Different Types of Playtesting
Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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The first unpublished game I ever played as an adult was Dry Gulch. At the time, I thought of it as playtesting; since then, I've come to realize just how many types of playtesting there are - and just how important it can be to the designer, publisher, or award you are playtesting for to make the right choice. Fortunately, there are a number of clues for the erstwhile playtester - still, there are times I realized halfway through or even after that I'd made the wrong choice.
The following is a list of types of playtest I could think of - please feel free to add others...
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Designer's First Playtest
Objective: Gently let the designer know that they don't have the next Spiel des Jahres winner without discouraging them from design.
Characteristics: Often exceptionally detailed rules with glaring holes, beautiful components that aren't quite functional, and a designer who wants to hear positives but needs to hear the negatives as well.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Rough Draft Playtest
Objective: Discover whether or not there's a game in there, hiding among the obvious flaws.
Characteristics: Often the rules will be raw, even incomplete in sections. Many designers avoid this stage; for others, it performs a key differentiation between possible games and impossible ones.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Completed Game Playtest
Objective: Enjoy the game; perhaps look for the one extra thing that might help it see publication.
Characteristics: Typically a very smooth game, with finished components if not finished artwork.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Decision Playtest
Objective: Help a publisher decide whether or not to publish a particular game.
Characteristics: Here, a critical eye is looked for - but even more importantly a judgement about how fun the game is.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Break The Game Playtest
Objective: Try out an extreme strategy to see if the game survives it (i.e., this strategy doesn't run away with the game).
Characteristics: Whether performed with the designer or a publisher, the hope is always that your plan fails.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Tweaking Playtest
Objective: Work through the final details for a game that's already largely complete.
Characteristics: A focus on a few small elements of the game, moreso than the whole.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Advertising Playtest
Objective: Build interest in a game that is on the verge of being published.
Characteristics: The focus is on enjoying the game (or discovering that one doesn't enjoy it), rather than finding problems.
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8.
Board Game: Fiji
[Average Rating:5.87 Overall Rank:2749]
Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Judging Playtest
Objective: Judge a game, whether for a contest or a publisher.
Characteristics: The focus is often on the usual elements, but what's looked for isn't the individual comments so much so as the overall judgement.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Full Draft Playtest
Objective: Similar to a rough draft playtest, but usually with fewer uncertain elements.
Characteristics: Tighter rules than a rough draft playtest, but not necessarily any more advanced a design.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Fine Tune Playtest
Objective: Typically somewhere between a Tweaking playtest and an Advertising playtest - showing the game, building interest, but not the final edition.
Characteristics: Sometimes the final version will be the same, sometimes not - but it will likely feel the same, as the changes will be minor.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Re-release Playtest
Objective: Test out a small change being made for the re-release of a familiar game.
Characteristics: Similar to Variant playtesting, but the changes are typically smaller.
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Variant/Expansion Playtesting
Objective: Test out a change to an existing game.
Characteristics: There are likely more opportunities to perform this type of playtesting than any other, as many people who don't consider themselves game designers at any level will still create variants. Sometime this even happens by accident, due to misunderstanding of the rules...
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Joe Huber
Westborough
Massachusetts
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Blind Playtest
Objective: Debug the rules; sometimes to see how the game plays with a different group.
Characteristics: Many playtests - whether by the designer, publisher, or award committee - are effectively blind playtests. This might be the only way to effectively debug rules.
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Springfield
Virginia
Westborough
Massachusetts
Agreed - if anyone wants to add it, please feel free (otherwise I will). Though blind playtesting tends to be most valuable, IMHO, for debugging written rules...
Campbell
California
I guess I spend too much time reading international standards documentation...
Jacksonville
Florida
All too often, a game tested by a group of people previously known by the designer/developer will have been playing with a certain "group think" or perspective. What blind playtesting gives you is a group of people with no preconceived notions or information about just how the game works, and the game system thus can be tested the most rigorously, as people come into it thinking "out of the box".
This becomes a proportionally larger and more crucial factor, as the complexity of a game system goes up. The more elements in a system designed to obtain a specific range of results, the greater the possibility for results to deviate.
Unspecified