Don't make this assumption about your players (Developing 10)

Developing is an on-going YouTube series, where I share the step-by-step process of making my first video game: Mind Over Magnet!

In this episode I take my game to GDC in San Francisco, and get some feedback. Along the way I learn some tough lessons about playtesting and making assumptions about your players.

=== Credits ===

Music By:

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported "Share Alike" (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

YouTube Audio Library

=== Subtitles ===

[AB-Prince]

gauging the difficulty of your own puzzle game is near-on impossible by yourself as knowing the puzzles' solution really screws you over.

[foodbag]

Mark, I've been working in AAA as a designer for 5 years at two different studios. I'm sure you already know you're popular among industry professionals and we share your content all the time. What I love above videos like these is that they really highlight the iterative process of game design. No matter how good your instincts are or how analytical you are about design, you will still run into issues like "I forgot to make it fun" or "woops, it's tedious" and that's ok as long as you're able to constructively digest feedback (the actual hardest part) and find solutions to the actual problems. Thank you for your service! 🙇

[WilliumBobCole]

I think it was Valve when making Portal 2 who said they found it better to watch people play your game but to NOT be in the same room, as people will give somewhat false positive feedback face to face, whereas if you just watch their face on a webcam alongside what is happening on screen, you can get a better sense of what they *actually* think. Obviously there's all kinds of value in all kinds of testing, but I thought this was worth putting forward as an alternative to what you said about being in the room when they play

[seraaron]

the worst puzzles (imo) are the ones where you figure out the solution fairly easily but then actually implementing that solution is really tedious. Towers of Hanoi is a perfect example of this kind of puzzle, because once you work out the steps the act of actually performing those steps is really monotonous but still requires focus because if you make a mistake and don't immediately catch it, it then also requires a lot of focused monotonous work to undo that mistake.

[SKy_the_Thunder]

7:02
I'm of the firm belief that a puzzle game should never allow you to get irreversibly stuck and force you to (actively) reset. It can be very hard for players to recognize that there is no way to salvage the situation and many may not even get the idea to start over.
The only exception to this are clearly communicated _Game Over_ states, which automatically trigger a level restart - like "key component X was destroyed", "you were squished between 2 objects" or "the objective timer ran out".

[Jellylamps]

I feel that when teaching little quirks in the way a game’s mechanics function, it can be very satisfying to engineer a situation where the player might accidentally use it while doing something else and then immediately follow it up with a very simple and isolated problem that can only be solved with the mechanic. For the people who just found it by accident, it can be very rewarding and even a source of pride. For those who didn’t, they still get to learn it with no clutter before going on to use it later.

[Shayzis]

It's actually such fun watching a guy that knows and teaches a lot of video game stuff actually be an amateur at game making, this actually motivates me to maybe try out something someday

[CaptBighead]

This is a lesson I learned ages ago as a D&D DM, haha. Your puzzle is never "too easy", and even when it is, that can be pretty fun! :D

[mitaro]

Another thing is that players don't necessarily just like hard puzzles, they like the feeling that comes from SOLVING puzzles. Getting that balance between challenge and reward is something a lot of game devs miss and I'm glad you're covering it

[brianmckinley]

As I'm playing through TOTK's shrines, I'm reminded of this video. A lot of shrines start off with a "puzzle" that is literally just implementing the mechanics of the game in the simplest way possible before opening up a second room where the "real" puzzle is. It's pretty smart that they make sure your brain is in the right place before being faced with an obstacle.

[BlazeMakesGames]

I believe that this was the reason for early NES games being known for being "Nintendo Hard" at the time. The only playtesters for a game would often be the devs themselves. And it's not like there was an internet around to get rapid feedback done anyways even after the game was released. So as a result it was extremely common for NES games to be really really hard. Which to be fair also worked for helping artificially extending playtime since it was hard to make a game that could last more than a few days of playing when you only had 40kb to work with.

[Koekfluksthegreat]

This series is so insanely down to earth! As a newbie gamedev myself this really speaks to me, seeing someone like you just talk about your game's development so casually, in such a friendly tone is truly lovely.

This series was a great idea Mark, and your execution of it even more so!

[bradb]

This is an interesting exploration of “knowing the path” vs “walking the path”. Mark is one of the best game design theorists and teachers, but as a practitioner he could re-watch some of his own videos. I’m specifically thinking about the “Jonathan Blow” puzzle video, which teaches a lot of the same lessons learned here.

[Sanisgillon]

Omg a two hour, in real time, feedback video 🥺 I can’t think of anything kinder to give to someone working on a project. (Emotionally quite horrifying, but so so valuable)

[Padicus]

The idea of swapping your hands on the controller is very interesting. There's a similar concept in music teaching. If you want to walk in a guitar student's shoes you can try playing left-handed (or right-handed if you learned as a leftie). It's eye-opening. The guitar feels like a completely unknown object in your hands. It's a very powerful experience.

[pavarottiaardvark]

The platforming version feels more suited to a little separate thing - a couple of super hard levels that need good reflexes for expert players.

[traguna]

I’ve had this experience so many times, especially when I started out game dev, it’s crazy. Every single time I thought I made a mildly challenging level it turned out to be near impossible for play testers. Every time I thought I made a level for babies it was nearly perfectly balanced for playtesters. It’s such a natural instinct to use the information that’s been bouncing around in your own head for so long intuitively that it’s truly an exercise in patience and trial and error to learn that you are the only human on the planet who feels that way about your game. It’s your baby. It’s a personal, intimate thing to make a game and tooling that for the public is not a natural skill set for 99.9% of people.

[epsilonthedragon]

Underestimating difficulty is certainly something that seems to plague every jam game I ever make. I think I got it right once and then never got it again lol.

[RavinousStudios]

Once in high school I was dealing with people who made the same mental mistake as described here and looked it up. I've always LOVED that it's called "The Curse of Knowledge"! 😁

[gentlemanscarecrow]

Mad props to the art style. Those drill bits are satisfyingly animated