#129: Play Your Game

[Mackrels]

Best advice ever!

[FogLeg]

As a maker of game it might not be very easy to look at your creation through the eyes of player. You might "think" your UI is intuitive and monsters are balanced, but to find out how players see things, it might be good idea to go into your game and ask players for help.

If your question "How can I trade silver bars?" gets answers like "Click on the tiny spot (you thought it was normal size button) with some scribble on it (you thought it had very clearly written TRADE) left from the kidney-shaped (supposed to be map of kingdom) yellow blob (shiny golden crown)", you might have some problems with UI.

You have even more problems if the answer is "Why would you ever want to trade anything, trading is useless, just go and bash the orcs".

[ChristopherA]

I know that I learn a lot showing the game to others, or even just giving the keyboard to them and 'letting them drive'.

For instance, I noticed when I demo'ed Castle Marrach that my friend tried "ask seamstress for a dress" and it didn't work -- what does work is "ask seamstress for dress". Such a minor difference, but it really made it difficult for her. So I've requested that it be put on the list to either fix it so that the 'a' works, or maybe a better error message, or a new NPC that works differently.

An older story is an early 3D design program -- watching a user he'd always crash it, but I couldn't. It turns out that I dragged rectangles from upper-left to lower-right, and they started at the bottom and went up. It was very hard to find this problem otherwise.

I'd never have seen either of these if I didn't watch someone else play.

-- Christopher Allen