{"id":2712,"date":"2021-06-21T15:57:05","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T14:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/?p=2712"},"modified":"2021-06-21T16:10:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T15:10:23","slug":"exploring-playtesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stevebromley.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/21\/exploring-playtesting\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring playtesting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m currently thinking about playtesting. And building in the open. This blog post is an attempt at the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last six months, I\u2019ve been interviewing game developers about playtesting. I\u2019ve wanted to explore how they define it, why they do it, how they do it, and what makes playtesting difficult. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My suspicion was (and still is) that there is a lot that professional games user researchers could bring that would help game developers run better playtests but that the cost is prohibitive.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s reasonably expensive to hire a user researcher or commission a user research study from an agency. Game developers are also time poor, meaning a lot of the games user research expertise is out of reach to them or not a priority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to change that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My journey<\/strong> to learning about playtesting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I am very early on this journey. I imagine the steps will be something like this\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Understand the situation for game developers currently, including what\u2019s difficult about playtesting<\/li>
  2. Consider what tools, resources or things would help them overcome those difficulties<\/li>
  3. Prototype potential solutions with developers, iterate, and refine until I\u2019m confident this is providing value <\/li>
  4. Launch the final thing into the world<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    And I\u2019m very much in step one currently. But it\u2019s going great so far. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These interviews have meant breaking out of my normal games user research circle (Interested in joining the games user research circle? I have a book<\/strong><\/a> and a newsletter<\/strong><\/a> on how to do that). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I\u2019ve been speaking to producers, UX Designers, community managers, CEOs, solo devs, and more, which has been extremely illuminating. This has only been possible due to the support of industry pros who have helped shaped my thinking and given guidance so far, including Caspar Field, Brynley Gibson, Rami Ismail, Juney Dijkstra (and all the kind people who have signed up for my interviews).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Doing this in the open also creates serendipitous opportunities. Dr Alena Denisova from City University in London has already got in touch about teaming up for a study she and a colleague are leading, which I\u2019m really excited about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What\u2019s at the end?<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    I believe the output from this work will be a collection of tools to help teams who can\u2019t afford professional support apply games user research techniques to their own playtests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you are interested in following this journey, you can follow me on twitter<\/a> or sign up to this email address to get pinged when interesting things occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n