Entry 8 - Bronze
Chapter 9 of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, is entirely based around how to recruit, manage, and utilize playtesters. While I’ve always known the power of playtestsing and how often overlooked it is, it hasn’t been until recently that I’m beginning to design games that playtesting has become a somewhat scary thing that applies to me. I say scary only because I know that when I’m developing any game or idea in general, I strive for complexity and vivid detail. This complexity makes sense in my head and can make complete sense all the way up until I flesh it out as a core story element or game mechanic and implement it. Then, a playtester comes along and says “This is way too complicated/convoluted and could be so confusing that it detracts from other elements of the game”. While the feedback may be completely valid, and I know there’s truth to what they’re saying, that doesn’t mean I like it. At the end of the day though being a game designer for a community is about taking criticism from that community so you can better serve them content they will enjoy. So perhaps I would be better served through continuous playtesting in early stages of development, to help minimize the amount of over-complicated mechanics becoming too integral.
A game I recently played that I believe could have benefited from more playtesting is the release build of Call of Duty Modern Warfare. I discussed the Beta version earlier, and while they are not exactly different games, I believe discussing the changes from Beta to Release tie in well to the practice of effective playtesting. While Call of Duty’s publisher, Activision, has always used playtesters, the length at which they use them and the areas in which they focus their testing seems sub-optimal. It has been a long running tradition for Call of Duty to release their games with server issues and borderline game breaking gameplay mechanic bugs. This release was no different. Despite carrying out a Beta for the game last month, in what is traditionally assumed to be a period of taking in community feedback and refining an already finished game, Modern Warfare was released with: staggeringly offensive portrayals of Russians in the campaign, an ability called dead silence that is meant to silence footsteps in multiplayer was ineffective, and online sessions were continuously ended or not accessible the first couple days of launch. All of these issues could have and should have been identified then promptly rectified at, if not before the Beta. I can only imagine that their playtesters told them while playing the campaign that their portrayal of evil Russians was overboard and that they would receive backlash, but they most likely justified it as being something along the lines of "Realistic edgy content”. Now a large portion of Russian customers are boycotting the game. When it comes to multiplayer, I understand it’s complicated to not break things when you’re making those changes based on user feedback, but if they were made aware of the issue by playtesters (assuming they bothered to test between Beta and release) revert it to the previous build where an important anti-camping ability is not broken and useless. Lastly, while it’s not a responsibility of playtesters, but rather QA/engineering department, players should not be unable to play a best-selling AAA title just because Activision wanted to low-ball the server space they needed so they could improve the bottom line.