课堂中玩测试的力量

课堂中玩测试的力量
The Power of Playtesting in the Classroom

原始链接: https://landenlove.com/the-power-of-playtesting-in-the-classroom/

## “让我们学习！”：游戏开发与课堂测试作为日本的语言教学助手，我一直在开发“让我们学习！”，这是一款旨在向小学和初中学生教授英语的益智游戏。游戏挑战玩家根据英语句子解决谜题，并且可以通过简单的二维码直接在网页浏览器中访问——避免了应用程序下载问题和IT障碍。一个关键的重点是直观的设计，这通过严格的测试来实现。我优先采用“演示，而非告知”的方法进行教程，相信有效的游戏机制应该能够在没有明确指导的情况下被发现。我独特的身份使我能够在课堂时间*内*进行宝贵的实时测试。同时观察10-20名学生可以立即提供关于谜题设计的反馈，并发现意想不到的解决方案，甚至可以激发新的谜题想法——例如利用视角或逆向工程机制。虽然我承认存在伦理考量，但我认为这项活动是有益的，因为它提供了一个有针对性的、免费的英语学习工具，并且我计划与其他的教育工作者分享它。然而，这种设置依赖于作为一名教育工作者并拥有分配的课堂时间，以及游戏与课程直接相关的特定组合。

这次黑客新闻的讨论集中在游测的力量上，尤其是在教育环境中。LandenLove是一位在课堂上使用游测的创作者，他强调观察学生*如何*与游戏互动，而不是直接*询问*反馈，承认学生渴望取悦老师的固有偏见。修改是基于观察到的问题进行的，即使意外的故障（比如掉落的香蕉！）产生了意想不到的积极反应。对话扩展到收集客观反馈的挑战，以及一个致力于连接软件开发、教育和研究的社区的潜力。参与者讨论了可用性测试的伦理考量，以及从用户观察中获得的惊人见解——即使是微小的改变也可能对用户体验产生重大影响。建议包括利用像Claude Code这样的工具进行实时修改，以及将游测作为一项服务提供，同时承认扩大此类努力的后勤障碍。核心要点是观察玩家行为对于改进游戏/软件设计的无价价值。

原文

My Background

I am currently working as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) at three different Japanese schools, One middle school and two elementary schools. Outside of my regular duties, I like to make games and activities to teach English.

My latest project is “Let’s Learn!”, a puzzle game made to teach English to elementary and middle school students. Each puzzle has an English sentence that the player must follow to complete the puzzle and progress to the next level. You can play the game right now in your browser. I have also been posting devlogs on the itch.io page.

Deploying to the Web

Since the beginning of development, my build target has always been deploying to web browsers using Godot’s built in WASM export profile. This lets me deploy the latest build of the game to a github page without requiring my students to download an app to their school-provided IPads. This is useful for two reasons:

I don’t have to deal with Apple developer fees and hardware
I don’t have to get approval from the IT department

Sharing the game is as simple as pushing the latest build to the github page and generating a QR code that points to the page’s URL. I can then share the QR code on the classroom projector, similar to how Kahoot quizzes work.

The Importance of Playtesting

The importance of playtesting cannot be understated. It shows how real players are interacting with your game and what difficulties they may have with your designs. Because I want to target people of all ages and backgrounds, I needed my design to be as intuitive as possible. The entirety of “Let’s Learn!” can play played with a single finger.

Currently, I do not have a single explanation of how the controls work. Despite this, players are able to figure out how to pickup objects and how to rotate the camera without any issues. This is because I carefully watched each playtest silently (<- Very important), redesigning and refining my controls until I could confirm first-hand that my player’s did not need any explanation.

I consider control tutorials to be a bug, not a feature (obviously there are exceptions to this). The most egregious example of this is Doom Eternal. Before you are introduced to EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. MECHANIC, the game teleports you to a padded safe room with passive AI and holds your hand through the entire experience. It is incredibly immersion breaking and is the complete opposite of the image of a “bad-ass demon hunter”.

These tutorials are so bad, that I assume they are a result of rushed development. Because proper playtesting and tutorial design isn’t something that can be brute forced. It requires lots of care and attention.

I prefer the “show, don’t tell” style of tutorials. These are often seen in Valve games. My favorite being the Half-Life 2 introduction of the headcrab.

You see a crow fly into the tongue of a headcrab and die. You now know everything you need to know about this enemy. Plus, you might have gotten a laugh out of the encounter. Comedy plus gameplay tutorials are a surefire way of making sure your players are learning and remembering your mechanics.

Playtesting in the Classroom

A typical day in our classroom consists of following the main JTE’s lesson plan (Japanese person Teaching English). Occasionally, I am given 10-20 minutes at the end of class for “ランデン先生Time.” In the past, I have done activities such as Kahoot quizzes or English Uno. Lately, I have been doing mass playtests of Let’s Learn.

It is only after reflecting on these playtests that I have realized how powerful and unique this situation is.

Every time I need to test a new feature or puzzle, I can have 10-20 students of varying ages and English abilities all simultaneously playtest my game in parallel. While they are playing, I can walk around to any student and see how they are progressing and see what troubles they might be facing.

Beyond the amazing QA this provides me, it is also a great way to brainstorm new puzzles. One such example, was when a player was struggling with an early prototype of picking up objects. Because he was unable to interact with the object, he tried using the perspective of the orthographic camera to “place” the object on top of the goal location.

Another player, one of my co-workers, used the object pickup system to try to solve a pachinko puzzle in reverse, by grabbing the object before it exited the area.

These two examples are puzzles that I would love to add to my game in the future. The first puzzle being similar to a puzzle you might find in “The Witness”. The second puzzle having a solution such as, “An Apple on the ceiling.”

This is a Very Unique Scenario

Despite all the useful information I have received from this experience, it is something unique to my situation and cannot be easily replicated.

For all this to work, you need to be an educator who has free class time they can allocate to activities such at this. Furthermore, the concept of your game must be related to the subject matter that you are teaching.

There are ethical questions to having students playtest a game. I believe my actions are justified for the following reasons:

This is an activity specifically designed for them.
The objective of the game is to teach English, not just play a video game.
The game will always be free to play.
I intend to share this activity with other English teachers.

And, of course, this is not something I am doing secretly. I love watching my co-workers play the game and I love hearing their feedback.

Thanks for reading.

课堂中玩测试的力量 The Power of Playtesting in the Classroom

Table of Contents

课堂中玩测试的力量
The Power of Playtesting in the Classroom