Play testing - end of the Semester

This semester in Critical Analysis of Games, we had about 12 or 13 games out of a class of 26. Some folks worked alone because of their schedules or because they were the only person interested in a topic. Here is a link to all the projects for this class: projects. You can see more pictures here on Flickr.

There were games about LOLcats, YouTube videos, space pirates, Dante's Inferno, Dr. Horrible's musical blog, greek mythology, dating in the 50s, retro space adventuring, trans-Canadian highway system, children's fairy tales, and bounty hunting. We had board games, trivia games, card games, and combinations. The play test session was hectic. We rotated games in and out as people finished a round. It would be better to let them play a round, have a few minutes to make notes, and then repeat. For that we need space and people - lots of people - since most of the games need 4 players.


We invited some staff and other professors to come play. They gave the students good feedback. It was a way for other people in the school to see what kinds of things students in the new game design major will do. And it's important for students to get feedback from someone other than me (or their peers). Especially if we want to think about making commercially viable games - we need to understand different markets

Having our playtest time during final exams week makes it tough to get students. Next year we're going to do the big play test the last week of classes. That will give the students more time to revise and do their write up too. This year we had candidates in doing demo classes so we were a little short of time.