This is the third stage in the Game Design Project Packs. Here students will test the games they've made. They will play their own game and possibly play each other's games. You could even incorporate revisions and further testing. It all depends on how much time you want them to focus on the game design concepts. Details follow below.
The importance of testing and revision - the iterative process in game design
This testing and revision stage of the game design process (usually called playtesting) is essential. It can be fun and rewarding or sometimes very frustrating! It offers a look at the most important elements of the creation process and it's essential for making a quality product. It also can easily take more time than all other parts of the design process combined.
Being so important, students need to see it. With limited class time, though, it is likely you will use it in this activity only provide some exposure to the concepts and a chance to have fun with the designs. Tell students it is important when making any type of game, but let them know real testing and development their game will require a lot of work outside of class.
Keeping that in mind, tweak the following outline and resources to fit your needs.
Groups test their own games
Game designers often play their own games first, just to see if the creations even work at all. For this project, each group should play their game at least once.
After playing, students should discuss these questions:
- Did the game work as we intended?
- Did we find anything (good or bad) that we didn't expect?
- How much do we think other groups will enjoy our game?
- What changes could we make to improve the game?
Depending on how much time you have for this design exploration, students could rework their cards. Simple changes might be handwritten right on the cards. Significant changes might require students to actually alter the cards in the original templates in their Project Pack. Of course, that would require them to print and cut out more components.
If time doesn't allow a students to make all the changes they want to, remind them that they can improve the game as much as they want on their own.
Groups test a game designed by another group
For this part of the project, each group will play at least one other group's game. Ideally this will be "blind playtesting", meaning the groups will play the games without additional assistance from the game designers.
The game components should already be created by now. Game introductions and possibly new rules need to be printed (or shared through Google Drive) so groups have everything they need to learn and play the games.
Along with these materials, give each group a copy of the Game Playtesting Sheet found in the Project Pack. It provides questions for before and after playing the game.
Additional considerations
- Give the groups time in class to read and discuss the Game Playtesting Sheets that test groups filled out for their game.
- Groups could test games from more than one group if time allows.
- Students could take their games home and have other people play them to get more opinions.
- Have a class discussion (possibly virtually) at the end of this stage so you and the students can look for patterns on what worked best in the games.
- It would be ideal to get opinions from students outside of that class or who did not go through the design process themselves. In other words, they would likely be unfamiliar with the base game, so the whole experience would be new to them. This probably would require the designers to put a lot more work into their written rules.
In the next and final stage, students will reflect on their game designs and the design process. Click here to see some general guidelines for the Reflect Stage.
