The Benefits of Playtesting
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This week, I got the opportunity to play games made by other groups, and give my own feedback on the gaming experience. My fellow classmates also got the chance of playing the video game made by my group and give their feedback as well. This was an experience known as playtesting, and in these last two months, our class have had two playtesting classes: One for the first draft of our video game (Alpha) and one for the second draft of the game (Beta). While this seemed a little nerve-wracking to me in the beginning, What I discovered was that any feedback given from playtesting was good feedback in that it would help the group figure out ways to improve that we could our video game. It was also a lot of fun to play many of the different games made by your fellow students, and share your thoughts on the experience!
(Example from our FeedBack Document) After going through both of the playtests, and after receiving a lot of feedback, we managed to figure out how to improve a lot of things. This included the different appearances and attacks of the enemies, as well as the non-existing balance of the game. We fixed this with ways, such as making the enemies appear in waves, and each time three waves of enemies were destroyed, a new form of enemy would appear on the screen and have different way of attacking the player. This format would also later on help balance the game, as well as make it less stressful. This was all thanks to playtesting, which I can say, in conclusion, was an interesting and beneficial part of our video game process. It was fun to help other groups by giving feedback, and it was also great to receive feedback. This helped me and my group to discover new ways of making our video game better, and I highly recommend that whenever there’s an opportunity to test a video game that is in-making, or having other people try out your video game, you take that chance! It’s like I said before: All feedback is good feedback.  |
