The Life of a Playtester – Part 1
Well, it’ s been a good long while since my last post. In my excuse I had a nice long holiday, then came back from that holiday, got over feeling sullen that I had to come back and be broke, got cheered up with payday, got depressed that so much was spent on basic groceries, got even more depressed that there were a lot of bills to pay, got sick, got busy, got happy that payday came again, got even happier when I discovered that my local supermarket was having a sale on rib-eye, got ecstatic that my wife made me an awesome steak and finally completed playtesting and proofreading a new product, which brings me to the whole point of this.
For the past several months I had the distinct pleasure to be a playtester for Dream Pod 9 on their up and coming Heavy Gear: Arena.
Big Giant Stompy Robots coming soon to a store near you!
The game takes place away from the front lines of the Heavy Gear universe and instead drops you head first into a gladiatorial arena where pilots in big stompy robots try to disassemble each other with a blinding variety of weapons. I won’t go into the details of the game yet (I’ll save that for after the release) as that isn’t in the scope of todays lecture. Instead I will regale you with tales of high adventure, daring deeds and the absolute agony of being a play-tester. Yes, you read right, agony! A lot of gamers out there have the notion that being a play-tester for a product you love is the best thing since sliced bread; well it is but that’s not the point. The point I’ll be making here is that play-testing, when done properly, is a lot like work.
When the call went out at the beginning of the year for play-testers I jumped at the opportunity. It had been almost a year since I had to leave my dream job working for Battlefront Miniatures and I was quite desperate to maintain my exposure within the industry (pretty hard to do when you’re living in Saudi Arabia). I figured since I was stuck at home having to play Mr. MOM, I might as well put what free time I had (and trust me it’s not a lot when you’re raising 2 children) to good use doing something I enjoy.
The fact that I was 2000 km away from home with none of my usual gaming buddies within reach may have put a dampener on things if it wasnt for a very handy program – Vassal.
The Vassal Engine is a virtual tabletop program available from www.vassalengine.org for free. It allows players to meet up online and play their favourite tabletop/boardgames.
Initial attempts to rope in my mates back home to get a game in proved to be unsuccessful; inertia is a hard thing to beat especially when you’re trying to get someone to learn a completely unfamiliar interface. Left with no other option I decided to simply play with myself (get your mind out of the gutter and put things into context). I’ve never even tried to solo chess before – never had the need, but then as they say necessity is the mother of all invention.
Solo play isn’t as easy as it sounds, first up you got to be very careful not to cheat. It’s too easy to bias your moves in such a way to benefit your favourite faction, to test something in a way that may forward your own personal agenda, to just plain cheat when you dont like the outcome of the roll you made. I found myself face to face with these inner monsters, and it was only through an awesome act of will that I was able to silence them =P .
Secondly, you have to make your moves in a logical manner, the thing about playing with yourself is that you’re prescient. You already know the move your going to make, you can’t be surprised so instead you have to plan your moves in such a way that any trap laid out is the only move you can make. You are literally forcing your own hand here and it is a lot harder then it sounds.
Thirdly, solo play is dull. I’d argue that the thing that makes tabletop gaming so much fun is the social context of it all. You are showcasing the work and effort put into assembling and painting your army, you are spending time with friends or taking it to a rival. Jokes and barbs are traded and at the end off it, you all go out to catch a bite to eat with each other. Playing solo takes a game, guts it and leaves it cold and lifeless like one of those corpses on the coroners table from CSI. The fact that you will be playing a lot of games during the period of testing does nothing to alleviate this. On the plus side this does leave you with the ability to focus on mechanics and filter out unnecessary distractions.
Despite these hurdles I was committed, in their announcement Dream Pod 9 was offering a free soft copy for testers as well as USD50 in shop credit to the player who posted the most games. What’s not to like about that offer, I’d get a book for free and be in the running for a chance to get certain figures that I wouldn’t buy otherwise. I was determined to crank them out as hard and fast as possible and on top of that I aimed to impress. My goal was to be as thorough as possible, gain some cred and maybe even work it to land myself a position with the company as a contract employee (something that DP9 was known to practice).
My schedule was 3 games a week and miraculously in the first phase of the testing when the was a lot to be hashed out I actually kept to it. With two children and other familial and household duties that was a tall order, I ended up waking up at the crack of dawn for the chance to sit down and play. Once the game was done came the report, a 10 page document that had to be attached with every game. It required a blow by blow so that the supervisor on the other end could figure out what was happening, the fact that I was on playing on vassal meant that I could take screenshots of the board after every turn which turned out to be a huge boon as I could then cut down on the amount of descriptive text and let the pictures do the talking.
When you play a game normally, it doesn’t really take all that long. However when you have to stop, record and analyze what it is you just did it becomes a rather drawn out and tedious process. There were some days where I had to literally drag myself out of bed, my joints aching and head heavy from slumber. The post game effects were no party either, rather more like the after effects of one. Headaches, tired eyes and sore shoulders were all hallmarks of having just completed another match. You see you’re not just playing a game to test it out, you’re trying to break it. As a play-tester you seek out those odd circumstances where the rules just don’t quite fit and then try to recreate them in a game. How often does an issue come up? What chain of events will lead up to the issue? Does the issue really warrant a fix or a change? These are questions that need to be addressed and when you’re kicking around a new set of rules they’re bound to come up a lot.
Things would have undoubtedly continued in this vein if it wasnt for the emergence of some very-very good company. That unfortunately will have to wait till part 2 as right now I’m just about ready to call it a night and hit the hay! Be sure to tune in next week once I have hopefully re-focused myself enough to write it.
Saleem Rasul
