Playtesting to uncover problems, not their solutions.

A common tendency for playtesters is to point out things that they think would make your game better. And rightly so! In a significant way, this is why you asked them to playtest your game in the first place, and specific feedback can be great! But… Very often a player does not have all of the intimate details of why you made the game how you did. Sometimes (maybe even often) they miss the mark on suggestions. Or they can be so emblazoned by the passion of the game they just emerged from that they can’t step back and look at the problem without bias.

Something that has helped me, is to try and direct conversation to dig down into the problem they are experiencing. If they are frustrated that is never something that you should ignore. I always make notes on EVERY piece of feedback that is given to me during a playtest (my feedback spreadsheet for my game Minions of Mordak is on line 1635 and growing!), but use this feedback to dig into the specific cause a player’s frustration. If it comes up a few times from different playtesters, then there’s a good bet you’re encountering something that needs fixing! And there’s a good bet that if you don’t fix it, it will come out in reviews and opinions of players down the line.

Take Twilight Imperium, for example, a playtester who was attacked and had a really sour experience because of how it set them back, may shout to the designer with fervor:

“I was so devastated, My faction needs stronger ships because I felt totally powerless against that enemy faction.”

– Surly Playtester “Of course, your faction is clearly underpowered, why didn’t I see that!”

-Befuddled Game Designer That might be the fix you’ve been looking for!

However more likely there is something else that is the cause of their frustration. In the example of Twilight Imperium there are 50 ways a designer could alleviate that problem. It could be that the player missed an opportunity to upgrade their ships earlier and was outpaced. Perhaps that was just a poor choice on the part of the player, and they deserved that defeat. Perhaps it is an indication that certain ship upgrades are hidden under too many layers, or do not present themselves clearly enough for players to understand.

In this example, let’s assume that taking the player’s suggestion directly will not fix the issue (it may even sometimes cause more imbalance!). However by speaking with the player and trying to get to the root of it, you can focus down on what the problem is exactly. Once that is determined it’s much easier to take a step back as a designer and examine your array of options to alleviate that problem. And to choose a path that will fit best into the complex and interconnected web of systems that make up your game!

What has worked well for me during playtest sessions, is to record every piece of feedback given. After recording it, try to drill down with the player into what confused / frustrated / annoyed them about the situation. Make sure you understand their feelings, and make note of that also. Now you can move on (unless the player really wants to chat through the issue). It’s going to be more valuable to you to get more feedback on multiple things than to get hung up on one issue anyways. Then, days later, you can examine the points of frustration and compare it with the actual math of the game. Sometimes this highlights important oversights or imbalance issues, sometimes it just hints at a hunch for a fix you might want to try, sometimes it will be nothing! Whatever the case, you now have a good use case of a problem, and the time to think through a great solution to it.

If you have any thoughts, playtesting tricks or want to add to this article’s ideas about playtesting, I’d love to hear about it in the comments! Thanks for reading!