Week 9: November 4th, 2022 – Feedback from Playtesting

Hello!

This week we focused on iterating based on the feedback we received during Playtest Day on October 29th.

Playtest Feedback

The feedback from Playtesting came in a variety of forms, with the three main forms being observing players while they played, debriefing players after they finished, and player responses to a survey. Each of these will have their own section to discuss our findings.

Observation

Here are some of the notes I had taken about player habits/my own findings during playtesting:

[Playtesters] attempted to click+drag power levers
[Playtesters] missed clicking on switch hitbox
[Playtesters] seemed unsure about how to leave the spaceship
The Systems finale module not resetting after an attempt
[Playtesters] not attempting finale 2
[Playtester] hesitation to enter side district (even when we attempt to drive them in that direction)
[Other Playtesters] entering side district first, when we weren’t prepared for them
[Playtesters] avoiding launching the spaceship
Finale feedback was difficult to parse, not present. Players would be looking one direction and not know why they failed.
[Playtesters] could fail multiple finale modules at the same time (which doubled the ship blowing up)

Breaking these down into groups:

Players not exhibiting intended behavior

[Playtesters] attempted to click+drag power levers
[Playtesters] missed clicking on switch hitbox
[Playtesters] not attempting finale 2
[Playtesters] avoiding launching the spaceship

For these issues, we likely can make the options already present in the game more clear. We can specify the game only has click interaction (no dragging) which should reduce the first behavior. The second can be fixed by enlarging the switch hitbox. The third will likely be either left as is (if we want to player to explore more freely) or there will be dialogue that encourages them attempting the finale again. We will either need to remove player agency and force them to play OR plan for them not playing. Similarly with players avoiding launching, we can provide a timer that will provide feedback if the player makes no progress in a long time.

Build Issues/Missing Feedback

[Playtesters] seemed unsure about how to leave the spaceship
The Systems finale module not resetting after an attempt
[Playtesters] could fail multiple finale modules at the same time (which doubled the ship blowing up)
Finale feedback was difficult to parse, not present. Players would be looking one direction and not know why they failed.

For these issues, some are easy to resolve code/programming errors that I was able to fix very quickly. The other problems were generally surrounding feedback and how we communicate what is happening to the player. We attempted to improve feedback in the finale by adding more change/larger change to ensure the player is understanding of the modules that are failing. For the lack of understanding about leaving the spaceship/unsure where to go, again the timer with feedback and/or more inworld feedback as to what options are available will be useful to the player.

Bias Exploration

[Playtester] hesitation to enter side district (even when we attempt to drive them in that direction)
[Other Playtesters] entering side district first, when we weren’t prepared for them

This observation is much more in line with this game being a tool for education than the rest of the observations (which were much more about “game” aspects). Our build state as of playtesting didn’t explore how players might talk with resident NPCs (or avoid them), but this behavior is extremely relevant to the purpose of the game. If players unconsciously avoided going to certain places/districts or talking to people, we can start tapping into those biases.

Debriefing

After players finished the game (and after our survey but we will visit that last), we sat down with them to talk about their thoughts and get some perspective on their experience. I wrote down some of the comments that I had received:

[Player] wanted more dialog to explore certain aspects/occasionally missed what someone had said
[Player] really liked the posters
[Player]’s favorite part was trying to solve the finale
[Player] liked having to seek assistance and liked that they felt they were picking between a well-known character and an experienced character

We were happy to hear that players felt interested in solving the finale and that drive to finish motivated them to play. That said, they seemed to be ignoring aspects of the intended story to focus on the finale. We hoped that the finale would be more of a way to keep them interested, not the only thing they explored.
Overall, we definitely got the sense that scaling back some aspects of the finale and putting more emphasis on the narrative would serve our project interests.

Survey

We devised a short survey to poll playtesters on their thoughts/understanding of certain aspects of the project. We had them complete the survey right after gameplay (and prior to the debrief. The survey featured questions like the following:

This question above was about our two engineer characters (featured below). Almost 90% of participants noticed a difference (when the main visual distinction is skin color), meaning that skin color is an attribute our playtesters were generally aware of.

1 being not very trustworthy, 5 being very trustworthy.

This question was our most surprising find. Most of our players found RC to either be a neutral or trustworthy source of information, even though we intended for them to come off as very biased. We recognize now that we may have to convince players that RC is biased with more examples of how that bias can cause damage.

One of the other questions we had created was about how the players felt about the engineers. We generally expected both engineers to be perceived as helpful but there was a lot of feedback that players weren’t exactly sure what the engineers did. The ways the engineers “fixed” the ship wasn’t especially visible or clarified for the playtesters and we want to ensure we improve that feedback/visibility.

Overall, we really enjoyed getting to playtest and have started to build off of the feedback we received in order to improve our game. We want to further accentuate the dialog/narrative experience and simplify the finale without losing too much engagement.

Moving Forward

We want to schedule additional meetings with educators/students to explore our game and ensure we are iterating significantly on the narrative/storytelling. Our next big checkpoints involve trying to overhaul the narrative and flesh out a lot of the messages we are trying to communicate.

Thanks for reading,

James from STEMspire