to take seriously?
Reference
Webber, A. M. (2018, April 11). How To Make A Game: Playtesting Advice From Game Designers. Retrieved April 29, 2020, from https://geekandsundry.com/how-to-make-a-game-playtesting-advice-from-game-designers/