Playtesting Best Practices: Real World and Online covers the complete journey of playtesting – the iterative journey to shape and refine tabletop games from raw ideas to balanced and fun games. This step-by-step guide embraces the process and celebrates the purpose of every step, from early self-playtesting to late-stage unguided playtesting, and offers the specific questions and practices the author has refined to perfect his own games.
This book is split up into four main sections, each with a distinct focus:
Getting ready to playtest: Establishing goalposts, brainstorming, self-playtesting, getting organized, how to design a prototype, and writing rules. The focus here is starting good habits and establishing best practices, whether this is your first game or your hundredth.
Playtesting in the real world: How to find playtesters, how to teach your game, what to do during the playtest, how to take notes and collect feedback, and being a great playtester yourself.
Playtesting online: How to adapt to digital platforms, the best practices for playtesting online, how to use these opportunities well, and cautions about playtesting online.
What to do next: How to iterate, additional ways to playtest your game, knowing when you’re done with playtesting, and choosing how to get your game out there.
By:
Chris Backe
Imprint: CRC Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781032813486
ISBN 10: 1032813482
Series: CRC Press Guides to Tabletop Game Design
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 09 June 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Introduction, Section 1 - Getting Ready to Playtest, Chapter 1 - how we got here - a review to catch you up, Chapter 2 - Brainstorming, Self-playtesting, and Organizing, Chapter 3 - Prototyping the Game, Chapter 4 - writing rules and reference cards, Section 2 - Playtesting in the Real World, Chapter 5 - finding playtesters and preparing to playtest with other people, Chapter 6 - teaching your game to playtesters, Chapter 7 - during the playtest, Chapter 8 - taking notes and collecting feedback, Chapter 9 - iterating and preparing for the next playtest, Chapter 10 - becoming a great playtester, Section 3 - Playtesting Online, Chapter 11 - getting started with online playtesting, Chapter 12 - best practices with online playtesting, Section 4 - What to Do Next, Chapter 13 - Stress-testing your game - additional ways to playtest, Chapter 14 - what happens next?, Conclusion
Chris Backe (rhymes with 'hockey') is an award-winning board game designer. When not designing games, he's the co-founder of No Box Games (a publisher of print-and-play games), and the co-founder of Virtual Playtesting (an online playtesting community). He's written about board game design since 2017 and has playtested hundreds of games in over a dozen countries. He currently lives in Birmingham, England with his wife, Laura.
