Playtesting Best Practices

Real World and Online

Chris Backe

$263

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

CRC Press
09 June 2025

Digital animation; Games development & programming

Series: CRC Press Guides to Tabletop Game Design

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: 9781032816678
ISBN 10: 1032816678
Series: CRC Press Guides to Tabletop Game Design
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 09 June 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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.