I have begun to notice that even observing different audiences can have pretty dramatic impacts, when it comes to making video games. Imagine you were designing Animal Crossing — observing for example (inasmuch as one can identify player types by a single game that they play) ‘Call of Duty players’ interacting with your nascent design could be useless at best, and incredibly damaging to the process at worst.
Within some game design circles I have noticed a similar attitude regarding player suggestions but I think getting suggestions from the right type of player can actually be extremely valuable, and placing the emphasis on avoiding explicit criticism is not as useful as making sure whatever information you get is coming from a compatible place. (A concept which I did not fully understand before this article.)
Specific to your proposed better way, I would strongly recommend that anyone making a game look for something more specific than ‘random playtesters’, although the rest of the advice stands.
I have begun to notice that even observing different audiences can have pretty dramatic impacts, when it comes to making video games. Imagine you were designing Animal Crossing — observing for example (inasmuch as one can identify player types by a single game that they play) ‘Call of Duty players’ interacting with your nascent design could be useless at best, and incredibly damaging to the process at worst.
Within some game design circles I have noticed a similar attitude regarding player suggestions but I think getting suggestions from the right type of player can actually be extremely valuable, and placing the emphasis on avoiding explicit criticism is not as useful as making sure whatever information you get is coming from a compatible place. (A concept which I did not fully understand before this article.)
Specific to your proposed better way, I would strongly recommend that anyone making a game look for something more specific than ‘random playtesters’, although the rest of the advice stands.