The main focus of this week was playtesting.  Before being able to host a successful playtesting session, we first needed to understand how playtesting works and why it is so important to game development. In the textbook it mentions that when it comes to developing a game for playtesting, “The goal is to get to a version that people can play without much intervention from you” (279). One great thing about my group’s playtesting session was that everyone was able to play our game without any intervention from us. It took little to no explanation for our play testers to go through and play our game. It was very helpful that we made our game in Twine which is something that our entire class has had an introduction to before, so my group didn’t have to explain the mechanics of the game.  My group also made sure to not give any hints about the meaning behind the game or its purpose.  Instead we made sure to have one of our questions at the end of the session ask what they felt the meaning and theme behind the game was. This let us know that the impact we wanted our game to have on the players came through and was successful.  Since our game is purely narrative based, it was extremely important that players understood what was going on and could even relate to the narrative.

Another important aspect of playtesting is making sure that you playtest with your target audience.  My groups target audience was teens and young adults which was perfect since our play testers were our fellow classmates. Some of the feedback that we got back was that our narrative was relatable, which really helped us to know that we are reaching our target audience.  When writing the playtesting questions, we really made sure to not ask any leading questions.  Instead we wanted the play testers to tell us what they got from the game, if there were any aspects that seemed particular valuable or invaluable.  We wanted to know how they felt going through our game and if they felt that the choices, they were making in the game mattered and effected the narrative.  The answers we got from these questions helped us to understand what we were doing well, and what were the things we still needed to work on. Overall, playtesting was definitely a very helpful part of our game development.

Works Cited

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: a Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. CRC Press, 2019.