The phrase “games are a service” is already perceived as a banality today. But when developing, it often happens that developers forget about it. And they continue to work with the game as an end product.
In the era of the “winning free-to-play”, this is a fatal mistake. Just developing a game, even with PvP, even if it supports Facebook, even with cool graphics and mechanics, unfortunately, is often not enough even for it to just pay off.
AvailabilityWhen they say service today, everyone, first of all, implies the presence of permanent additions, as well as user monitoring.
But, unfortunately, they often forget about such an important component of the service as its accessibility, if you want, clarity or “low entry threshold”.
So, when it comes to the service, it is clear that this threshold should not be very high. If users, after downloading the game, do not understand the management, or if they simply do not understand what needs to be done in it, they will close the application and never return to it, and you, as a developer, will lose all your investments in the project.
Possible solutions and problemsIn most cases, the accessibility problem is solved in three stages: the presence of a competent usability designer in the team, thorough internal testing, and then correcting minor flaws when monitoring user reactions in the territory where you “gently” launched the game.
This is a good option for large full-service studios and for publishers, but in the case of independent small teams, everything is more complicated. Firstly, in such teams, as a rule, there is no separate person on UI. At the same time, a person who, for example, makes levels in the game is completely unsuitable for this role, as, indeed, an artist. One thinks more about mechanics, the second about beauty, and it is necessary to think about how and what a housewife or a tired businessman thinks. Secondly, thorough testing in a studio where up to 10 people work (and, most likely, there is not at least one full-time tester who would not only catch bugs, but also report where the “shoals” are in the gameplay) is a time–consuming task. Thirdly, to edit using UI monitoring without a marketing department is the same as hammering nails with a microscope. Theoretically possible, but most likely you will ruin not only the nail with the microscope, but also the wall.
There are two ways out: find a publisher or a team to outsource testing. There are enough publishers now, but it’s not so simple with the second ones.
A domestic company Playtestix has recently been mentioned in our blogs, which specializes in such services. They promise to “quickly collect data on how different groups of players react to certain features and what difficulties they have in the process.”
Autosource testing of gaming applications is not yet mainstream today, so we advise you to pay attention. And if you have already worked with the guys, or you know any other teams doing the same, write to us.