Client Brief - QA Testing Feedback

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For this project we carried out a QA Testing and feedback session, this was carried out to help identify bugs and improve the gameplay overall. In the session we gathered fourteen playtesters who played the game and then filled in the feedback form, giving us relevant feedback to improve off of.

 

The first question asked was, Did you find the game educational? This question was a very important one as the game was supposed to be used as an educational tool for people to learn about owning and caring for a reptile of their choosing. Overall, every person that responded to this question said that they did not understand the premise and objective of the game so this tells me that they did not find the game educational. However, this feedback does not affect my role so I will refer this to the game designers and narrative designer so they can improve the implementation of text boxes and the overall narrative representation in the experience.

 

The second question, Did you find the game easy to understand?, twelve people responded saying that they found the game to be “Confusing” and having unclear objectives and objective activities. Most people on this question said that the only thing they could understand was that you walk around, this highlights to me that the game is severely unfinished and unpolished. As yet again this feedback does not fall on my shoulders as an artist I will refer this to the relevant department so they can improve the overall experience in the game to improve narrative design.

 

The third question, what audience do you think the game is targeted towards?, was met with overall a single age range, Pegi 7, this is perfect that the playtesters were able to give the game a Pegi 7 rating as this is the rating that we were trying to achieve during development. In addition to this, I can see that the premise of the game was able to be picked up by some of the testers as they say that the game would be tailored towards people who like lizards or who are looking to own a lizard or reptile, no improvements can be made following this feedback.

 

The fourth question asked what did you enjoy about the game? The feedback from this question will greatly affect the improvements that the game designers and programmers will have to make in order to improve the enjoyability of the game and overall the feedback from players. The most of the feedback from this was that they liked the premise of the game, which is to take care of a reptile, but it was poorly executed to a standard that I would not approve of if I was a designer or programmer, I can see that although the programmers and designers have spent time making the game, I don’t think this represents three weeks worth of work.

 

The next question asked the most important question in the questionnaire in my opinion, what could be improved?, the most prominent responses from this question were that the playtesters wanted us to add textures and models to the game so that the items, reptiles and environments could be easily recognised. This is a very important response because, although I and my second artist have spent the last three weeks of the project dedicating our full time and attention to making the assets required and creating textures for them, regularly sharing these assets and textures with the game designers and programmers to put into the game, they have not bothered to put these into the game to replace the placeholder items and textures. This shows me that I have not been able to receive any relevant feedback in terms of art style improvements because they have not put our work into the game, I feel extremely saddened that they have not put these models into the game to get it into a presentable state before the playtest and so I will be asking the programmers and/or game designers to add these into the game when they come to adding amendments. Other than this, the playtesters feel that the game needs to be finished completely and in a playable state, with minimal game breaking bugs, and I feel this way too after playing the game in the state that it was presented I feel that my hard work has materialised into nothing because none of the artists work is present in the game. I will be relaying this to the relevant people and hope that they improve this going into amendments.

 

The following question linked closely to the previous, Was the art eye-catching and consistent?, as stated above none of mine or Nyes artwork is present in the game in a state that we handed to the programmers and designers, so this feedback in my eyes in null and void, the artwork that I provided to the team was not used so I cannot improve any of my designs because this feedback was provided when no textures or models are present in the game.

 

The seventh question presented to the playtesters asked, if any bugs are present in the game, what are they?, The answers on this question ranged from small bugs to game breaking level bugs, every response mentioned a different bug. For example, “The game crashes when you choose a reptile”, “If you press certain buttons on the PC the game will crash” and “when you interact with the door, you slide”. Although I am an artist and I cannot fix these bugs within my job role, I feel that it is paramount that the programmers know this information and fix the game so that it is in a polished and professional state because at the moment I can see that not one person encountered zero issues when playing the game, I will see to it that the programmers have seen this feedback in hopes that they resolve these issues in the improvements time allocated.

 

The next question, Is the game fun and enjoying?, received mixed responses from the playtesters, for the most part the testers found that the game was boring and uninteresting, this is likely due to the fact that the game has no assets and is very buggy to play. I am not surprised by this feedback because the game is not in a playable state and the premise of the game is not easily recognised, however saying this some people said that the game has potential so we will see if the improvements that the programmers and designers make to the game will improve the overall experience. As said before, I cannot make any changes to my art for this project because the feedback was not based on the assets and textures that I made.

 

The ninth question that we asked the QA Testers was do they recommend adding any features to the game, the majority of the responses mentioned adding textures and models to the game, as stated before this as a major area that the game is currently lacking despite the assets and textures being readily available to the designers and programmers, I have no control in adding these assets to the game so I make it clear that we need to add these models that I have spent weeks working on into the game. In addition to this, many people said that we needed to make the objectives and gameplay loop more clear because at the moment the objectives are hard to see and the gameplay is hard to grasp, so I will have to tell the programmers that they may need to rethink the presentation of objectives and instructions.

 

The very final question that we asked was is there anything you did not enjoy, now the responses from this were very contrasting compared to the previous responses, most people responded with a clear no, which completely contradicts the previous feedback, however, the other respondents said that they felt the game needed to include reptiles and also a reduction on pop-up icons and boxes because they were sudden and appeared at random intervals. I am unable to fix these issues however, I will relay this feedback to the programmers who will be able to fix these issues and add the assets to the game.

 

Overall, I feel that the feedback gathered from this playtest session has been helpful in some ways, firstly we have been able to identify bugs and errors in the gameplay helping the programmers to understand what they need to fix and amend to improve the overall gameplay experience. However, I feel that the feedback has not been helpful to my job role because none of the assets or textures made have been put into the game so I have received no relevant feedback to improve my artstyle, models or textures because the game is in a whitebox state, even though the assets and textures are available to all group members and have been since day one, and I have been regularly telling the relevant people that my assets and textures are ready and available to implement into the game. From this, I cannot personally make any improvements to my work so instead will work on relaying the feedback to the team and moving onto a final evaluation.