User Researcher. Currently playing: Untitled Goose Game.
The first time I sat down for a live playtest, I was petrified. I was unsure how to build rapport, when to jump in to ask questions and the atmosphere must have been very tense for the unfortunate player stuck with me. Overcoming my fear was worth it though -...
PlaytestCloud has recently added moderated tests to its toolkit, in addition to traditional unmoderated research. However developers I speak to are often unsure which is appropriate for them, or how best to use them to test their games.
Playtests generate a lot of data. From interviews alone, you may have hours of players' thoughts and opinions to wade through. This can feel overwhelming, and it’s easy to get bogged down. How do we make sense of that, and work out what really matters?
Running interviews as part of your playtesting can offer a direct view into what is happening in players’ brains. This allows us to diagnose exactly what they are thinking, and understand the behavior we see in games - helping us make good game design decisions.
How to be confident that you’re deploying interviews at the right time, ensure you’ll learn useful things to improve your game, and remove the risk of catastrophic failures during your interviews.