You’ve spent hours upon hours designing your game. You’ve poured yourself into the game. It has consumed your waking thoughts. You dream about your game at night.
But how do you know your game is good?
How do you know your game will be relevant to the target audience?
Do you guess? Do you trust your instincts? Do you hope for the best? No.
As a responsible game designer, you playtest.
Why do I need to playtest?
In my 10+ years designing games, I have never hit a design bullseye on first try. Game design, like writing, painting, cooking and more is an iterative process. We get better with practice. We refine our craft with feedback. And for a game designer the best way to gather feedback is through a playtest.
And it’s not enough to show your game to a trusted group of friends and ask for their feedback. You have to put yourself and your design out there in front of your target audience and brace yourself for critique.
I recommend playtesting early and often. With each iteration your game becomes more refined and focused.
Tips on Playtesting with Children
Daddy’s littlest playtester.
Playtesting of any sorts is challenging. But it is even more so when your playtesters are children.
The following are tips for ensuring playtest success with children.
Be Prepared!
Before you begin your playtest session you will want to have a few things prepared.
First be sure that your game is staged so it is ready to test. You do not want to waste the playtester’s time (and your time!) navigating to the feature you want to test. Have the feature queued up and ready to play.
Second, go into the playtest with an agenda. Know what you are trying to test. Have questions prepared. You may deviate from this script once the session has begun, but this preparation will give you a good starting point.
Third, always have a backup. In my experience if something could go wrong during a playtest, it most likely will. I have had computers suddenly freeze. I have had children break controllers and keyboards. I have had the power go out. Be ready for things to go wrong with a back-up plan (extra hardware, battery back-ups and more).
Kids are Polite, Give Them Permission to Be Honest
The need to be “polite” is drilled into children’s heads from an early age.
“Say thank you for the present! No you can’t tell Aunt Sherri you don’t like yellow and that you don’t wear an adults XXXL sweater. You’ll hurt her feelings! She spent months knitting that! Be polite and tell her you love it!!!”
Because of this ingrained politeness your playtesters may feel bad about giving you honest feedback. This can be disastrous. The point of a playtest is to gather honest feedback so that you may make improvements. (I have heard parents scold their children during playtests for giving honest feedback. “Don’t say that!” the parent would say “They worked very hard on this.”)
Jesse Schell, the author of The Art of Game Design, countered this politeness-factor with a clever pre-play speech to the playtesters. During this speech Jesse would inform the testers that “We have been working on a new game and we know there are some things that aren’t quite right yet. We would really appreciate it if you could help us find these things.”
This is brilliant for a few reasons:
First, we set the stage by telling the playtesters that we know the game isn’t perfect. This lets them know that what they are seeing is a work in progress that will change.
Second, by framing the playtesters job as “helping” the team we have transformed critique from something that felt negative into a positive. By pointing out what is wrong or unclear or not fun, the playtester is helping the development team. Children (particularly younger ones) are motivated heavily by a desire to “help”. Use this to your advantage and get the best feedback you can.
Keep Parents Around, But Keep Them Sidelined
Keeping your kid playtester’s parents around can be useful for crowd control, but be sure that they aren’t helicoptering near the playtests and skewing the results.
Some parents have a very difficult time watching their children struggle. I have had more than one parent be unable to control themselves while watching their child encounter prolonged difficulty - some sighing loudly, while others tried to give “helpful” advice. One particularly frustrated parent took the mouse from their child’s hand and showed them the solution. But this only upset their child and robbed our team of a learning opportunity.
Part of conducting a playtest is watching testers fail, get frustrated and try to work through problems. Observing this will help you to understand the player’s thought pattern when they encounter different aspects of your game. When a parent interrupts this process we lose an opportunity to learn.
I like to remind parents early on that they are welcome to observe, but to please keep their coaching and comments to a minimum. Another good trick is to stock a “parent waiting area” with games and magazines to help distract the invasive parents during testing.
Remember: the focus is kid feedback, not parent feedback.
Get Down on Their Level
When interacting with children during your playtest, don’t talk down to them while towering above.
Get down on their level.
Kneel.
Sit.
Make eye contact with them.
Let them know through your posture and body language that you value their opinions.
By getting down on their level you will help children to feel more comfortable with you, which will result in better feedback.
Keep groups small
Kids have a tendency to get each other psyched up. When kids get psyched up they have a difficult time sitting still and focusing, which will make playtesting your game that much more difficult. Keep the number of testers in a group small (3 to 5 children per group).
I also like to observe the group prior to the test beginning. If I notice certain children seem to be riling each other up, I try to keep them in separate testing groups. Keeping groups excited, but controllable will ensure a more pleasant experience for everyone involved.
Keep Them Talking
Kids love talking about themselves. They love telling you every single detail of their day, their year and their life. Encourage children to talk as they play to better understand their thought process.
I encourage my playtesters to narrate their experience. “
Well now I’m walking over to this treasure chest. Do do do… Oh wow! I opened it and there was a skeleton inside! POW! That was a little scary…”.
Now this “Think Aloud Protocol” isn’t easy for everyone. Some players get self-concious. Some players will stop talking when they get frustrated (which is unfortunate because designers need the most insight into frustrating moments!). But when verbal communications fail, look to non-verbal forms...
Watch the body language
While I am wary of anyone who claims to be a “body language expert” on television, I have found observing a playtesters body language can be indicative of how they are feeling during the course of a playtest session
Is a player slouched in their chair and haphazardly playing the game? They might not be very excited about what they are experiencing.
Is the player slowly inching toward the screen frantically tapping the controls? Looks like they are feeling engaged and excited.
Body language isn’t an exact science, but it can be helpful to gauge your playtester’s mood and overall engagement. Be sure to note not only their body language, but what is happening on screen to elicit that reaction - these two things go hand in hand.
Listen to how children interact
When testing with multiple groups at once, children will often talk with each other about what they are experiencing during play. Listen to what they have to say. This “table talk” can be very informative.
How do they explain what they are experiencing?
Are they able to coach each other through challenging sections?
Do they truly understand what is happening in the game?
By listening to your playtester’s table talk you can get an in depth view of how they are experiencing and interpreting your game. You may also gain insight into better ways to explain your game to players.
Post-Play Data Gathering
Hopefully during your playtest you’ve been taking copious notes:
What did the player say?
What was the player doing with their body?
How did the players interact with each other?
How long did the player play the game?
Did the player get stuck? If so, where?
Was the player confused? If so, by what?
But there is still more information to gather. You can still gather data post-play. Two forms are most common...
Ratings Scales and Surveys
A common practice post-playtest is to administer a survey to gather player feedback. But this can be particularly tricky with children.
First off, many children have limited reading skills. So be sure that your survey uses minimal words, instead focusing on imagery or numbers.
Second, keep your survey scales small. A common survey scale will have players rating game features from 1 to 10 (1 being “The Worst” and 10 being “The Best”), but this scale is confusing for children. The difference between small intervals (a 3 and a 4, or a 6 and a 7) is often difficult for a child to articulate, causing the scale to feel overwhelming. Keep the scale small - 1 being “The Worst” , 2 being “Okay”, 3 being “The Best!”.
Third keep visuals simple. Some designers try to make visual scales to help pre-literate children easily express their feelings about a game. But this can backfire if the visuals are too complex or leading.
At Yogome, our post-play rating system asked players to rate the experience by choosing one of five smiley faces. The data we received from this system indicated that huge numbers of our players were rating games at the highest level - even though in-person playtests showed a lack of satisfaction with some of these games. We soon learned that players were choosing the highest rating not because of their love of a particular minigame, but because it was the most visually interesting icon (Happy Face Barfing Rainbows). With this in mind keep your visuals descriptive, but not overly leading.
Who wouldn’t want to tap on that smiley face barfing rainbows!? Adorable.
Conducting Player Interviews
You may also want to talk with playtesters post-play to better understand their feelings. In his book The Art of Game Design Jesse Schell lays out great tips for interviewing players…
Have a list of prepared questions.
Interview playtesters privately. You don’t want a playtesters opinions being influenced by others.
If you are going to hold both individual and group interviews, hold the individual interviews first. Group dynamics and peer pressure can drastically shift responses.
Avoid Memory Tests. Don’t ask players things like “On level four, why did you chose the green ruby instead of the red or blue ruby?” Most players aren’t forming memories regarding in-game actions and can’t answer them removed from the game.
Ask for more than you need. Instead of asking “What was your favorite thing in the game?” try asking “What were your three favorite things in the game?”. This gives you more data and it alleviates the pressure of choosing for your playtester.
I’ve playtested my game. Now what?
You’ve conducted your playtest. Congratulations! Now what?
First off, give yourself a pat on the back. Playtesting is not an easy experience. At the beginning of this article I wrote about how we often pour our hearts and souls into a game design. And it can be devastating to sit by and watch people critique something so near and dear to your heart.
After your self-congratulation has completed, gather your team members and compare notes. Take the information you received from your playtesters and compile it into a central document. Look for patterns and common themes throughout your feedback.
What did people like?
What didn’t they like?
Where did they get stuck?
Once you have your feedback organized, decide on what is actionable and what isn’t. Do this by comparing your game’s goal with the feedback have received. For example: Is your goal to create a pirate-themed puzzle game for elementary school students? Then use your accumulated data to understand if the game is meeting that goal.
From here it is as simple as keeping what works and changing what does not. Sometimes needed changes may be cosmetic or simple changes to wording. Other times a playtest may reveal the need for a complete redesign of a feature or system. And still other times the playtest may change the goals of your game - for example: you may decide that your design doesn’t work for your original target audience, but it works perfectly for another group.
After you form a new game design and implement it, you can then begin the testing process again. You will repeat this process until the game is ready to launch.
Great Resources on Playtests
For more information on playtests, check out:
Jesse Schell: The Art of Game Design
Garreth Griffith: Child’s Play: Playtesting with Children in the World of Skylanders
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020348/Child-s-Play-Playtesting-with