作者：teale

在本文的第一部分中，我从理论上解释了游戏测试的合理性，并介绍了在游戏开发过程中可能用上的几种测试。现在，我将继续探讨更加实践性的问题，如谁来测试游戏以及如何对待数据和反馈。

谁来测试？

你准备开始测试游戏了。

那么，谁来测试？

简单的回答就是，你能找到的任何人都可以参与测试！但更复杂一点的回答是，要让不同的人参与游戏开发过程的不同阶段的测试。

在早期探索阶段，让朋友参与测试是最好的，因为他们可以一针见血地指出早期原型中的许多未完善之处。虽然奉承可以极大地满足你的自信心，但诚实更有价值。另外，最好不要一想到什么好创意就马上向所有朋友公布，

因为你必须首先在开发过程中做测试。把想玩你的游戏的人罗列成表，但这还不够，当有需要时，你还要添加更多新测试者。

让朋友进行第一次盲测《Corporate America》(from nothingsacredgames)

在开发早期，硬核玩家朋友非常有帮助，因为他们可以发现结构上的问题并提出建议；当你致力于游戏的平衡性时，他们的作用甚至更加重要。你需要一些人来探索游戏的深度，而三五个玩家好友正是不二人选。

寻找陌生人来测试你的游戏可能非常困难，但又很有必要，特别是当解决了结构问题后，你正准备测试游戏的易玩性和规则时。你绝对需要组织几次由陌生人参与的盲测，即让他们在没有你的介入的情况下，通过阅读规则学习如何玩你的游戏。你可以在当地的游戏商店、游戏集会、公园、大学校园，或甚至通过网站寻找陌生人玩家。记住，陌生人只是你还没认识的朋友！

乐意帮助你的人都可以参与测试，但同时你最好考虑一下你的目标受众。因为让不属于你的目标受众的人来测试你的游戏，他们很容易对你的游戏产生消极反应，进而导致你怀疑自己的开发方向是否正确（即使你的目标受众可能喜欢你现在的游戏）。

我们已经讨论了让朋友和陌生人参与测试，那么你自己呢？显然，你也想玩自己的游戏吧！在开发过程的大多数阶段，你可能侥幸通关游戏，但记住，在你真正玩游戏时，你的数据就不太管用了。你还应该保证你进行若干次自己不参与的测试，特别是在开发易玩性和规则的阶段。你当然可以帮助测试平衡性，但如果你的游戏是策略游戏，谨防太过了解你的游戏——如果你比你的对手更了解游戏，你的数据往往不平衡，于是就不实用了。

记录什么数据？

我笔记本上的某一页，有些凌乱了(from nothingsacredgames)

你应该随身携带笔记本（谁知道灵感什么时候会出现！），但尤其重要的是，要有一本记录测试的笔记本，作为日后的参考资料。除了写下玩家的反馈，你还应该记录以下信息：

-测试者及其信息

-测试时间

-最终得分

-游戏过程中的累积得分（以监控游戏节奏）

-使用道具的数量（游戏邦注：如《Pandemic》的疾病方块或《Corporate America》中的美元）

-在游戏中发生的任何特殊事件（如过强的或模糊的卡片组合、困惑、漫长的回合、玩家无事可做的回合等）

-玩家遇到的特别糟糕的体验

你应该带着目标和假设开展测试，对吧？达到目标需要多少信息？你在测试过程中必须记录下来。标准化的笔记有助于追踪和比较不同测试之间的进度，这对验证你是否做出正确的调整选择是非常重要的。

如何看待批评？

你让人们花时间和精力来测试你的游戏，因为你想得到反馈，对吧？而不只是满足你的自我认同感吧？很好。

所以当他们提供反馈时，你应该感到快乐！老实说，没收到任何反馈才是悲剧……那通常意味着你的游戏太惨不忍睹了，玩家都不知道要怎么提建议了。玩家测试后抛出一大堆想法，这是好事！意味着他们对你的游戏有兴趣，想让你游戏变得更好。

处理反馈是一件非常艰难的事。你必须学会把自己的感情放在一边，客观地看待你的想法。无论如何，你不要自我辩护，即使你不同意玩家提出的建议，也要从容地接受批评。即使肤浅的建议看起来并不怎么实用，也可能包含有用的信息。

总是写下反馈，一方面作为日后的参考，另一方面让测试者觉得你是在认真对待他们的参与（这是应该的）。

不要把测试者的建议和反馈当成教条和圣经。记住，你们只是玩了你的游戏一两次，而你自己思考了并且玩了无数次。通常来说，第一印象是错的。但不要忘记，第一印象本身是很重要的，即使是错误的第一印象。总之，认真对待所有反馈。

你不妨把处理玩家反馈当成解谜题。玩家会建议你如何调整游戏，通常是让你在游戏中添加新的东西。虽然有些想法不错，但你的工作是砍掉游戏中多余的东西，所以你应该对这些提议保持克制。但是，这些建议基本上体现了玩家试玩时遇到的某类问题。你的工作是透过建议的表面，找出玩家提出这些建议的根本原因。一旦你发现深层原因，你就能决定这些建议是否能切实解决问题或是否存在更适用的解决方案。

结论

测试是工作，但也应该是有趣的，对吧？

你也许希望如此，但就像科学实验，消极的结果往往比积极的结果更让人受启发。人们不喜欢糟糕的体验，所以你必须尽可能地将糟糕体验从你的游戏中排除出去。这个过程你可能会觉得痛苦，但糟糕的测试结果可以让你发现你的游戏确实存在不足，还可以激励你拿出行动，迫使你接受残酷的现实。不怎么有趣的测试过程往往最实用。这是让诚实的玩家参与测试的另一个原因，不会掩饰自己体验的人才是好玩家，才是你可以指望的玩家。

好吧，以上就是我暂时的测试经验。现在，你可以开始自己的游戏测试了！我希望这个过程不会让你觉得太有趣！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Board Game Design Basics: Playtest! Part II

by teale

Last time on Board Game Design Basics, I gave a theoretical justification of playtesting and discussed some of the types of playtests you’ll be running over the course of developing your game.

Today I’ll pick up where I left off, getting to more practical matters like who should playtest and how to make use of data and feedback. Let’s dive right in!

The Who’s Who of Playtesting!

So you’re ready to start playtesting.

…who should do the playtesting?

The short answer is everyone you can get to playtest! But the slightly longer answer is different people at different times during the development of a game. (For a review of the stages of development, check out my last post on playtesting.)

A blind playtest (no rules help from the designer) of Corporate America with some friends. Image from the Presidential Hats Tumblr.

The first blind playtest of Corporate America with some friends. Image from the Presidential Hats Tumblr.

Friends are great for the Early Exploration phase, assuming they can see beyond the many rough edges of an early prototype. While flattery can be great medicine for the ego, honesty is more important. It’s also a good idea to not expose all of your friends to your awesome new creation right away, since you need to test the game on first timers throughout the development process. Keep a list of people that want to play the game but haven’t yet so you can find fresh playtesters when you need them.

Hard core gamer friends are very good early in development, when they can identify structural problems and offer suggestions, but are even more important when you’re working on balance. You will need some people to scour the depths of what your game offers, and a group or two of gamer friends are the best people to do it.

Finding strangers to play your game can be difficult, but it’s vital, especially as the structural changes are getting ironed out and you’re ready to start testing accessibility and rules. You will definitely need to host several blind playtests with strangers who learn to play the game by reading the rules without your intervention. You can find strangers at local game shops, game
conventions, at parks or college campuses, or even through craigslist. Remember, strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet! *wink*

You should playtest with everyone who’s willing, but you should consider your target audience, as well. It can be counter productive to playtest with people outside of the scope of your target audience, since they could easily have a negative experience, which might make you think you’re on the wrong track (even though people you want to enjoy the game might love it).

We’ve covered friends and strangers, but what about you? Obviously, you want to play your own game! During most stages of development you can totally get away with it… just remember that your data is less useful when you’re playing. You should also make sure you run several playtests without participating, especially in the Accessibility and Rules stage of development. You can definitely help balance, as well, but when it comes to highly strategic games, beware of knowing your game too well–if you know the game much better than your opponents, your data will be too skewed to be useful.

The Joy of Data!

A recent page from my notebook. Note: messiness not required.

A recent page from my notebook. Note: messiness not recommended.

You should always carry a notebook around with you (who knows when inspiration will strike!), but it’s especially important to have one when you playtest. You will want to jot down notes so you can reference them later. In addition to writing down feedback from players, you also might want to keep track of the following:

- Playtesters and date.

- Play time.

- Final scores.

- Scores throughout game (to monitor game pacing).

- The number of components used (think disease cubes in Pandemic or dollar bills in Corporate America).

- Any awkward events that occurred during the game (overpowered or ambiguous card combinations, confusion, annoyingly long turns, turns where a player did nothing, etc).

- Any particularly bad experiences players had.

You’re going into the playtest with a goal and a hypothesis, right? Figure out what information would be useful for that goal and make sure you keep track of it during the playtest. Keeping standardized notes will allow you to track how the game is progressing between playtests, which is important to make sure your changes are taking the game in the right direction.

Taking Criticism Like a Champ!

You’re asking people to playtest your game, spending their time and mental energy. You want feedback, right? Not just to stroke your ego? Ok, good.

Then be happy when they offer feedback! Honestly, no feedback is a very bad sign… that usually means the game is in such bad shape that your players don’t even know where to begin to fix it.

Players dumping ideas for the game after playtesting is a great sign! It means your game has inspired them and they want more.

Taking feedback can be very challenging. You need to learn to distance yourself emotionally from your ideas. Whatever you do, do not get defensive! Even if you disagree with feedback a playtester offers, take that criticism with grace. Perhaps there is a gem of useful information in there even if the surface suggestion isn’t particularly helpful.

Always write down feedback. It’s good to be able to reference it later and it makes your playtesters feel like you’re taking them seriously (which you should be doing anyway).

Do not take feedback and suggestions from playtesters as scripture. Remember that they’ve played your game once or twice, and you’ve seen it played many times and thought about it for hours.

Often times, first impressions are wrong. But don’t forget that first impressions are important in their own right, even if inaccurate. Take all feedback seriously.

Often times, you should think of playtester feedback as a little puzzle. Playtesters will offer suggestions about how to change the game, frequently suggesting new stuff to add to the game. While
some of these ideas will be good, your job is to cut out unnecessary clutter from your game, so you should be resistant to those types of suggestions. Still, the suggestion is most likely indicative of some sort of problem the playtester experienced. Your job is to look past the surface suggestion to discover the reason the playtester made the suggestion. Once you’ve discovered that, you can determine whether the suggestion actually addresses the problem or if there’s another solution that might work better.

All’s Well that Ends Well?

Playtesting might be work, but it should be fun, right?

You might hope so, but just like a scientific experiment, negative results can often be more enlightening than positive results. Humans dislike bad experiences much more than they like good
experiences, so it’s important to try to stamp bad experiences out of your game if at all possible. As painful as they can be to live through, playtests that go poorly give you a glimpse into areas where your game really needs help. They can also jolt you into action, forcing you to accept the writing on the wall. Playtests that aren’t fun are often the most helpful. This is another reason having honest playtesters who won’t sugar coat their experiences are the best playtesters you can hope for.

Alright, that’s all I have about playtesting for the time being. Now get out there and playtest! I hope it goes terribly for you!(source:nothingsacredgames)