ABSTRACT
Most people who attend a playtest tend to look where the player looks. If it is a videogame, this means at the screen. There is a school of thought that believes it is dangerous to have the developers of a game present when it is tested. The danger is that their emotional investment in the game will cause them to encourage the players to overlook flaws and “infect” the players with an insider’s viewpoint. A postgame interview is a great way to ask players questions too complex for a simple survey sheet. It’s also a way to get a sense of how they really felt about the game, since game designers can see emotion in their faces and hear it in their voices. As technology advances and real-time analytics and dependence on microtransaction revenue become increasingly critical, the more playtesting is merging into ongoing game tuning.
