Experience of Testing a Board Game
As our 'Sensei' says, "To become a game designer one has to have the experience of testing games made by others. So that one knows what are the things one would want to avoid while designing one's own game."
And so our batch was given an opportunity to test a couple of board games made by the BAJM batch of our institute a few weeks earlier. Well to be frank nobody had any idea what we were supposed to do, besides of course playing the game. Made into a group of 4 we started with the game based on the book 'Who moved my Cheese?' known as the self motivational guide. Well talking about the game, it was a multi-board game, one meant for the main game and two others for the maze race part. To enter the maze race you have to land on a specific spot on the main board after with you get to draw a card from the action deck and if luckily it has 'Maze Race' written on it then everyone has to jump into the maze race temporarily. This aspect kinda reminded me of another game we had played a week before, 'The Lord of the Rings'. Don't get me wrong, the two games are way apart but the multi-board mechanism made me do the connect. Other than the card drawing spots the rest of the board seemed empty and so failed to deliver any kind of action itself. While playing the first time we barely landed on any of the card drawing spots which further brought down the fun quotient. In the second game a player manged to land on card space and also drew out the maze race card. So now both of us were on the maze board. Since this mini game was supposed to have all the action of the game packed in it, we had high expectations, well what can I say we were disappointed again. The solution of the maze was so obvious that it was now all the matter of who gets higher numbers on the dice, And thus the only fun part of the game was ruined as it failed to challenge the player. By now we were starting to get the big difference between testing a prototype and playing a full fledged completed game. We now realized how each finished game must have been put through a lot of rounds of testing before finally publishing it. After the maze race which wrapped up quickly we returned to the main board. The rest of the game went almost event-less.
Well now came the hard part that we hadn't done before. We were supposed to talk with the designer in the presence of our HOD. We started off the with the most common problem, the lack of action in the main board of the game. We also pointed out how the probability of landing in a maze race was reduced by the fact that two events had to occur mutually in order to trigger the race, and how the maze itself was a drag and too obvious for a challenge. Now we were feeling like professional critiques and so we started suggesting additions and modifications, like including more mini-games or altering the main board to make it more action pact. Now the HOD moved into the discussion. He told us that despite being interesting and tempting to follow our suggestions were useless as they were solely based on our player instinct. He said that we were taking the game away from the book on which it was supposed to be based on. Though in its current state the game was far away from the book, our additions also were no better. He asked us to read the book first and make suggestion later and till then we were only supposed to point out the weakness of the game. He then turned to the designer and told him to start work on the next prototype and to try to bring it closer to the soul of the book or else he might end up making another maze game. Now we realized what we were doing wrong, for most of the time we were looking at the game with a player's perspective while we were supposed to look with a designer's perspective. Not that we have understood that perspective now but at least we're starting to. I failed to take notes of the comments made by our HOD otherwise you also could've had a piece of the guy's wisdom. Well thus we concluded the testing of the first game.
The second game was much more fun than the maze thing. Well it was based on a particular event from Hindu mythology, a gambling game that was played between Yudhishtir and Duryodhan, the one which started the epic war of Mahabharata. The designer took the board layout and added his own rules to make a new gambling game. In this version of the game all players play the part of Yudhishtir so everyone is already destined to lose, the only way to win the game is to be the last an to lose. The Game works on complex reverse psychological mechanics. When a player advances on the board he wins all the coins placed as a bet by the other player but he keeps loosing the game itself as the goal of the game is not to reach the finish first but to be the last man standing on the board. The game already felt great as it is and the gambling part raised noise in the hall and we had a lot of fun and I think we may have gotten carried away as nobody was testing the game anymore we were rather just playing it now. When we finished we realized of s**t we forgot to write anything down to talk about. So this time when the designer came in all we could tell him was that the board could be visually more interesting. But then suddenly something hit my mind and I said "The game was fun with the gambling and all but I doubt the same level of success if the game was meant for four players instead of two". The HOD seemed to agree and I was going "hurray" in my head, it was like u hit a bulls eye in the dark. Apparently I was right coz when the guy returned after two weaks with a prototype for 4 players we didn't find it that appealing since it ultiplied the game time by 4. Well after two rounds of testing each of these games we felt like some elite testers, but our faces were soon rubbed in the fact that it's a lie by our HOD. He told us that we were still not thinking like game designers.
At the end of all this nobody has any idea what a game designer's perspective is, but I guess it will reveal itself soon or at least I hope it does.
Well now came the hard part that we hadn't done before. We were supposed to talk with the designer in the presence of our HOD. We started off the with the most common problem, the lack of action in the main board of the game. We also pointed out how the probability of landing in a maze race was reduced by the fact that two events had to occur mutually in order to trigger the race, and how the maze itself was a drag and too obvious for a challenge. Now we were feeling like professional critiques and so we started suggesting additions and modifications, like including more mini-games or altering the main board to make it more action pact. Now the HOD moved into the discussion. He told us that despite being interesting and tempting to follow our suggestions were useless as they were solely based on our player instinct. He said that we were taking the game away from the book on which it was supposed to be based on. Though in its current state the game was far away from the book, our additions also were no better. He asked us to read the book first and make suggestion later and till then we were only supposed to point out the weakness of the game. He then turned to the designer and told him to start work on the next prototype and to try to bring it closer to the soul of the book or else he might end up making another maze game. Now we realized what we were doing wrong, for most of the time we were looking at the game with a player's perspective while we were supposed to look with a designer's perspective. Not that we have understood that perspective now but at least we're starting to. I failed to take notes of the comments made by our HOD otherwise you also could've had a piece of the guy's wisdom. Well thus we concluded the testing of the first game.
The second game was much more fun than the maze thing. Well it was based on a particular event from Hindu mythology, a gambling game that was played between Yudhishtir and Duryodhan, the one which started the epic war of Mahabharata. The designer took the board layout and added his own rules to make a new gambling game. In this version of the game all players play the part of Yudhishtir so everyone is already destined to lose, the only way to win the game is to be the last an to lose. The Game works on complex reverse psychological mechanics. When a player advances on the board he wins all the coins placed as a bet by the other player but he keeps loosing the game itself as the goal of the game is not to reach the finish first but to be the last man standing on the board. The game already felt great as it is and the gambling part raised noise in the hall and we had a lot of fun and I think we may have gotten carried away as nobody was testing the game anymore we were rather just playing it now. When we finished we realized of s**t we forgot to write anything down to talk about. So this time when the designer came in all we could tell him was that the board could be visually more interesting. But then suddenly something hit my mind and I said "The game was fun with the gambling and all but I doubt the same level of success if the game was meant for four players instead of two". The HOD seemed to agree and I was going "hurray" in my head, it was like u hit a bulls eye in the dark. Apparently I was right coz when the guy returned after two weaks with a prototype for 4 players we didn't find it that appealing since it ultiplied the game time by 4. Well after two rounds of testing each of these games we felt like some elite testers, but our faces were soon rubbed in the fact that it's a lie by our HOD. He told us that we were still not thinking like game designers.
At the end of all this nobody has any idea what a game designer's perspective is, but I guess it will reveal itself soon or at least I hope it does.
