Playtesting Best Practices: Real World and Online covers the complete journey of playtesting - the iterative journey to shape and refine tabletop games from raw ideas to balanced and fun games. This step-by-step guide embraces the process and celebrates the purpose of every step, from early self-playtesting to late-stage unguided playtesting, and offers the specific questions and practices the author has refined to perfect his own games.
This book is split up into four main sections, each with a distinct focus:
- Getting ready to playtest: establishing goalposts, brainstorming, self-playtesting, getting organized, how to design a prototype, and writing rules. The focus here is starting good habits and establishing best practices, whether this is your first game or your hundredth.
- Playtesting in the real world: how to find playtesters, how to teach your game, what to do during the playtest, how to take notes and collect feedback, and being a great playtester yourself
- Playtesting online: how to adapt to digital platforms, the best practices to playtesting online, how to use these opportunities well, and cautions about playtesting online.
- What to do next: how to iterate, additional ways to playtest your game, knowing when you're done with playtesting, and choosing how to get your game out there.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Remember the human
What is playtesting?
Why should I playtest my game?
When and who should I playtest with?
About this book
Section 1 - Getting Ready to Playtest
Chapter 1 - how we got here - a review to catch you up
Goalposts
The Game Design Loop
Stage 1: Creating
Stage 2: Experimenting
Stage 3: Iterating / Updating
Chapter 2 - Brainstorming, Self-playtesting, and Organizing
Brainstorming
Get in the zone
Ready, set, go!
Review and rank your ideas
Write out your concept
Goalposts vs. concepts
Creating your Minimum Viable Game
Self-playtesting your Minimum Viable Game
Getting organized
Set up a workspace
Organizing ideas and notes into a single system
My system to track ideas
My system of taking notes
Naming the versions of your game
Getting your computer organized
Putting it all together
Chapter 3 - Prototyping the Game
Designing a prototype on your computer
Put function over form, but pay attention to form
Double-coding
Organizing a spreadsheet
Don't hire an artist, but consider paying for art assets
Public Domain photos
Creative Commons photos
Stock photos and icons
What about using AI art?
Building a collection of components
Where to find pieces
Updating your prototype
Assembling your prototype
Creating the second (or third or fourth) prototype
Update what you want to learn
Putting it all together
Chapter 4 - writing rules and reference cards
The 7 things to include in your rulebook
Helpful rules for writing rules
Use mechanical terms, not thematic terms
Updating the rulebook
About Reference Cards / Player Aids
Putting it all together
Section 2 - Playtesting in the Real World
Chapter 5 - finding playtesters and preparing to playtest with other people
Playtesting with friends and family
Setting expectations
Continue to public playtesting
Playtesting with designers
Playtesting at conventions
Starting a real-world playtesting community
Putting it all together
Chapter 6 - teaching your game to playtesters
Welcomes and introductions
Setting the game up
Start with the MAINS
Avoid frontloading or recapping
Invite questions
Connecting components
Empathy and seeing things from the player's perspective
Start the game
Chapter 7 - during the playtest
Take notes
Bring the energy
Observe body language
The three competencies
Ask and answer questions
Keep the game moving to respect their time and energy
Reserve the right to change a rule
Putting it all together
Chapter 8 - taking notes and collecting feedback
End of game notes
Subjective and objective feedback
Collecting feedback - the Chairperson Theory
Drilling down
Filtering feedback
Writing and reviewing notes
Asking good questions
Some specific open-ended questions to ask
Overall impression
Fun and enjoyment
Rules and the teach
Play and player agency
Mechanics and theme
Strategy and tactics
Emotions and feelings
Scoring, winning, and end of the game
Accessibility
Ratings and perceptions
Target market and expectations
Ask for email addresses
What about written feedback?
Elements of a feedback form
Putting it all together
Chapter 9 - iterating and preparing for the next playtest
Complete your notes
Start sorting
General experience
Subjective judgment
Specific systems
Signal vs. noise - Filtering the feedback
Choosing what to change
Choosing what to cut
Choosing what to add
Reverting changes
Putting it all together
Chapter 10 - becoming a great playtester
A playtester's responsibilities
How to turn players into playtesters
Putting it all together
Section 3 - Playtesting Online
Chapter 11 - getting started with online playtesting
What is online playtesting?
Why online playtesting is worthwhile
What to watch out for
Why real-life playtesting is worthwhile
What to watch out for
A brief history of online playtesting
Programs for creating a digital prototype
Best practices for creating a digital prototype
Getting your game playtested online
Putting it all together
Chapter 12 - best practices with online playtesting
Completely set up your game, then save it
Understand the layers of abstraction
When teaching your game, speak slowly and clearly
Playtest the online version to improve the physical version
Beware of only playtesting online
Important tasks when online playtesting
Putting it all together
Section 4 - What to Do Next
Chapter 13 - Stress-testing your game - additional ways to playtest
Test at all player counts
Prescribe play
Stack the deck
Start the game halfway through
Change the way the game is taught
Extreme strategies
Unguided / 'blind' playtesting
How to observe an unguided playtest
Taking notes
When to step in and when not to step in
Collecting feedback
Putting it all together
Chapter 14 - what happens next?
How do you know you're done with playtesting?
Subjective signs
Objective signs
When to shelve a game
Fear and temptation
Choose your own ambition
What do you want to do with your game?
Release online for free
Print on demand
Create a print and play game
Crowdfund and self-publish your game
Sign your game with a publisher
Win an award
Make a lot of money
Putting it all together
Conclusion
It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Stay Connected, Stay Curious
Appendix A: Glossary of terms
About the author
Index
Biography
Chris Backe (rhymes with 'hockey') is an award-winning board game designer. When not designing games, he's the co-founder of No Box Games (a publisher of print-and-play games), and the co-founder of Virtual Playtesting (an online playtesting community). He's written about board game design since 2017 and has playtested hundreds of games in over a dozen countries. He currently lives in Birmingham, England with his wife, Laura.
