FINDING BETTER PLAYTESTERS
Playtesting is a cornerstone of successful game
development, offering vital insights into player experience. But why, asks Steve Bromley, is finding representative playtesters so challenging—and how can we do it better?
P
laytesting gives us an essential insight into the future reception of our games. What will players understand? Where will they get stuck? What will
they enjoy or find frustrating? This can be invaluable for learning of problems earlier
in development (when it’s cheaper and easier to fix them), and for efficient prioritisation during production - working out where best to spend your development time to maximise the quality of the experience for players. For most developers, the idea that playtesting is
valuable is uncontroversial. However not enough of it gets done, and there are often genuine practical barriers that stop teams regularly putting their ideas and games in front of players to inspire iteration. I’ve been interviewing game developers regularly about their playtesting practices to learn what’s stopping them from doing it. And one of the most pertinent is “it’s hard to find playtesters”.
“I believe the single most valuable playtest activity you can do is sit and watch some external people play your game”
Why is it hard to find playtesters? Playtesters - people who we can watch playing our game (and ask questions too) are the raw ingredients of a playtest - it’s their reactions, behaviours and sentiments that we’ll use to inspire changes. However they can be hard to find. We need a regular supply of ‘new’ playtesters (especially when testing
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concepts like ‘learning’ or ‘difficulty’). Participating requires the player to give up some of their time, and put effort into participation - which can be difficult in a world where there are endless alternative forms of entertainment. This means that teams often struggle to find appropriate playtesters, and end up relying too heavily on their existing community, their friends and family, or playtesting themselves. All of whom have different background knowledge and experience and can’t give you an accurate representation of the thoughts and behaviour of a ‘new’ player. The challenge is therefore to find potential new
playtesters, and then to convince them to take part in your playtest.
Who should take part in my playtest As mentioned, we need our playtesters to accurately represent our final ‘intended’ players - with the same level of experience and background knowledge. The most accurate predictor of future purchase
behaviour is past behaviour. The most accurate predictor of whether they’ll buy your game in the future, is whether they are buying your competitor set of games currently. We can use this information to help source and recruit these players. Start by making a list of your competitor games
(you hopefully already have this from previous market sizing activities). Then brainstorm some places where players of those games hang out - associated Reddit communities, Discords, Steam Communities and game specific forums will have pre-existing groups of your potential players. With permission from community leaders, this can be a valuable place to find them - then relying on ‘snowball recruitment’ and referrals to grow a small list of potential playtesters further.
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