If the team are not used to taking part in a playtest, then it might be useful to prepare them for what is about to happen. Watching players struggle to play your game, and misunderstand what appears to be ‘obvious’ can be uncomfortable viewing, and then there’s the interview. It might be difficult for some on the team to hear players make negative comments about the game they have worked on, and some might become defensive, dismissing what they are hearing as just opinions or they’re the ‘wrong’ player. It’s for these reasons that we put so much emphasis on playtest preparation - if we carefully select our players, observe their behaviour with accuracy, and interview them to uncover their mental model of the game, then we can be reasonably sure whether there is problems with the game’s design which need addressing.

So if playtesting can be so uncomfortable, why do it? There are many reasons really, at an individual level you could say it’s about wanting to become better at your craft, and playtesting is key to getting feedback on design decisions. Or maybe it’s wanting to better understand the current state of the game, what needs fixed the most. At a team or studio level, it’s about wanting to create the best possible experience for your players. By identifying and addressing your game’s friction points before release, you are positively changing how your game is likely to be received, in turn improving the potential of your game’s critical and financial success. Most people on teams do want to be part of a successful project, where success could mean the impact the game had in the market, recognition from peers, industry awards, or financial performance.

Creating the right team mindset before a playtest is about framing, it’s explaining to the team that by doing playtesting they are creating an opportunity to change how the game will perform. Yes, there are likely to be moments where they might feel uncomfortable, but with the right mindset you can learn to welcome these moments, as it’s here where you will learn and grow.

If anyone on the team asks why do we playtest, here’s a starter list, you can add to this over time

• To evaluate our design assumptions - validate the knowns.
  
  

• To uncover what we don’t yet know - find the unknown unknowns.
  
  

• Improve team alignment - making everyone on the team aware of the current state of the game, what works and what doesn’t. This also helps to break down silos.
  
  

• To Learn - if you ask an aviation pilot how long they have been flying, the answer is not in years, but how many hours of flying time they have. The reason is that it’s only in the cockpit where the learning occurs. This can be a useful analogy for games teams, the degree of experience you have is not measured by years in a role, but how many hours of playtesting experience you have. Feedback is a critical component of experience, so it’s an interesting thought experiment where they might want to consider how many playtesting hours they have.
  
  

• To create the best experience possible - ultimately what unites everyone on a team is the shared mission of creating the best possible player experience given the constraints.

Key Takeaway

What you are trying to establish is for playtesting to become part of the culture of your games studio, “It’s what we do around here”. Changing studio culture takes time, but it can be done.

Next: Step 3. Observing Players > 39. Briefing the Player