Process
Playtest session
You might say: one observed run
A playtest session is a planned test of a specific question with a chosen build, participants and protocol.
- What it does
- Makes observations comparable across changes.
- Ask
- What scenario will reveal the uncertainty we need to resolve?
Sources
- Ian Schreiber, Game Design Concepts, Level 16: Game Balance
Playtest the game once (either on your own or with others) with the purpose of finding balance issues
- Tracy Fullerton, Playcentric Design (ACM interactions, 2008), Playcentric Design, pp. 42–47: test scenarios and prototypes with players
Called ‘playcentric’ design, it involves setting interesting player-experience goals, building a rough paper or digital prototype that attempts to achieve those goals, testing the prototype with players, evaluating the results and integrating feedback, and then doing it again.
- Robert Yang et al., The Level Design Book, Layout: blockout and playtest are needed to answer whether a design works
only a blockout and playtest can begin answering that question.
- Anders Drachen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei and Lennart E. Nacke, Games User Research, ch. 2 pp. 24–26
Preparation: requirements gathering, defining the research question, recruiting participants, creating the script for the test.
- Celia Hodent, How We Introduced UX to Epic Games’ Production Pipeline (GDC16), Prod31–35 process
Given the focus of the test and its protocol, we plan when/how/with whom to do it and we decide which build to use.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Playtest session" (playtest-session) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
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