FIVE ESSENTIAL PLAYTESTS
THROUGHOUT DEVELOPMENT
Steve Bromley looks at some of the most impactful times to run playtests throughout development, and what you can hope to learn at each stage.
F
or as long as we’ve had games, we’ve had playtesting. Way back in the 1970’s, Atari was sending teams out into arcades to study the people playing their games.
Ever since then, ‘seeing what players understand and like about our games’ is a crucial part of any development process. But we don’t have infinite time and budget, and logistical
challenges (like getting a build together) can make it difficult to prioritise regular playtesting throughout development. Despite this, the benefits of learning about how players are experiencing games are indisputable - surfacing problems early while still having time to react to them makes development less chaotic, prioritisation easier, and reduces the need for costly re-work.
THE RIGHT MINDSET FOR PLAYTESTING Playtesting, or any sort of user research activity, is intended to inspire decision making. You need to learn something about players to inspire or build internal confidence; a study is run and the team has the information it needs to move on.
“During ideation and concept exploring, building an understanding of ‘who our players are’ will ensure problems are avoided later”
42 | MCV/DEVELOP October/November 2024 It’s easy to fall into the trap of treating playtesting as
a checkbox exercise - a thing to do because ‘we need to playtest’, rather than to inform decisions that need to be made. Always start planning any playtest with a discussion of ‘what decisions do we intend to make’, and ‘what do we need to know’, to check that you are in a position to act on what you learn. A lack of internal confidence about the game’s vision, what the most important things to work on are, or whether players will like the game are also common signs that a playtest might help provide clarity.
ALIGNING PLAYTESTS WITH DEVELOPMENT PHASES Although we have to be careful about running playtests just because we’ve hit a development milestone, there is a benefit of mapping the type of playtest to your development stage - the type of questions you and your team will have changes throughout development, and this has an impact on what playtests should be run. Here are five of the most important: 1.Understanding players before we build things During ideation and concept exploring, building an understanding of ‘who our players are’ will ensure problems are avoided later. Your marketing teams will likely be working on a player definition, but the characteristics they cover are often focused on purchase behaviour, rather than information that will inspire game design decisions. A player’s context creates constraints that need to be designed around (e.g. Will they have sound on?
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