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Making Games More Fun: Methods for Playtesting Games
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Making Games More Fun: Methods for Playtesting Games,
503

Game Design, Lecture

Bill Fulton
, Microsoft

Michael Medlock
, Microsoft
Many games simply aren’t as fun as they could be or need to be in order to be successful. Often, the developers of the game are surprised (and dismayed) at how the game is received. The team thinks the game is more fun than the gaming press or public seem to find it. These discrepancies between the team’s opinions and typical gamers' opinions happen because human beings naturally "get too close" to their work to see the problems others will have.

Because of this discrepancy between the team and typical gamers, it is valuable to seek feedback from people outside of the game development process. While QA testing is the best first step to minimizing this problem, QA testers are part of the game development process and will also eventually get too close to the game. Furthermore, as professionals in the games industry, QA testers can also have a hard time knowing what the non-professional gamer is able to do and likes doing.

This talk goes into detail about user-testing methods—methods for getting feedback from typical, not professional, gamers. The talk also goes into details about different user-testing methods for discovering problems in your game, and how to verify whether fixes to problems have actually succeeded. The methods discussed have been invaluable for improving games such as Halo, Age of Empires 2, Zoo Tycoon, and Dungeon Siege. Details on how to start doing testing like this for your own game are be covered.

This talk is a follow-up to the GDC 2002 talk: Getting Data that Improve Games: A Case Study of Halo.

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