We had 5 people test the game in total. With each test we learned something new about the experience that we had constructed. Of all of the feedback we had three common threads among most of the participants. The first was that the Point-Man or the Thief as we have been calling the first-person player, does not really have much to do at the moment besides follow out the directions which the Hacker is dishing out. A fair assessment, one that we are addressing with our next sprint by incorporating the remaining features that the Point-Man has. Next, players who took the role of the Hacker felt a bit overwhelmed with information at times. They felt that they needed to grab all of the nodes and activate all of the cameras, which they would lose track of, and thus they overwhelmed themselves with info that ultimately led to both players to "game over". The last bit, was that the game was fun at its core and there are a million directions we could take this in. In our survey, almost all of them felt cited tension in playing the game with another player. Communication was also something that was cited as handled well by our game (couch co-op).
For the playtest itself, I used some methods that are currently enforced by Valve when they conduct play sessions. We sat both players next to each other so they could easily talk to each other. Both players had an iPad recording with the front facing camera set to record so we could see their facial reactions to certain parts of the game. This way, we can control some of the player bias that may form when they are filling out the questionnaire. We synced the iPad recordings with my iPhone so we could see what the players were in fact reacting too. When we reviewed the footage, it was very interesting because now we could cross-reference their reactions to certain things against their direct feedback. It was a good balance to have, I can understand why Valve uses this.
For this weekend, I have been working on creating a white paper with all of the info about our game so Zac, AJ and I can then start in on a version of our pitch on Tuesday. I am also charged with placing a bunch of assets into our empty rooms to make the prototype feel a bit more alive. .
I better get back to work!
-Andrew
