Playtesting: Taking your game from good to great
What is playtesting?
You've been working on your passion project. Your game is going to be the next indie darling on the scene. You've carefully crafted the lore, the levels, the characters and the gameplay. The art is stunning. The soundtrack is a masterpiece. It's your magnum opus, but there's just one thing missing - the players!
How do you know that the game you're working on is a great game or even a good one? The answer is playtesting. When you playtest a game, you invite players in to analyze everything from the gameplay loop and mechanics to the art and dialog.
Playtesting answers some important game design questions:
Is my game fun?
What do I need to add or take away from my game to improve it?
Where are players getting confused, stuck or frustrated?
Playtesting doesn't mean showing it to your mom and a few of your friends, though that can be a great place to get started. You need to playtest it with people who don't know you and won't feel pressured by social biases to tell you that your game is brilliant. In other words, the goal is to gather the unvarnished truth from the people who will actually be purchasing and playing your game when it's released.
Why should you playtest your game?
Playtesting is a lot of work, time and sometimes money depending on how your playtesters are compensated. On top of that, it can be hard to hear what sounds like harsh criticism of a game project you've dedicated a lot of your time and passion towards. Why should you bother?
You are not the player.
Read that back to yourself again: You. are. not. the. player! If you've spent enough time working on your game, you may think you are the ultimate arbiter of what could improve the game, but this is called the False-Consensus Effect. It's a trap you can easily fall into while designing or developing a game, but it's a mistake to project your behaviors and anticipate the reactions you think your players will have. When you playtest, the assumptions you make about your players get challenged and often proven false.
Playtesting will improve your game.
That amazing puzzle-laced dungeon you spent all those late nights crafting? It makes sense to you, sure, but you are the one who made it. Of COURSE it makes sense to you! What if your players get frustrated and give up after playing for ten minutes? What if players don't understand how to solve the puzzle or, even worse, that there's a puzzle in there at all? Most importantly, what if players don't find your game fun? All of these questions can be answered by playtesting.
Time investment up front saves you time in the long run.
This sounds counterintuitive because when you playtest early it can feel like it's slowing down your development process. However, playtesting can catch gameplay issues early before you've dedicated a lot of time taking a deep dive into a feature or features that players either don't like or don't understand.
It can create fans of your game.
For many indie devs, the marketing aspect of game development is the most challenging. It's hard to stand out in a crowded market, and even harder to reach potential players. Recruiting a group of playtesters that you regularly get feedback from creates a community of sorts around your game. If your game is fun and you actively listen to your testers' feedback, testers will become fans and tell their friends about that great game they've been playing.
Behind the scenes of a playtest conducted for Thin Ice using a paper prototype.
When should I playtest?
Now that you've been convinced you should be playtesting, the big question that comes next is: When!?
This question doesn't have a definitive answer beyond: as early as possible.
What "possible" looks like will vary from game to game, but a good way to think about it is to assess what your game's main mechanics are. If those are all in a playable state, then get to playtesting! A word of caution here is to beware of scope creep. The crucial word here is main mechanics. That means not to worry about having online multiplayer ready to go before you start playtesting how to jump in your platformer.
The initial version of your game might look rough or have some bugs, but don't be self conscious about showing off your early stage prototype to players. Get your prototype in front of as many people as you can as early as you can to get the best feedback. Analyze the feedback and continuously integrate it into your game as you are working on it. The key is to never stop playtesting.
Where do I find playtesters?
When thinking about where to recruit playtesters, the first thing you need to do is think about your game's audience. Hopefully by this point you've already done that, but in case you haven't - defining your audience means considering the major traits about them that would make them interested in your game.
What to consider about your audience:
Age group
Gender
Platform they play games on
Genres or other games they are fans of
How they play games (i.e. in a group, online, solo)
There's more you can analyze there, but this is a good start if you've never thought about your game's audience before. Once you've considered who your audience is, it's time to start researching where they hang out.
Some game audiences will have specific places they can be recruited, but below is a list of some general places to look for playtesters:
Discord: Look for a server that either relates to your game's genre or to indie games in general
Reddit: Plenty of game genres have their own subreddits so you can be as specific as you want to be
Itch.io: A small but active indie game community
G.Round: A site dedicated to playtesting indie games
Game dev meet-ups: Likely not full of players from your target audience, but a good place to get your feet wet if you've never playtested before
Social media: If you have a social media presence for your game already, this is a good place to start recruiting by sending out a general request for playtesters
Ready to dive in?
In the sequel to this devlog, I'll walk through how to actually run a playtest and analyze results once you've recruited a group of players.
