Game Testing

Game testing

Solo Testing
Playing with Designers
Playing with Non-Designers
Blind Testing

The purpose of playtesting is to play a game in order to know what to improve. It may help you achieve your project goals and see which you already accomplished. Playtesting is divided into different sectors:

Quality Assurance - it identifies bugs, gaps and dead ends and what needs to be fixed.

Focus Testing - you bring together players that are part of the audience's demographic to determine how well a game serves their needs.

Usability Testing - players are given tasks to accomplish in order to recognize the controls and playability.

Balance testing - identifying imbalances in the game in order to fix them.

Fun Testing - trying to identify the fun factor of a game and different things that make it fun.

Remember to include other people, not just yourself, in the playtesting process. These would be other game designers, colleagues, experienced gamers and strangers. That way you will get fair results and a better chance of improvement and meeting your goals.

Playing with designers is necessary for professional identification of flaws, both in your games and the games of others. This part of the reading gave me some insight on how to be a good designer and what to avoid. It's about being professional and not giving "it's good/bad" kind of simple feedback.

Non-Designer play testers are important. They may not be professional Game Designers but they could give some valuable insight from an outside source. They may ask questions and have preferences.

Blindtesting is about you not being there to witness the testing, or anyone apart from the player is present at the testing. It has it's limitations with the information it can provide. It's about a non-bias experiment where the researchers nor the testers know the right answer. It is more suitable towards the end of making your game, since you have a high degree of confidence in it. IT's about non-obvious problems that you most likely didn't see. At this point the player has all the game components and can get the full experience of the game.