thread: 2011-02-17 : Ben Lehman: Playtesting: Stop
On 2011-02-18, valamir wrote:
I had a very wierd experience reading this.
At first I was all "playtesting doesn't work"? That's hooey
And then I was all, "yeah that's a lot of good points Ben's making"
But from there I was all "but making the leap from 'these things are important' to 'and you can't get them from playtesting' seems pretty unsubstantiated.
So my conclusion:
Every place where Ben is saying "do these things they're an important part of design"...bold that...underline it...and do it.
And every place where he says "don't try to use playtesting for this"...scratch it out...erase it...and ignore it.
Replace it with..."when you use playtesting for this, it should only be after you've done these other things* and you should by this point have some specific ideas of what you're looking for in the playtest as a result of having done those other things...cuz otherwise...you're playtesting wrong and wasting your time...and THAT'S when you can mangle your design".
So the premise of this article I think is completely wrong. It shouldn't be "stop playtesting because you're doing it wrong". It should be "keep playtesting, but here are the things you need to have done first in order to do it right."
Rewrite it like that, and it gets two thumbs up for me. Leave it as is and its just another internet design meme waiting to be passed around and misused.
*not referring to the practice of Playstorming here, which IMO is really its own seperate animal.
