Brandon the Game Dev

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways.

Just here for Highways & Byways updates? Click here – it will take you right to the updates at the bottom of the page.

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Play-testing has been really high up on my radar for the last couple of weeks. Between 7 Subtle Player Behaviors You Should Notice When Play-Testing and The Art of the Play Test: Designing Tests and Keeping Records, you might think that’s all I’ve got on my mind. You’d mostly be right to think that, too. Highways & Byways is ready for blind play-testing, and I’ll be spending this weekend setting up a plan on how I’m going to coordinate testing from this point forward.

It took me a long time to get this game ready for blind play-testing. But before we talk any more about blind play-testing, let’s define it.

Blind play-testing is when you give your game to other people with no instructions on how to play. You can choose to observe them while playing or elicit their feedback after the game has ended.

I tend to break this definition down even further. Please note these are “Brandonisms” and not formal board game design terms I’ve seen anywhere else:

• Single-blind play-testing is when I give my game to other people with no instructions on how to play, but I still play as a player. The benefit is that I can observe directly how players act in response to certain strategies. The drawback is that it’s not truly blind play-testing, since players can pick up on what you’re doing.
• Double-blind play-testing is when I give my game to other people with no instructions on how to play and I do not participate in the game at all. I can observe during the game or ask questions after the game is played, but the critical piece here is that I must not interfere with the game as it is going on.

To give you an idea what goes into getting a game ready for either type of blind play-testing, here are some things I’ve already done. I’ve play-tested the game a lot by myself, acting as 2-4 players at a time. Self-testing was my primary form of testing in the first and second versions of the game, when I wasn’t even sure if some of the core concepts would work. Then I started testing with my brother whose indefatigable patience and ready availability makes him invaluable in play-testing. A few versions later, I was testing with my parents and cousins. Once the game was pretty clearly on the right track, I started testing it with friends online and offline.

Blind play-testing requires that your game function well in both gameplay and communication aspects. Knowing when your game is ready for blind play-testing is not an easy call to make. For that matter, it can be scary to pass it on to people who may or may not like it. Yet blind play-testing is critical for making a market-ready board game and there is some data that only blind play-testing can provide.

8 Signs Your Game is Ready for Blind Play-Testing

1. The game can stand alone. You don’t need developer input to play any more.

If your game has gotten to the point where people can pick it up and play it without asking you questions, that is a very good sign. If you find that play-testers do not ask you many questions during your non-blind play-tests, you’re definitely on the right track.

2. Your game cannot be broken.

Part of why game developer presence is so important in early play-testing is because of the possibility for games to completely break down. If your game becomes unplayable due to a glitch in the rules, a logical inconsistency in mechanics, or even a wickedly overpowered strategy, you cannot blind play-test it. Period, point blank. Your games do not necessarily have to be good before you start blind play-testing, but they must be finish-able every single time.

3. You have functional artwork.

Blind play-testing is a test of both gameplay and communication. If your game requires certain visual cues in order to be properly tested, you need to have enough artwork to be able to properly test.

As an example, Highways & Byways starts with a drafting round in which the Byways on the board are divvied up among players. In order to test the game’s ability to communicate, I needed a completed board map. The board art was then recycled for the Byway cards, which reference specific places on the board. While this only comprises about 10% of the art in the game, the board was mission-critical to further play-testing. As it turns out, the experimental design techniques that James and I have been using work beautifully, enough there was no way to know that without putting in the time to develop art.

4. The rule book is usable.

This ties into point #1 about not needing developer input, but is important enough to warrant a separate point on my list. Your play-testers, having never played the game and having no input from you, will be learning your game from the rule book. You might have kept only a skeleton of the rule book until now, but that will not cut it during blind play-testing. Here are some resources you can look to if you need to clean up your rules:

• Creating the First Version of Game Rules
• How to Make Board Game Rules
• How Far Should Rule Books Go?

5. Players do not get stuck.

If players get lost on the board, in the rule book, or in the decision-making process during the game, that should concern you. Players are less likely to get stuck in “analysis paralysis” with the developer right there to help them. If players do get stuck with you right there, then the problem will probably be worse during blind play-testing and you need to address it prior to blind play-testing.

6. There are multiple viable strategies available to players.

Though your game does not necessarily have to be great before starting blind play-testing, it needs to have a few workable strategic angles. If you have multiple different viable strategies, then balancing them is often a matter of tweaking rules. If you only have one viable strategy, you could be looking at problems baked into the mechanics or even core engine of your game. You generally don’t want to be messing with your game on that basic of a level once you get blind play-testers involved because they’re often hard to find.

7. You know what your game is like, but have trouble describing it.

Blind play-testing is great for finding problems, but it’s arguably even better for marketing. In addition to the fact that many of your blind play-testers will eventually become customers, you can use the things they tell you about your game as part of your future sales pitch. When someone says “this part of your game is appealing,” the odds are good that it will appeal to lots of gamers.

8. You cannot go any further in development without outside feedback.

At some point, you’ll hit a wall in play-testing that you cannot scale without bringing in fresh points of view. That is where I am right now. Highways & Byways is a few subtle tweaks away from being a solid performer on Board Game Geek. Yet I believe it would be an act of hubris to think that my family, close friends, and I are capable of spotting all the problems ourselves. You need lots of different opinions to refine a creative work so that it meets its full potential. Blind play-testing is how board game developers refine their work.

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Most Important Highways & Byways Updates

• Highways & Byways is ready for public play-testing.
• I’m putting together a plan this weekend on how I’ll coordinate play-testing, including where play-testers will gather, when games will take place, and how they’ll be notified.
• In addition to the above, I need to consider single-blind and double-blind play-testing when developing this plan.
• James is continuing to develop art for the game. None of this art is necessary for play-testing, but it will be important later on for game quality and promotional reasons.

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways.

Just here for Highways & Byways updates? Click here – it will take you right to the updates at the bottom of the page.

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I have play-testing on the brain. In the wee hours of the morning last Friday night, James Masino delivered the first serious draft of Highways & Byways board art. It was a gorgeous rendition of the disorganized mess of roads and states that I’d been play-testing with before. By using color/contrast zones, stripping all text from the board, and generally making the game look pretty, I was finally able to coordinate play-tests through Tabletop Simulator.

The main challenge of Highways & Byways at this point is not the core engine, the mechanics, or the rules, but rather how well the game itself can communicate with players. James and I are both informal students of behavioral psychology, so we’re always looking for the best possible ways to get our points across.

During the course of these play-tests online, I was able to watch players learn the game for the first time. After a few minutes, patterns of behavior emerged and I noticed subtle behaviors that provide information on how the game is being perceived by the players. I’ve listed seven behaviors I’ve been watching for. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but rather just a short list of lessons I’ve learned this week.

7 Subtle Player Behaviors You Should Notice When Play-Testing

1. Players spend a long time searching for something on the board.

If players spend a disproportionately long amount of time searching for something on the board or on cards, that means your game doesn’t communicate clearly. Ask your play-testers where they are getting stuck and take notes. You might need to work with your artist to find a clearer way to communicate important rules.

2. Players forget to do something on a regular basis.

If players forget to do something on a regular basis, there are two ways you can deal with the problem. The first is that you can simplify your game to where players have fewer actions that they must do. The second is that you can list everything on a reference card, telling them what to do and when to do it.

3. When confronted with certain gameplay situations, players ask questions or check the rule book.

Sometimes this is unavoidable, especially in more complicated games. However, if you find players doing this so much that it slows down the pace of the game, you need to simplify the mechanics, create a reference card, or clarify the structure of your rule book.

4. Players spend a long time using components.

Having physically accessible components is important, even for players who don’t have any physical issues. My hands work perfectly fine, but I am loath to deal with paper money in games, shuffle decks over and over again, or move 100 tiny little punch-out pieces on a board. It gets old fast.

As this is a surprisingly complicated thing to get right, here are some articles which you might find useful if your game has problems with annoying components.

• The Art of the Paper Test: Catching Accessibility Issues Early (Dev Diary: 05/19/17)
• Why does accessibility in board games matter? (A Guest Post by Michael Heron of Meeple Like Us)
• What is the role of accessibility in the board game community?

5. Players make decisions to help themselves or hurt other players.

Unlike the four behaviors above, if you see players overwhelmingly choosing to harm competitors or keep to themselves, that does not necessarily indicate a problem. In fact, unless what you find players doing completely clashes with your intentions when creating the game, any outcome is good! If a game is very “take that” or mean-spirited, then when it’s time to sell it, you pitch it to an audience who enjoys that sort of thing (like I did with War Co.) If players find that their best strategy is to take care of themselves, then that is fine, too. That’s how it goes with Highways & Byways about 70-80% of the time, so you can imagine I’ll be capturing the attention of different players than I did with War Co.

6. Players engage in table talk (or not).

The presence or absence of table talk is a good indicator of game weight. If you see players engaging in table talk, that means your game is fairly light. If players tend to go silent for long stretches of time, your game is probably heavy. People don’t tend to socialize and make strategic decisions at the same time. Your game can be lightweight or heavyweight – both are fine! Understand that different players like games of different weights.

7. Players freeze.

If players freeze, that is because they are not sure what to do. Sometimes your rules aren’t very clear, but sometimes your players are experiencing analysis paralysis. If it’s the former, you need to clean up your rules. If it’s the latter, your game may have too many decisions. You can either pare them down or accept that your game is heavyweight. Either option can be fine, depending on what direction you plan on taking the game in. Highways & Byways does not have this issue, but War Co. does suffer from it, simply because of the sheer number of options available to players.

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Most Important Highways & Byways Updates

• James Masino delivered board art.
• I created test version Highway 4 in Tabletop Simulator.
• Through my Discord community, I did some play-testing of version Highway 4 in Tabletop Simulator.
• After a few play-tests, I changed up the “Event Card” mechanic by doing some tweaks.
• The above changes were significant enough for me to create test version Highway 5.
• James polished up the board a little.
• I created test version Highway 5 in Tabletop Simulator.
• I plan on play-testing Highway 5 this weekend through the Discord community.
• The entire time this has been going on, I’ve been focusing on growing the newsletter and Discord community with a mix of manual outreach and Facebook ads.

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways.

Just here for Highways & Byways updates? Click here – it will take you right to the updates at the bottom of the page.

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This week in Start to Finish, I wrote Choose Your Own Adventure: Self-Publish or Not, an article dedicated to the benefits and pitfalls of self-publishing your game. This week, when trying to provide art directions to James, I remembered an additional pitfall that is an especially prescient and intense problem for self-publishers. I call it Tired Mode.

Photo by Aaron Jacobs. Posted to Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0 License. (Source)

No matter how clear your vision for your project, there will be some days you’ll be too tired to explain it. Mental fatigue is real, y’all.

— Brandon Rollins (@BrandonGameDev) July 26, 2017

Tired Mode is my inelegant name for the mental state that occurs when both of the following conditions are met:

1. You are unable to effectively perform mental work.
2. You are unable to recognize your own inability to effectively perform mental work.

Lots of things can cause Tired Mode: physical exertion, distraction, poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of breaks, poor sleep, caffeine abuse, and so on.

The outcomes of falling into Tired Mode are myriad and range from annoying to devastating. You might sit at the computer for two hours Googling articles but not getting anything done. You might get into a loop of checking your social media over and over again. You might find yourself reading the same sentence over and over again. You might succumb to continuous and useless rework. You might find yourself typing confusing and contradictory art directions to James Masino via Discord on your iPhone while you’re on break at a day-long meeting outside of your normal work environment.

That last one happened to me on Wednesday. This episode perfectly symbolizes something in my mind which I knew for a long time already but had a hard time explaining. It is really, really hard to do a lot of mental work and keep your head on straight.

How to Fight Tired Mode

Part 1: Recognition

Part of what makes Tired Mode so devastating is condition 2: “you are unable to recognize your own inability to effectively perform mental work.” One of the best things you can do is log off the computer if you’re getting nowhere and go outside. If you’re talking to someone and you’re not making sense, be ready to say “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day and I’ll be able to give you a better answer tomorrow.”

This takes time. You’ll have to practice recognizing Tired Mode so you won’t succumb to it in the future. At first, you’ll probably only catch yourself after the fact, but that’s still good – it gives you an idea of what triggered Tired Mode and what you can avoid in the future.

Part 2: Prevention

Speaking of avoidance, the best way to fight Tired Mode is to never fight it at all. Prioritize sleep. Eat well. Exercise. Schedule time for all of these things. If you don’t take care of the basics of productivity and well-being, then the details don’t really matter.

Part 3: Smarter Scheduling

Once you get a sense for the conditions that cause you to get into Tired Mode, start scheduling your life to avoid them. If you’re a morning person, do your important stuff in the morning. If you’re a night owl, don’t do important stuff in the morning. Time management is not merely about reducing the amount of steps in a process to make it take less time, but also about making sure you time your tasks well.

Not a Part: Powering Through It

Sometimes you will have to power through Tired Mode. You shouldn’t plan on it, though. That’s reactive and not proactive – it doesn’t address the root issue and it will leave you even more depleted the next day. That’s no way to live a life.

Why Tired Mode is Worse for Self-Publishers

When you self-publish, your judgement is final. Every game mechanic, every piece of art, and every marketing endeavor ultimately comes down to your decisions. Nobody can overturn what you do. In fact, nobody else will even have a reason to dissuade you from making a bad decision. That is why it is extra important to recognize and prevent Tired Mode when you’re self-publishing.

Setting up mental boundaries is really important. Game development is a marathon process. Small problems can have a disproportionate impact on us when we are repeatedly exposed to them over and over again. Tired Mode often comes out of tiny little energy-sapping things repeated over and over again.

Tired Mode in Players

Developers are not the only ones affected by Tired Mode. Your players also experience Tired Mode. This is why I’ve spent several articles talking about accessibility in gaming. Oftentimes, you’re not just helping people with cognitive disabilities, you’re helping perfectly healthy people have fun even while they’re in Tired Mode.

While you definitely want players to mentally engage with your games, you want to remove unnecessary decisions and make your components and board communicate super clearly. The very same techniques you use to manage your time and organize your life can benefit your games, and thus, your players.

Long story short: don’t underestimate the power of fatigue. Recognize when you’re not performing. Take care of yourself. Organize your time and your life as clearly as possible. Remember that if you self-publish, there is a lot riding on it. Then take all your lessons and apply them to making better games.

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Most Important Highways & Byways Updates

• Again, I’ve been promoting the newsletter and the Discord while waiting on art.
• The board art is nearly done.
• Byway Card templates should be done by the time this article posts.
• Once I have board art and Byway Card templates, I will spend an afternoon creating a pretty play-test version of Highways & Byways on Tabletop Simulator.
• I plan on testing Highways & Byways through the Discord community.