Today was a crucial and quite scary step for the project: playtesting.

Indeed, so far we’ve been happily working and testing the game on our own. We did that not because it was a secret process – after all anyone can check out and run the source code since day one – but because it would not have made much sense to get feedback on something that was actively developed, thus changing directions very often.

The downside of not sharing the progress, is that eventually you end up being so much immersed in your creative process and imaginary world – in that case, Pluto – that you have no way to remain objective or even properly test the game yourself.

For example, after making one of the quests hundreds of time, to look for bugs or test some new feature, the user interface and the narrative disappear completely from your experience. It becomes an automated procedure and certainly not a playful moment.

On top of that, each of us started to be obsessed about particular features or details that are not necessarily useful or important for the project. But it is important to be able to “kill your darlings” before they slow down the development of the project or get you entirely side tracked.

All of this make the playtesting a necessary, yet scary, mandatory process to move on and remind you what were the reasons that pushed you to make this game.

Last week we reached the point where most of the essential game mechanics and interface features were in place, in an unstable and clumsy way of course, but at least we knew that we were heading towards a stage where the game was playable and more or less coherent. This is why today at Baltan Laboratories we hosted a play testing session of NOP with game design students and researchers from TU Eindhoven.

For such an occasion, it’s really important to leave your ego behind and be ready to face, most of the time, painfully honest comments. In that regard we had a fair amount of these and it was a really good thing. A bit painful at times though… ahem.

What we did was to let the testers play the game for 15 minutes, and ask them afterward a few questions. More specifically:

1. interface (readability, flow of the game (action-response sequences), user input, commands)

2. narrative (story, non-player characters, multi-player aspect, game world, message communicated)

3. playability (difficulties encountered and suggestions to improve)

4. fun (did you enjoy the game? why?)

5. link to entire project (Is the game clearly linked to the research aspect of the entire project?)

The response we got was very good and helpful. I will not give much details, but overall most of the advices and critic we got were known issues or things we noticed were wrong but for which we were not entirely sure how to deal with them. Regarding the game itself, some players managed to progress very fast, others struggled and it was interesting in each case to know why it worked or why it did not.

Of course it can be frustrating to get feedback on things that you already know are broken because of lack of time or just because it is not high priority at the moment. Never the less it is important to get over this frustration and let the players tell us whatever come to their mind as it is an invaluable source of information, specially if your testers are themselves working in the field of game design. We greatly appreciate the time they took to visit us and give feedback on the project.

At the end of the session we had a long list of things to fix, things to change or improve and things to add or remove. Very long list. The good news is that most of these should not be too difficult to implement and hopefully can be done, for most of them, before the end of the week (says the narrator in a hopeful way).

Once this is done, we will be ready to invite remote beta testers – from the internets – and it will be the second major step to take in order to make sure we’re on track.

At 16.00 we presented Naked on Pluto to the crew of NIMk and we were very happy Angela Plohman from BALTAN Laboratories came to join us (we’ll be at BALTAN in October for the next sprint). We discussed the project in its current state, and talked about the steps in development we’ve taken so far, the biggest problems we’ve encountered and the next steps. Explaining these things at this stage of the project was quite a test for us. We’ve been submerged in the game’s logic for 3 days now, and we’re starting to loose our sense of reality ever so slightly…

Schell talks about the future of game design as it invades the real world. He analyses the immense success of Facebook games such as Farmville and Mafia wars. What do they have in common? They use psychological tricks to convince people to spend real money to gain access to features in the virtual world or game. They are “busting through to reality”. Games used to be about escape, but these days we are so cut of from nature and self sufficiency, we have a hunger for what’s “real”. He refers to the book “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want“, by Joseph Pine to illustrate this. He refers to DARPA’s red balloon challenge to show how games can be used to let the masses solve real world problems (read “doing research for the military” in this case). He mentions the already ubiquitous point systems in anything from loyalty cards to drivers licenses and the equally ubiquitous technology collecting data about individuals. All this can be used in games. Schell sketches a future scenario where consumer products are full of sensors monitoring our behaviour, giving bonus points to consumers who behave in ways beneficial to the producer of the product (like toothpaste and dental insurance adding points every time you brush your teeth). He finishes by pointing out that this future scenario has both a negative and a positive side: it could be all about manipulation of consumers by companies and government, but it could also be a chance to inspire us to be better people.

With the exact same ideal in mind, creating a better world and making us better people, Jane McGonigal approaches the issue from the opposite side. She does not want games to invade the real world, to become part of reality, but wants to use the “escape from reality” games offer as a motivational force to solve real world problems from within the game world. Like Schell, she points out we are cut off from nature, facing massive and world threatening problems like global warming and the depletion of the worlds oil reserves, but this does not lead to a “hunger for reality”, instead it leads to a massive “exodus to virtual worlds” (as described in Castranova’s “Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality”, 2007).

She points to the enormous amount of time spent each week on online gaming globally (3 billion hours) and claims that by increasing this amount to 21 billion hours of online gaming a week before the end of the next decade, we can save the world. She points to the emotions felt when a player is on the verge of an ‘epic win’ as the key to motivating players to keep going and to achieve things they never believed could be achieved. In games we become ‘better people’, when facing problems we stay optimistic and keep going until they are solved. The reason for this is that in games you are presented with quests matching your ability, there are always plenty of collaborators around to help you and you keep on receiving positive feedback on your actions via points. McGonigal points out that the average youth spends 10.000 hours gaming before the age of 21, which, according to Levitin’s theory in “This is Your Brain on Music”, should make them virtuosi. But what are gamers getting good at? She points to 4 super powers:

1.urgent optimism (you always believe you can win)
2.social fabric (online gaming builds strong bonds and trust between people)
3.blissful productivity (gamers are happy working hard)
4.epic meaning (inspiring missions)

These superpowers lead to super empowered hopeful individuals, and at the moment they exist in virtual worlds, but this can be changed. McGonigal makes a strong case for using the superpowers of gamers to solve real world problems, and to play games that matter.

Personally I prefer to think of the future of games in McGonigal’s terms, as it is centred around the positive emotions experienced within games by the player, and using this for the benefit of all. Schell’s prediction of the future is based on an analysis of successful business strategies… and those usually don’t benefit many, and certainly don’t solve any real world problems (they could possibly make them worse). Games such as Farmville don’t contribute anything to anyone’s life but mind numbingly repetitive tasks. Both talks do point to the power of game mechanics to motivate people to take action, let’s make sure our joined forces are used well!