Playtesting

We are almost at the end of the semester and the pressure is on. Now that we have finished the essentials of our game, now it is time for testing it out. We were not planning for this, but somehow we ended up on Professor Nacke's office the other day. We showed him our game and what we have so far and told him what we planned to do. The result was complete chaos. He pointed out so many faults that I actually didn't know what to say. The rest of my team felt the same way I assume, but I can tell they were crushed. Like I wanted to crawl into a corner. However, we listened to the advice Professor Nacke pointed out about our game. It made us realize that we still have a lot of work to do. So we got down to it right away.

Stream Playtesting

A stream on the internet was made by several team members in my group. Through this stream people were able to see and play our game. Through this stream, we were able to receive feedback from a variety of people. They were mainly asking us to add in features that we were initially were planning to add next semester. However, we felt good about our feedback. Now we are going to take those suggestions made by our play testers as well as Professor Nacke and put it into game. 

Playtesting Changes

Here are the changes we plan to incorporate in our game this week:

• Have a tutorial at the beginning of the game about the controllers
• Make the side bars of the helicopter thinner so that there will be more space to see in the cockpit
• Allow players to have more controls over the helicopter
• Scale skyscrapers(and other objects located on terrain) to make the player feel they are not so far away from anything

These are just a few examples of the changes we will be adding or changing for the final project this week. There might be more changes as we go along but theses are the major changes we have decided as a team to change so far. 

How playtesting has affected us as a game development studio?

Listening to the advice given by classmates, non-game development students, and the professor truly reminded me that we are not making a game for us. We are making a game for the players themselves. A video game will not be fun if only a certain category of people can play it. It wouldn't be fair at all. My team and I really have to get into the minds of the players. We have to think about what they will ask, how will they react and so on. 

Here is an picture of how a typical development cycle should be:

Here is what our game development cycle is currently:

Start -> Design -> Implement -> User test -> Evaluate -> Implement

Right now we are in the evaluating stage beginning the implementing stage where our feedback will play a major role as we journey to the end of this semester's project. 

Conclusion

Playtesting our game is a truly effective process in game development. It allows game developers to gain insight of the game to know whether it is good or bad. Now if we include the suggestions made by our playtesters, we hopefully will have a more effective game where everyone will be able to play it with no problems.