{"id":403,"date":"2010-01-19T22:21:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T12:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/?p=403"},"modified":"2010-01-19T22:21:09","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T12:21:09","slug":"virgin-play-testers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/virgin-play-testers\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Play Testers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/virginplaytester.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Virgin Play Tester\" src=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/virginplaytester.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"131\" height=\"109\" \/><\/a>How many virgins have played your game?\u00a0 Do you make sure they&#8217;re virgins before they play?\u00a0 You need at least one virgin per week to keep you on track and you should be filming them!<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">What are virgin play testers?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A virgin is anyone who has never played nor seen someone play your game before.\u00a0 That second part is important.\u00a0 If Bob is watching Jim play your game then both Bob and Jim are no longer virgins.<\/p>\n<p>They are equivalent to someone downloading the demo of your game and firing it up for the first time.\u00a0 They should come from your target audience and preferably be scattered throughout this demographic.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Why do you need virgin play testers?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>People have a short attention span these days.\u00a0 You only have minutes to convince someone your game is worth buying.\u00a0 Watching a virgin play your game lets you watch the experiences every player will go through when they first play it.\u00a0 This is absolutely vital if you want to make your game playable and get a conversion.<\/p>\n<p>Gladwell in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0316017922?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=doosgamcodblo-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0316017922\">Outliers<\/a> has the 10,000 hour rule: the time it takes to become proficient in an activity.\u00a0 I have the 1,000 hour rule.\u00a0 <span class=\"pullquote pqLeft\">After 1,000 hours working on (and playing) your game you can&#8217;t objectively determine its quality<\/span>. The only caveat to this rule is that after a year of not having anything to do with the game your virgin status is reset.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t really help in the world of game development as you can rarely take a year off.\u00a0 It\u2019s much easier to just go out and find virgins. The bottom line is that the only way you can experience what your game is like for a virgin is watching them play.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">What\u2019s the best process?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here are some simple rules to help you:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Video tape everything<\/strong> \u2013 If possible, try and get the game and their hands in the shot at the same time.\u00a0 This lets you see what buttons\/sticks they are pressing at different stages, particularly if they get stuck<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Don\u2019t help<\/strong> \u2013 If you have to help them your game needs some major changes.\u00a0 Imagine that same person sitting at home without you there; they will most likely give up on the game.<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Get them to say what they are thinking<\/strong> \u2013 The best way to find out when they are stuck, bored, excited, surprised or confused is to get them to tell you what they are thinking as they play through the game<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Don\u2019t dismiss anything<\/strong> \u2013 No matter how trivial a comment is you need to take it on board.\u00a0 Even if the person dismisses their comment later you should take notice of it.\u00a0 On a number of occasions people would say a particular part of the game wasn\u2019t a problem after having it explained and it\u2019s easy to then ignore that issue.<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Fix the problems \u2013 <\/strong>This is vital. \u00a0There\u2019s no point getting virgins in to play the game if you don\u2019t fix problems they find.\u00a0 This might seem like a simple idea, but it\u2019s important you keep a record of every issue and resolve them.<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Where can you find virgin play testers?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are 4 main places you can find virgins to play test your game:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Within your company<\/strong> \u2013 If you work for a large company, start internally.\u00a0 This reduces NDA and other issues, helps build community within the company and encourages other teams to start virgin play testing if they don\u2019t already<\/li>\n<li><strong>Friends and family<\/strong> \u2013 The next best step is people you know and trust.\u00a0 You\u2019ll still want them to sign an NDA, but there\u2019s less chance they\u2019ll break it.\u00a0 This is also a great way to catch up with your partner who you haven\u2019t seen since before crunch started.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Local game development education institutions<\/strong> \u2013 Go to your local game education centre and put up a sign on the notice board reading \u201cGet your name in the credits of a game, right now!\u201d\u00a0 I guarantee* at least 90% of them will jump at the opportunity.\u00a0 This also has the secondary benefits of letting you scope out talent and you might even get some good suggestions for your game.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Everyone else<\/strong> \u2013 This is the most important and largest group.\u00a0 Grab random people off the street or from your local video game shop.\u00a0 You want to be taking a large cross reference of people here.\u00a0 It\u2019s also a good idea to find some people outside your target audience.\u00a0 You may find the game appeals to a larger audience, or that making some small tweaks will broaden your audience substantially. \u00a0Free beer and\/or pizza is usually payment enough for people to sit and play games for a few hours.<strong><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>*Not a guarantee<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like to say a big thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitalcream.com.au\/blog\/\">Matt Ford<\/a> for a lot of the ideas from this post.<\/p>\n<p>I was blown away by how important it was to watch virgins playing our game each and every week.\u00a0 It does take time and resources, but it\u2019s well worth the effort.\u00a0 It helps keep you on track and focussing on the initial user experience, the most important part for making the sale.<\/p>\n<p>Go out right now, find someone that hasn\u2019t played your game before, sit them down and watch them play.\u00a0 I guarantee* you\u2019ll learn something about your game that will make it better.<\/p>\n<p>*This one is a guarantee (unless you\u2019re a lawyer)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How many virgins have played your game?\u00a0 Do you make sure they&#8217;re virgins before they play?\u00a0 You need at least one virgin per week to keep you on track and you should be filming them! What are virgin play testers? A virgin is anyone who has never played nor seen someone play your game before.\u00a0 <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/virgin-play-testers\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[27,31,112,55],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","tag-education","tag-game-designer","tag-game-development","tag-play-testing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-6v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}