Playtest Tracking Template

Explore

Playtesting is a key part of the game design process - both for your own observations and for gathering user feedback. This template is for tracking playtests and feedback. It has forms for player surveys and for facilitators who test your game without you present.

​

Playtest Table

The Playtest table is for playtests that you personally run or observe. The default view is a grid that includes key information such as the version of the rules, the playtesters, and the facilitator, if it wasn’t you. There’s also room for designer notes and photos, based on what you observed.

​

Feedback Tracking

The Feedback Tracking table is for player and facilitator feedback reports. Airtable makes it easy to share public forms for playtesters to fill out.

​

We included questions that we find useful but you can add your own. As your design matures, you can add and remove questions by adding new columns to the table and editing the form. It also might make sense to add columns to track things that are idiosyncratic to your game, like theme or playset used. We have two different versions of the feedback form: public and private.

​

The first is for private playtesting, where you are personally tracking each session in the Playtest tab. This version asks the player match their report to a specific playtest. The second version of the form is for public playtests, once you have shared your design with a larger audience and are asking them to playtest on your behalf. We’ve created two views to track the different types of responses. The private view clusters feedback by rule version and by playtest session

​

We’ve given you the option of linking the feedback to the Players tab, which is helpful if you expect to have multiple playtests per person. The forms takes the player’s name in the Player Name column and you’ll have to copy it over to the Link to Person column to accurately track the players; check to make sure the player wrote their name the same way each time. You can view public and private feedback at the same time by going to the All Reports view.

​

Rule Versions

When you’re testing a game, it’s helpful to keep track of which version of the rules you used for each session. This makes it easier to track feedback, especially later in the design process. This table is cross-linked to the playtest and feedback table so you can track rule versions for your sessions. We’ve kept things pretty simple here but you can add more details if you like.

​

People

This table is also simple, it tracks the playtests and feedback submissions associated with each player. It’s just another way to view the data.

Explore
Updated September 28, 2017 at 4:30 PM
Copied 136 times

Randy Lubin

Entrepreneur and Game Designer randylubin.com
Explore the base
Playtest Tracker
Playtest Gallery
All Reports
Feedback By Version (Private)
Feedback By Version (Public)
Grid view
Grid view