Playtesting, Functionality, Completeness and Balance

Playtesting:

This doesn't mean that players play the game simple for fun. Playtesting a game has too many aspects. Playtesting is done through the entire game level that is when a player playtests a game, the developer seeks to get a feedback where he can improve the game, find bugs, experience the game, know how the player feels at every point in the game. Some games are playtested for even more than 1000s of hours!! Playtesting, evaluating and revising is iterative process for game.

Recruiting playtesters is the most difficult job a developers finds because it's hard to trust anyone with your game. You never know who is gonna give the honest opinion about your game so that you can improve it or make it even better with new added features suggested by playtesters. The fact that you and you are the best playtesters when the game is in development progress. Reasons behind this are, you will never lie to yourself about the game and always give honest opinion. When working in a team for the game, there will always  be more developers, so the number of developers working on a game are the number of playtesters in the development stage. Testing your own game at this point is about making your game work. As you continue developing, outside testers will provide an accurate insight..

Once you playtest your own game yourself, now it's the time to continue expanding your playtesting partners.Ask your friends to play the game, and ask your relatives, college friends. Even if you expand your playtesting to your friends and colleagues, you wont be able to handle the criticism from them or they are your friends, they won't be able to tell the truth about your game because they will be always afraid of one thing that you won't get disappointed with their feedback.

Once you are done playtesting with your friends now it's time to extend it to people you don't know or people you have just met or some random people from the internet who loves to play games. Playtesting with strangers provides the best perspective and insight on your game. This is because these individuals have nothing to lose and nothing to gain by telling you the absolute truth. They are also not influenced by any personal ties they may have with you. One of the ways to find players for the playtesting session is log into any community website or servers or the school or online websites to find more players with similar game interests.  You need to find someone who is able to express his honest opinions to you related to your game. Nondisclosure agreement (NDA).is an agreement done between the player and the developer so that the individual playing the game can't disclose the information or the game idea/concept of your game. Playtesters must be of different gaming interests so that they are diverse and consider them as the consumer of your game. Your game must interest them!!

Once you have playtesters, the next step is to Conduct a playtesting session! Once you have people from different interests and are ready to play the game, the next step is to let them play the game on their own/ You don't have to tell anything to them. Don't tell them anything about how to game starts and ends and how to play it. Just tell the controls, don't tell them what they have to do and how to solve the game's mystery. Let them  play with no explanation and let them figure out everything on their own. You cannot respond to ALL points made by playtesters. It is natural to become defensive about the game you’ve spend a lot of time developing. Do not answer criticisms, just write them down. You’re not interested in hearing how much they love your game but rather what they don’t like about the game or what they don’t understand.Sometimes when working with groups, you’ll have an individual with a strong vocal opinion who begins to influence others around them Many professional playtesting facilities isolate playtesters for this reason. In smaller companies, reiterate to the group that everyone’s opinions matter equally and that everyone should have a chance to speak. Running a playtesting session is a skill. It takes practice to improve your skills and accept constructive criticism from strangers.

Methods of playtesting, There are different ways that you can playtest and watch them. Let each player play and watch from their shoulders or behind one-way glass.  Or group of people play together. Or give them feedback forms with too many options to fill in or ratings. Take interviews. Open discussions. Now once you have the honest opinions on your game, the next step is to look more into improving your game. Is your game functional? all the playtesters that have played your game, were they able to play the game without any knowledge of controls or how the story goes?  was it easy for them to figure out about the game? Loopholes, A flaw in the system that users can exploit to gain an unfair or unintended advantage. A true loophole is one that when exploited ruins the experience for all players. As long as a loophole exists, the game is considered incomplete.

Is your game balanced? balancing a game generally means that your game is properly balanced? it has all the experience that a player expects from the introduction of the game, all environment and controls are all properly set upped and the player. There are 4 balancing areas to consider: variables, dynamics, starting conditions and skill. To set new variables, variables are something like the values for the player or enemies or number of times an item pops up through out the game or health packs. Balancing dynamics means changing moving speed or shooting speed of player and enemies, how fast the background changes, or everything related to speed and motion. Balancing relationships, when changing values for one system effects the players. Example Player earns a point therefore they are rewarded with an extra turn. This starts a cycle in rewarding the strongest player. Often resulting in a premature win for that player. Balancing skills, some games have easy, medium and difficult levels to match the player's skill level. So that player doesn't get bored through out the game and once he finishes the easiest level, he has something to play for the medium and hard level, like more challenges and more new abilities unlocked when he player harder levels. For medium skill level balancing, it needs too much playtesting for the developer so that he knows when to put in more enemies that player can handle in medium levels because has to think of something for the next hard level. In single player games, level difficulties are adjusted per level and typically increases as the player progresses through the game.In some games like tetris, level adjusts automatically, when you are doing too good the blocks start to fall faster and you get confused, that's what the developers want you to feel.

Don't make too many changes to your game at the same time. Just do one change and let the players playtest your game again and let them decide if the change that you did is fine or not. Just wait for them to decide it and then make more changes to your game, but always remember one change at a time!! Make spreadsheets for every change that you make.