It is hardly surprising that the current circumstances, which have reduced the opportunities for folk to meet up and play games face to face, has resulted in a huge increase in traffic to the virtual board game world. Tabletopia has reported at least a 10-fold increase in traffic with similar increases also reported by Board Game Arena.
Neither is it entirely unexpected then, that virtual playtest groups have also sprung up and more designers are getting involved in playtesting online through interfaces such As Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia.
The biggest surprise is, why have we all waited so long?
Over the past week or so I have playtested 5 or 6 games belonging to other designers and uploaded one of my own into Tabletop Simulator for my first virtual playtest.
It works! Really well!
I’m sure there is plenty of space for discussion on any and all aspects of virtual playtesting, but for now I thought I’d start with a list of the obvious Pros and Cons to a relative noobie.
Pros
- Prototyping is actually pretty easy. Uploading 2D digital assets is straightforward, and many regular components (dice, counters tokens etc) are already available. Even a little bit of effort allows prototypes to look half decent.
- Novel Components. You can create novel 3D assets far more readily without having to resort to a 3D printer. And virtually cost free.
- Flexibility. In the virtual world you can create your game the way you would like it to be – without the constraints of cost.
Do you want custom dice? Just add your images to the template.
Do you want 1000 more mauve cubes? Just Ctrl C, Ctrl V !
Is there a particular type of piece that you’ve seen in other games that would really suit your own? Then ‘steal’ a piece from another mod. - Changing a prototype is even easier. You don’t have to print anything out again – you can just add one more card or change the art file for your board. If you decide a card is too small, or your resource cubes are too big then you change them right on the spot, between turns.
- Additional Expense. Pre-lockdown, I used to attend monthly playtest events in my city and another city an hour away. Both of these were in commercial establishments where I would buy some food or drinks. So with travel and expenses each playtest of my game could cost me £20-30. At conventions I could maybe expect to play my game 3 or 4 times over a weekend, but at a likely cost of at least £100-200.
- Convenience. I can playtest in my pyjamas. (Not that I would ever do that!) Compared to monthly face to face meet ups or infrequent conventions this is a breeze.
- Playtesters. You now have access to designers and playtesters from across the world at almost any time of the day or night. And adding new contacts to your network may prove beneficial in the longer term.
- Pitching to Publishers. For all the reasons above, virtual playtesting can be a great format to reach publishers. Especially publishers who have a bit more time on their hands and won’t be attending many conventions this year (where the majority of designer publisher events take place).
- Recording. Although designers do occasionally record playtests, setting up a full audio video setup while out and about is more than most of us will bother with. Recording a session on a PC can be as easy as a touch of a button; and with a relatively small outlay could be setup to record the faces of each player at the same time. This is the sort of ‘blind-playtest’ setup that all but the largest publishing houses could only dream of.
Cons
- Cost. Whether you are buying Tabletop Simulator through Steam, or loading your game into Tabletopia there is a cost involved. It’s not much but it exists. And while Tabletopia is free to players, every player must purchase Tabletop Simulator. I actually bought 4 copies of TTS for about £20 through one of the frequent Steam sales, just so I could fire up TTS on multiple local computers and could also give copies away to would be playtesters.
- Some work is required to get your game into the virtual environment. You can’t just scribble on index cards and begin.
- “Playing a board game in tabletop simulator is like playing a regular game one handed, while wearing oven gloves.” The interface can take some getting used to. And require some patience of playtesters who are unfamiliar with how it works.
- Time. Games do take longer – maybe twice as long. It can be hard to tell how quickly a game will play in the physical world by extrapolating experience in the virtual world.
- Pace. This is linked to time, but if your game relies on an element of pace for particular mechanics (i.e. players have to be the first to grab something when a particular card is drawn) or to maintain interest, then playing in the virtual world may be difficult.
- Complicated stuff. Some things which come naturally to players holding on to physical components are quite difficult in the virtual environment. One of the prototypes I tested last week had a rotating rondel, and we lost count of the number of times spinning the rondel threw all the components across the table. There is however a growing community of folk coding scripts to control specific components, and they are more than willing to share experience.
- Overproduction. Its hard to really describe this as a con, but I can already see how easy it will be to overproduce my prototypes. When it is easy to make things look good then the production values could easily get ahead of the readiness of the game itself, and might create expectations of playtesters that the game is further along in the design process than might otherwise be the case.
So clearly, I am sold on the idea. I don’t think I will ever go back to purely physical playtesting after the world situation returns to normal. As long as I can find other designers or playtesters (and with the whole online world I can’t see how that will ever not be the case) I expect to make much more use of virtual environments in future. I even have a blatant board game rip-off of an old arcade game that I think might be better released into the virtual world than trying to publish it.
Designer Playtesting. A new video series of Playtests on Tabletop Simulator
If you would like to see what a virtual playtest might look like then I have been involved in a new project to record a series of online playtests with games from different designers.
The first edition has just gone live here.
http://www.thegamespeople.co.uk/designer-playtesting-video-series/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2555070314529353/permalink/2908259269210454/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYsmEZAeU08&t=
This is the first in a series of blog posts about virtual playtesting. Others here;
Playtesting in Pyjamas
Giving Playtest Feedback
Getting the Most from Virtual Playtesting
Since writing this I have been involved in establishing the Virtual Playtesting Group. We meet on Discord on Thursday evenings (6pm UK time) until late, and playtest in Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia.
With moderators in time zones from Eastern Europe to the Pacific, we welcome you to bring your online prototypes to playtest with other designers.
Here is an invite to the Discord Server.
https://discord.gg/Ze9mBWc