I want to talk about playtesting as a designer. No, not your game; other games. A lot has been said about designers who derail feedback sessions with suggestions that attempt to redesign the game on the fly. In my experience, those instances are outliers. (But, you know, don't do that.) Usually, I can expect 50% or more of players to barely provide feedback if at all. This post is for that 50% and anyone who wants to become a better playtester.
Let's start at the beginning. Ask before you play. Ask what genre of game a designer has brought before sitting down at the table. Ask how long the playtest will be. Don't put yourself in an unhelpful situation. Your job as a playtester is to be useful. You will not be useful if you need to leave halfway thru the game or if you hate the type of game being presented. I generally avoid 2-player card combat games (of any flavor) because I have no experience playing them and don't really care to. However, I will sometimes approach a game if the designer is specifically looking for unexperienced players. Usually, these playtests only involve rules explanations and a couple of turns, which is more reasonable since I don't care for these types of games. (And yes, hint to designers: low investment playtests for noobs are a good idea when testing rules and icon clarity.)
Once you agree to play a game, take notes. I recommend taking notes on your phone. It's always with you, and you can delete the notes after. (I recommend using a notebook for your own games though, so the notes are all together and chronological.) At the beginning of a playtest, I often pose questions in my notes: "Will X become a problem?" "Does Y work how I think it will?" I also tend to be very brief: "Card draws- confusing." I can generally remember what I meant when feedback starts. Writing for too long can slow the game down in some cases, so it's better to be brief. Taking notes helps track your experience throughout the game, including the rules explanation.
When feedback starts, state your biases and competences. Do you tend to like this type of game? What are your strengths as a playtester? For example, I always let designers know that I'm better with early ideas and late stage polishing, but I'm not great at math and balancing. However, I'm a good test case for if your rules overhead is too much for a gateway+ gamer. (I'm really bad at learning rules by being spoken at AND by reading them. I need a combo plus visual examples.) You should have at least some idea of when you give the most helpful feedback as a playtester and let designers know. This information should be presented as useful context (I've played a lot of this mechanic, so I was already familiar with the basic rules.") and not obnoxious braggadocio ("I'm so over deck-builders so I didn't have fun, but I can totally make your game better than all of those other games.").
During your feedback, address problems before suggestions. Identifying what's not working is a good skill to hone as a designer, and playtesting is a great time to build that skill. Try to categorize each of the problems: UX, rules complexity, imbalanced strategy, edge cases, etc. A lot of times, a game's rules and experience are being obscured by confusing implementation (or a poor teach), and as designers we should be able to identify if the problem is a rule or bad iconography.
When it comes to suggestions, offer paths to solutions. For my own games, I tend to ignore playtesters' suggestions in favor of simpler solutions that achieve the same results, and I expect other designers to do the same. As a result, I tend to point towards the experiences I was hoping for but that didn't occur. Sometimes, there are obvious ways to get there, and in those cases I will tell the designer what I think needs to change. (And I have had well-known and respected designers do the same to my games. Which flys in the face of "don't give suggestions" as a general rule.) More often though, I will say things like: "I was looking for a bigger risk-to-reward scenario, but I don't know how you could get there," or "I really wanted the gems to mean something thematically, but that's up to you." The goal of this kind of feedback is to set the designer up to get inspired and explore the problems in a deeper way after the playtest is over.
Address practicalities and limitations, especially when playtesting digitally. But tailor your feedback to the stage of design. If the design is at the 'throw everything at the wall' stage, the designer probably isn't all that concerned about the cost of dice. Still, throw a comment in about it, but it can look more like: "When you get there, you need to consider streamlining your components." Also, address the target market. Just because I would prefer all games be designed with me in mind, doesn't mean my feedback needs to be only about my preferences. It helps if you are aware of lots of games and can point the designer towards examples of games to research even if you aren't a fan of those games. (Top 10 or top 100 lists can help you get familiar with a lot of games very fast. Those lists usually hit on the main mechanic and unique trait of the games mentioned. They can be great for finding lesser known games from which to draw inspiration.)
Unless you would buy the game right now, don't focus on fun and boredom. As a designer-playtester, I limit my adjectives to what I find interesting and exciting (or not interesting and not exciting). I never ask designers if they had fun playing my game because I don't care if they did. They weren't playing to have fun; they were playing to find flaws. Better questions to ask: Where did the game feel slow? Did you want one more turn or one fewer turn? Were you invested in what you were doing? You can ask these questions of yourself as you playtest, as well. Don't forget to take notes about the answers.
Mention what worked. I don't get worked up about the ratio of good-to-negative feedback as a playtester. If you're giving quality feedback, most designers will want to hear it. So, positive feedback (ideally) isn't about making a designer feel better. It's about convincing them to preserve what is already working in the game: "These are the parts that work; don't change them." Sometimes the beating heart of the game is located in a different place than where the designer thinks it is. Talking about what you liked helps a designer find or confirm where the core of the game-experience truly is.
I've only ever had one truly negative designer playtest. Far more often, designers are either too nice or have nothing much to say at all. And if that's the case, then why playtest? I need my game improved more than I need to hear nice things. The great part about becoming a better playtester is that you can model the behavior you want to see and hopefully contribute to a more productive culture of playtesting.
ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.
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