Games Testing

Games Testing - Source

I read two articles on games testing this week which both contained a lot of information on criticism and testing.

The first article I read was Giving criticism – the good, the bad, and the ugly!. This article going in detail on the pros and cons of criticism and what you should avoid. Some of us are blunt and outspoken whilst others are tight lipped and timid. Criticism can be a great thing if done correctly and it is constructive, otherwise what's the point? There would be no learning if people couldn't be constructive with their thoughts.

That leads us to the question, How does one give constructive criticism? It's a fairly simple process to follow as all it takes in some initiative! It's something a lot of people need to work on as I know that many people don't know how to construct their criticism and it ends up coming out sounding harsh. This article gives to main points to put this into action.

1. Focus on valid and unbiased feedback. 
2. Make your criticism clear, understandable and relevant. 

Here are some examples of terrible feedback in contrast to great feedback!

Bad

1. That logo design sucks! 
2. I can't read that text!

Good

• There isn’t much contrast between the background and text color, and the font size is a bit small, so the text is difficult to read.
• do you think a serif-font might be more professional?

The second article I read was Challenges For Game Designers. This is a great book with many unique and interesting challenges. 

Here is a great example of a challenge that I looked at in this book and I found it would be interesting for anyone getting into game design to take a while to challenge themselves. Here is the challenge. 

Old Game, New Life

Board games are extremely adaptable creatures. Consider Monopoly. There are presentlyover 1,200 different versions of Monopoly, each with a different theme. Irishopoly, Do-gopoly, Catopoly—you name it, and it’s been done. For this challenge, you must use anystandard board game and give it an historical setting. For students creating games, the goal of this challenge should be topic mastery.

1. Choose a game to modify:All games are adaptable to different themes. The degree of difficulty comes only in understanding the directions of the original game. Be sure to pick something easily explained, understood, and played in a classroom in the time period you’ve allocated.
2. Choose a topic:The more specific the topic, the better. However, this is only a rule of thumb and not a rigid rule. Topics that are currently being studied are natural targets.
3. Research your topic:Once the topic is selected, research your topic using the Internet or other resources provided.
4. Modify the theme:Make a list of all the game bits and determine how you will replace these to fit the new theme. For instance, if you use Clue as a game, perhaps you could use equally famous historical settings and characters.
5. Make a prototype:Once  a  topic  has  been  selected,  make  a  prototype  of  the  game  in  question.  Re-member that board-game prototypes don’t need to be pretty. Your goal here is to see if the game itself is playable and interesting.
6. Create deliverable.