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Confession: I'm a bad playtester

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24 Jan 2018 15:43 #262022 by Shellhead
I have a confession to make: as both a game designer and a player, I am a bad playtester.

When I am designing a game, I find it impossible to just sit there quietly and watch while other people playtest my game. I over-explain the rules, I kibitz with strategy tips, and I often sit in as a player, if I feel like the game needs one player for that particular playtest. I know that I should stay out of it and only show them pertinent rules in the rulebook if they get stuck. And because I find it somewhat difficult to recruit playtesters, I have sometimes skimped on the quantity of playtests.

Because the Twin Cities metro area is a hotbed of aspiring game designers, I have also playtested numerous prototypes designed by other people.And I would like to think that I have done a decent job playtesting in the past, but now I am letting a friend down. He is a former Jyhad player, and is working on a science-fiction conquest CCG. The rules are a little on the heavy side, a four-player game takes about two hours, and there is a whole deck design aspect that is difficult for me because I don't enjoy deck design.

Because of the complexity and the deck design aspect, this game needs a lot of playtesting. But I didn't enjoy the two games that I have played so far, and I really don't want to play it again. The game is mechanically sound, but the elusive fun factor is missing and the card combos seem obvious and not clever. But I can't bring myself to say that, especially since the other playtesters seemed to like it. And even they can't keep up with his relentless weekly playtest game schedule, which is why he is trying to get me back into the playtesting.

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24 Jan 2018 15:48 #262025 by SuperflyPete
It takes a certain mentality, to be sure. It’s hard to watch someone completely fuck up your creation and not say anything.

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24 Jan 2018 15:54 #262031 by repoman
I hate play testing.

I hate it even more when the designer hovers like a helicopter mom and explains how you should be playing. If you've got to tell me after teaching the game, you've made a mistake somewhere.
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24 Jan 2018 16:09 #262039 by san il defanso

repoman wrote: I hate play testing.

I hate it even more when the designer hovers like a helicopter mom and explains how you should be playing. If you've got to tell me after teaching the game, you've made a mistake somewhere.


Everything here. You want me to playtest your game? Then get ready to hear what's wrong with it.

To all aspiring game designers: don't be that guy who asks if people want to play your prototype at game night, because the answer from me will always be "no."
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24 Jan 2018 16:10 #262040 by Legomancer
I did some playtesting and learned that I do not like playtesting. Other people enjoy it and more power to them, but I won't do it again.

I also don't want to design anything. Nor do I want to play YOUR design, if it didn't go through a process with a pro designer, editor, publisher, etc.
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24 Jan 2018 16:13 #262045 by SuperflyPete

Legomancer wrote: I also don't want to design anything. Nor do I want to play YOUR design, if it didn't go through a process with a pro designer, editor, publisher, etc.


Knowing what I know now, I’d have to agree.

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24 Jan 2018 16:28 #262055 by Black Barney
i'm too competitive to enjoy playtesting. My buddy designed a board game and asked me to try it out. A couple of hours into it, i pushed some enveloppes to see if I could break the game mechanics a bit, and eventually got bored and never wanted to play again.

Even back in the day, i had an offer to get flown down to Virginia to playtest my favourite card game over a week (everything paid for ) and I said no, i just know I wouldn't enjoy that aspect of it at all.

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24 Jan 2018 16:41 #262059 by san il defanso
I have in past had a very hard time separating my own preferences from actual good design. I actually quit playtesting when I realized I was offering advice that would make every game into something I personally would like, regardless of what the designer intended.

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24 Jan 2018 17:05 - 24 Jan 2018 17:48 #262066 by Shellhead

san il defanso wrote: I have in past had a very hard time separating my own preferences from actual good design. I actually quit playtesting when I realized I was offering advice that would make every game into something I personally would like, regardless of what the designer intended.


As a game designer, this was a common thing that I encountered with playtesters. A given playtester would give me a lot of specific suggestions, and it became apparent that they wanted to play, for example, a worker placement euro game instead of an area control ameritrash game.

Another common form of feedback could be summed up as "I would have totally won that game if you had designed it like [this] instead of like [that.]

I actually like the playtesters who try to break the game, as long as they don't deliberately break the current rules just to one-up my game. I ended a playtest game early once because somebody successfully broke the game in a way that couldn't be patched up on the spot with a house rule. Just to clarify, that was great, because it was extremely valuable feedback that helped me make a better game, my only design that ever got published.
Last edit: 24 Jan 2018 17:48 by Shellhead.

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24 Jan 2018 17:41 - 24 Jan 2018 17:47 #262070 by Erik Twice
I've had enough bad experiences as a playtester to not want to do it again. The issue is that, well, most designers do not want truthful comments on their game.

I remember one game which was a multiplayer wargame that was broken. The reason? You could move, shoot and then move back again. If you tried to move towards the enemy, they would just move, shoot you and then move back just enough so that you couldn't reach them next turn. So then you were force to move towards them again, only to have them move, shoot and then move back just enough so that you are out of range. It was awful and made no sense.

So after two hours of dropping subtle hints we had a lucky chance to stop playing. And we did. Thank god.

Most playtests just suffer from the game being boring. It's not that the game is good or bad, it's that it's unsalvageable because it's not fun. You also have a good chunk that, quite simply, are not worth working on because they are inferior versions of much better games. It's hard to have fun with an unpublished worker placement game when there are 50 other titles doing the same thing, but better. But, of course, you can't tell the poor guy that.
Last edit: 24 Jan 2018 17:47 by Erik Twice.
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24 Jan 2018 17:57 #262071 by Da Bid Dabid
These are the reasons why, despite having what I'm sure is a cool idea for a game that would be unique and fun, I'll never go through the trouble of trying to make it.

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24 Jan 2018 18:01 - 24 Jan 2018 18:01 #262073 by Shellhead
Several years after my one game got published, and after a couple more designs that didn't get published, I swore off game design.

But I had always wanted to play a card game or board game based on the Amber series, and it looked like that was never going to happen because his bitter surviving wife is mismanaging his estate. So I decided to make my own game, and I promised myself that I would never try to publish it. I did playtest it, but only to fine tune the exact kind of game that I wanted it to be, without regard for what would sell. I like my finished game, though I was never quite satisfied with the balance of the hidden victory condition cards.

Sadly, my Amber game is long and somewhat complex, which makes it a shelf toad. You think spending $100+ on a shelf toad is bad? Imagine spending 200+ hours of your life creating a shelf toad for zero profit. There are plenty of Amber fans who are gamers, but most are diceless rpg gamers and few are AmeriTrash gamers.
Last edit: 24 Jan 2018 18:01 by Shellhead.

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24 Jan 2018 18:04 #262075 by Erik Twice
Apparently the EON guys created an Amber game, but it was cancelled and they no longer have any files/prototypes.

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24 Jan 2018 18:13 #262077 by Shellhead

Erik Twice wrote: Apparently the EON guys created an Amber game, but it was cancelled and they no longer have any files/prototypes.


I've heard that too, and I bet it was going to be a similar design to Dune in certain respects. A decade later, West End Games got as far as a prototype and some playtest games. But they decided that the boardgame market at that time wouldn't be willing to pay enough for the large quantity of components in their game. Instead they recycled some of their ideas into their TORG rpg.

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24 Jan 2018 18:15 - 24 Jan 2018 18:28 #262078 by SuperflyPete
I like designing games with few rules where the game decisions shape the game itself. Sort of a sandbox.

In a perfect world, rulebooks should be no more than 6 pages.
Last edit: 24 Jan 2018 18:28 by SuperflyPete.

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