Entry #5: The Beauty of External Inputs

What´s good, my people. We have at this point all done our share of play-testing and had our games play-tested by others. I love these opportunities to get a look at other groups’ development strategies and ways of thinking/planning. It gives a unique and nuanced perspective on both design and production. There is truly a million ways to make a game. One of the most important thing to figure out is if your game fulfills your overarching aesthetic goal (heavy machinery in my case). The feedback we have received from play-testers have been invaluable for polish and improvement of our game. Naturally, as is the case with anything, play-testing-related feedback has had its pros and cons. I´d like to ascribe these shortcomings to inexperience, and it will very likely improve over the course of the course (dank).

While the student and teacher feedback may be the most critical and relevant, external sources of criticism can be just as important. It is easy to forget sometimes that not everyone has played video games for their whole lives. They may have a vastly different experience while playing and choose unforeseen ways of interaction. In my case, accounting for all the feedback this category of testers give is not necessarily all that important (depending on your target audience of course). What it can do is reveal things about your game that no one would have thought of otherwise.

Now, let me tell you about my experiences from both points of view; as a developer and as a tester.

Developer

For maximum efficiency of testing and query writing, we set up four laptops the second time around. Alpha testing went well even if we didn´t use as many computers, but more laptops meant that more people could test while others were simultaneously giving feedback. I was never present at our station to gather observational data so I can not comment on this. For the beta play-testing, our game was rather close to its final form and thus no greater changes or improvements were suggested. We were already aware of the most obvious shortcomings of this particular build, such as lacking a tutorial other than (hardly visible) text. This did end up causing confusion about the controls and mechanics. It may also have had a negative impact on the player experience as they were not properly taught how to play. Accordingly, we received a lot of criticism on this particular issue, which we then resolved in time for the beta release. Next time we will make sure there is a clear tutorial so that the player can give relevant feedback even if they´ve only played once or twice. Newbie mistake on our part.

We analyzed the data together and each Lead Whatever took notes regarding their areas of responsibility so that we could effectively solve problems and polish while also completing the other items on the Sprint Plan. Suffice to say, it was an intense week, but we ended up completing what was not done until Friday (the Sprint Review) during the weekend. I felt proud to present the game with all beta assets checked off in our Scrum Plan.

Play-Tester

I was very disappointed that no group had any cookies for the play-testers. Look, Hillary didn´t have any cookies, she worked eight years with her husband in the White House. Smart people, tough people—couldn´t get the work done. Very sad.

Jokes aside, I very much enjoyed testing games and giving the best feedback I possibly could. It was fun to take extra time to come up with something potentially valuable to the developers. Some games were hard to critique constructively since they didn´t yet give a good idea of how the finished game might feel. I understand that a busy schedule, sickness, and drama may have caused some games to feel like they were not yet ready for beta. In these cases, I thought it was important to give constructive feedback that is not too complicated, perhaps suggest some way to save time. A change that is excessively time-consuming is more likely to be disregarded at this stage of development anyway so why bother giving them irrelevant data.

It felt rewarding to also take some extra time to talk directly with the developers and give them critical feedback face-to-face instead of just leaving some text. Listening to what they were thinking about the feedback and being able to discuss possibilities for improvement like that really enriched the experience for, I think both parties.

Maybe we will have cookies for our testers next time. It´s a donation, not a bribe.

That´s about it, Reader Person! I hope you have a lovely day, and may your group find the time they need to finish your game.

Kill´em with success! //Jesper Karbing

About Jesper Karbing

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