Testing with children to improve the gameplay of Papermates

PlayableGames recently helped Gamebridge perform user testing on their title Papermates.

Gamebridge asked us if we could provide user feedback on the title. It was keen to understand the following:

• If children could understand what to do in the game.
  
• If children found it fun
  
• If any refinements were required to increase its appeal.
  
• What cultural icons would work well as default game characters.
  
• If children could understand how to set up a networked-shared game.
  
• And how to share collected items
  
• Where children across Europe tend to find out about new games.

We performed two evenings of user testing with four children, to help discover the answers to these questions. Each evening session lasted for 90 minutes.

The research took place in our studios in London. The participants played in our research studio while we observed their behaviour through one-way glass, and individual video feeds of their screens.

We recruited the participants so that they matched the target audience for the game, as defined by Gamebridge. We invited two pairs of two, with the children in each pair being friends.

The game was near to release, and participants played a developer copy that contained many of the final features. Two participants played Nintendo DSs and two played DSis. We recorded the room during sessions, as well as each of the participant's screens.

On the first evening, we explained to the children that they should play the game through as they would normally. This allowed us to understand what players were attracted to when they first played the game. We observed their natural behaviour on the screens and through one-way glass.

Midway through the first evening, we spoke to each child in turn, after they had played for an hour, to understand their first impressions of the game, and to gauge their opinions of the crucial first few game elements. We also asked them who their favourite celebrities were that they would like to see in a game like this.

On the second evening, we asked players to try out particular areas of the game that they hadn't already reached. We also asked them to try to perform tasks, such as setting up an online trading session between them.

Our client observed the sessions, and we discussed any issues with him there and then, along with ways to improve the user experience.

This was a small sample of end users, and testing took place over a relatively short amount of time. However, it produced a large amount of relevant user data that we could feed back to the client. First we prepared an unformatted list of issues and recommendations to improve the user experience, marking each as high, medium, or low priority, depending on its effect on the player's game experience.

The issues discovered from our testing covered areas such as:

• Setting up a network connection to trade items with friends was easy, but players found it hard to know what items they should trade, and when they had actually traded them.
  
• The game consisted of different minigames which required unlocking. However users found it hard to unlock them as it took quite a while to meet the requirements.
  
• Unlocking the minigames often required trading more characters, but it took players too long to access the trading area from the Minigame area, and they lost interest.
  
• Some of the earlier minigames did not excite the players sufficiently to try to unlock later ones.
  
• Some elements in the game did not seem to bear any relation to what they contained (e.g. to access the Trading area they needed to click on a rocket). Users forgot what to click on to access different elements.
  
• Other icons in the game were not initially understood.

These are just some of the high-level findings. We reported these back to the client, and the client has decided to use them to implement changes to improve the players experience.

Finally, we were also asked to find out how players discover games in Italy, Spain, Germany and France. We were able to do this by working with our partner agencies across the EU.

We are happy to say that even though the game was near release, the findings from what is just a small piece of user research have enabled Gamebridge to make design decisions that they are convinced will make for a better game.

Logan Gunasingham, Product Manager, said, "PlayableGames provided us the opportunity to obtain high level feedback on gameplay research. Due to this research, which was made on our target demographic, PlayableGames made us think again and make changes to the user interface and gameplay elements in our upcoming Nintendo DSi game."

Our projects are always tailored to each client's requirements, and if you would like to discuss anything with us that you feel we may be able to help with, we'd be delighted to hear from you.