Internet. Instead, playtesting is a key time during which you can transform your game
from average to excellent, from something that shows promise to a game that is truly
great. Few games ever came out of the developer’s hands in absolutely perfect shape.
Ideally, it is the playtesting cycle that gives your game the extra push to be the best it
possibly can.
It is worth clarifying what exactly I mean when I say playtesting. This is not the
same as debugging. Debugging is a more programming-oriented task in which all of the
inherently broken aspects of the game are tracked down and fixed. This can be anything
from the improper implementation of some game mechanics to graphical snafus to
problems that actually crash the game. Certainly these bugs must be eliminated, but
this is more a matter of concern for the programming team.
Playtesting is the design equivalent of bug fixing, though it is considerably less cut
and dried. When playtesters look at a game, they try to see if the game is any fun and try
to find faults in the game mechanics. This can be anything from a unit in an RTS game
that is too powerful and allows players who acquire it early to totally dominate the
game, to the illogical nature of how one enemy AI agent attacks players, to an
unintuitive and difficult-to-use control system. It is in the playtesting stage that the
game mechanics are tested and refined. Unfortunately, some game developers focus
entirely on fixing bugs and too little on determining if the game is actually any fun to
play. As a result there may be nothing actually wrong with the game, and it may be com-
pletely stable on all the systems it is supposed to run on. Too bad that no one wants to
play the game because it is not any fun. All players would rather have a game that plays
really well and crashes occasionally than one that runs flawlessly but is not worth the
time it takes to play it. At least the former game is fun some of the time, while the latter
game is boring all of the time.
Finding the Right Testers..........................
Finding the right testers is perhaps one of a game designer’s biggest challenges in
playtesting his game. Not just anyone will be able to playtest a game effectively. Almost
any player can tell you whether he likes your game or not, but a surprisingly small num-
ber will be able to explain why they do not like it and what you might do to improve it. Of
course, getting feedback from someone’s general impression of the game can be useful:
“that was fun” or “that was tedious” or “that was too hard” are all pieces of information
you will be able to apply to your work in order to make your game better. Truly useful
advice, however, comes in a more constructive form: “When I was fighting the twelfth
clown on level three, I thought he was too hard to defeat. I had no idea what I was sup-
posed to do to kill him, or whether the attacks I was attempting were having any effect
at all. I thought maybe I was supposed to roll the boulder at him, but I could not figure
out how to do so.” In this example, the playtester has provided the designer with very
specific information about the problem and a detailed explanation of why he thought it
was not much fun to play. Playtesters who can do that sort of analysis consistently are
extremely rare, making a talented playtester a truly priceless asset for your team.
A key part of working with testers effectively is knowing them well enough to
know how seriously to take their opinions and what biases they may have. Different
testers will have different motivations, which will necessarily color the opinions they
484 Chapter 25: Playtesting