Playtests can be bumpy. Not just cobblestone bumpy, but roller-coaster bumpy too. One day they soar and praise, the next they plummet and frighten. Over the next couple of days I’d like to to try to establish why there’s such a fluctuation of experience for me, and what I can do about it.

Good playtest

First things first, let’s try to figure out what I thought made a good playtest experience.

After months of work, I was looking for the experience that told me “hey Seb, you’re all right.” Yep, shallow as it is, when I went into a playtest I wanted to come out feeling like I was king of the world. Why? Cus that meant I didn’t have any more work to do.

Bad playtest

The chief absence from a bad playtest is utility. Was anything gleaned? Can I use any of the feedback? Can I perform analysis? If the answer is no, then I’ve wasted my time. The thing is, as long as I expect at least one thing to go one way or the other, there will be something to confirm or challenge. So there’s nearly always something to learn, with the right mindset.

What really makes a bad playtest, for me at least, is the spectrum of bad data that can be misinterpreted and digested when things go wrong through no fault of your game. I’ve mentioned this in another post. It’s the “sometimes a shit game doesn’t means it’s a shit game” phenomenon. Coming out of one of those sessions you’ve got to be careful. When you’re at your most vulnerable, disillusioned and doubtful, you are most likely to destroy your good work.

Some people say that an out-and-out playtest disaster is sometimes just what you need. Perhaps, but it should be acknowledged that it can also lead to instability, unrest and unnecessary tinkering unless it is accurately interpreted. Let’s say you have a perfect set of rules for a roleplaying game of epic romance, you walk into a room of adolescent card game players, they get bored and tell you you’re shit. Now you take this as truth, modify the rules to create more structure, playtest this shittier version of your system, find out it’s still shit, and keep editing until you’ve either come back full circle to your original rules, or turned the project into a pile of wank. Dangerous. Fucking. Shenanigans.

So, my lesson is this: until I’ve figured out how to deal with playtest preparation, I shouldn’t trust a terrible playtest. It may not be my fault, and anything I change may have drastic repercussions on my game.

(Next time…Figuring out what I really want)