Design-Build-Test-Learn

Play testing is an essential part of game design. Game design, like any other design follows a cycle of design, build, test and learn.
The never ending cycle of design
Play testing and the analysis of the observations made during it represent the last two steps in this cycle. To be able to evaluate the design decisions in the game it is important to let “outsiders” (people that are not in the development team) test the game. The reason that this is […]

5th post – Playtesting

During the production of our “Shoot em up” game, we have had couple of playtests. For the first test, we made a survey with 4 questions. We had received 22 responses. As for the second playtest, we just asked the players what they did not like about the game and how to improve it. The purpose of playtesting was to get feedback on the game and maybe some advices on how to fix some problems.

During the Alpha playtest, we basically […]

Playtesting

This weeks post is going to be focused on the playtesting sessions that we have gone through and the information that we received regarding our game. Based on the feedback that we got back from the first playtesting session, we realized that our game was very player friendly. The enemies were easy to kill and the obstacles that we had were not causing any damage to the player when they hit them. We also got feedback regarding our sounds, Mika suggested that […]

Week #5 – Using playtesting during development

Iterative testing is a fundamental part of Agile methodology. When Agile is applied to games we end up with playtesting our games constantly, both internally within our teams, and externally in organized playtesting sessions with other students or dedicated testers. The main reasoning for testing early and often when developing games is to see if planned mechanics work as intended and deliver the intended reaction from the Player. Added benefits include detecting bugs, thematic issues, and seeing whether art assets […]

Playtesting

Welcome back! This week I will be talking about the two playtesting sessions that we had during the Shoot’em up project. Since the two tests were several weeks apart, the post will consist of two parts – one for each test. I will also talk about how we incorporated the data we received from these tests. Finally, I will also discuss why and how we chose the questions we asked.
Playtesting session #1
For the first playtesting session our game was in […]

Feedback for developers, feedback for player

Hey!
Today’s post will deal with playtesting and its’ effect on making Fear is in me.
2 playtesting sessions scheduled during the course were great opportunities to confront games that we are currently producing with real end users and to gather feedback on what needs to be improved. Unfortunately, the technical issues that occurred just before the first session were a bit too much for us to handle. After we built the project, aiming the weapon turned out to be faulty and causing […]

Dev Blog #5 -Playtesting

Hello again!
This week I’ll talk about my team’s experience with the playtesting sessions we’ve had during this project. We attended both sessions, though we found little value in the second one and would rather have spent that time working on the game in order to complete it for the beta. I know other team felt the same way, but we still took the playtesting seriously and had a survey for testers to fill out. On both occasions we had an […]

Blog post 5: Playtesting

Hello there.
This week I am going to talk about how playtesting has affected the development of the game “Depth”. During this course we had two different sessions of planned playtesting, where everyone in the course and teachers, tests all of the games in development. The first session was right before the alpha presentation and the second session was right before the beta presentation.
To do this, we used two computers with the then latest version of the game. When people came […]

What is play? Baby, don’t test me, don’t test me, no more

Hi!
it’s blog time again! This time subject being playtesting and its effect on our game development.
Both the first and second playtesting session has been helpful for us, team Kraken, in order to improve our game, Aetherial. When observing the testers try out our game, we noticed many things regarding the gameplay and design that have not been obvious to us earlier. I, as manager, added extra time to our meetings in order to go through all the data that we’ve […]

Prototyping, testing, and play testing

Each of them has the same goal but different purpose – game prototyping, software testing, and play testing are important processes during digital game development as they all improve quality of the game product. Prototyping helps game designers to validate ideas and concepts, whereas software testing helps developers to detect errors and bugs in codes. Usually, prototyping and software testing are conducted frequently by internal members of the development team, i.e. designers, developers, and artists. Play testing is a process […]

Question 2: Are you making Umibōzu?

So, the playtesting. It sure did happen.
I had a hard time with it in many ways. A lot of it I felt was not very useful. Largely because I was already aware of many of the criticisms to be had. The timing of the shield; the lack of variation in the enemies and their functions; poor communication with player, especially with feedback; the companion characters in the game not having enough utility, differentiation, or personality for the player to care […]

Comments made on different managers blogs #3

Post in question
Hi Michael
I really love your post and I think it’s something all new managers should read at the beginning of the year. This post gives a great insight into management and teams. Specifically, what some necessary components to become a high-functioning team. It is as you write not as simple as to just put together an all-star team, which you showcase both with theories and your own reflections from your experience of this academic year.
The format of […]