Test Play

(stub, draft)

**Test Play** (testing, テスプレ) is the concept of testing your game before

releasing it. It is known that many makers did not test their game before releasing it.

## Why!?

One may want to test their games to verify if their game is possible. One may also want to test their games to see how the boss looks. One may also want to test their games to gauge if the attacks are fair or not, if the story is compelling, to dial in and revise the design so that it is better. One may even have testers to test their game: they may or may not respond to the feedback given to them.

## Why Not?

Makers grind their game until they can beat it. That is the nature of difficulty. However, some games may not be able to be beaten by the maker. For example, ルキト様 is not capable of beating their own games, so someone else tests it. Thir lent their a games a distinctive visual style where things look harder than they are. But in Discord Makers 2, it is heard that test play was more lax, leading to rougher game design. Some makers might want to make the hardest game ever. This leads to games that can be impossible to beat, or games which are very unfair in origin. The insistence on the current vision of ths game can lead makers to be reluctant to nerfing their game, ignore feedback from their testers, or keep bad design in.

## How

There are cognitive distortions that take place to distort the view of the game. This list might not be complete. Maker could also mean makers to the extent that they act as one unit.

### Possible assumption

The maker assumes that someone will find a way to beat it, though they don't currently know that way.

### "E" for Effort

> E" for Effort. (also Noble Effort; I'm Trying My Best; The Lost Cause): The common contemporary fallacy of ethos that something must be right, true, valuable, or worthy of respect and honor solely because one (or someone else) has put so much sincere good-faith effort or even sacrifice and bloodshed into it. (See also Appeal to Pity; Argument from Inertia; Heroes All; or Sob Story). An extreme example of this fallacy is Waving the Bloody Shirt (also, the "Blood of the Martyrs" Fallacy), the fallacy that a cause or argument, no matter how questionable or reprehensible, cannot be questioned without dishonoring the blood and sacrifice of those who died so nobly for that cause. E.g., "Defend the patriotic gore / That flecked the streets of Baltimore..." (from the official Maryland State Song). See also Cost Bias, The Soldier's Honor Fallacy, and the Argument from Inertia.
>
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### Fair assumption

The maker makes as if what they're making is fair. By some superhuman activation of willpower, they can do the impossible. With enough grinding, they can get consistent at the attack. And nerfing it would make the journey trivial.

### Initial assumption

The maker sticks to their initial vision, resisting change.

### Tunnel vision

The maker only knows what they perceive, and not what others could perceive.

etc.

## What

### Visual testing

This is looking at your game to ensure it looks well, interesting, exciting.

### Challenge testing

This is feeling the attacks how they flow into each other and dialing in the difficulty until it fits just iight

### External testing

This is getting someone else to test your game, and return feedback.

etc.

## What could be?

#### Finetuning

This is when you get better at the game you're making, and then buff the earlier content to exceed your current skill level so you can get even better.

Or you can be too good at what you're testing and be unable to see how a player of lower skill level might struggle with what you're making, unable to see the rough spots in balance.

### Visuals vs. Challenge

Your boss has an attack where random number bursts out to a accentuated beat in the song, giving the player only 0.2 seconds to react. But you don't want to adjust the challenge or else the attack will be trivial and anticlimactic.

Or, you make a game filled with good design, but it gets boring since you flattened out the spice, making the game unadventurous.

### Learning to like unfair random number

Oops! Attack difficulty is very wide standard deviation in difficulty, but averages to at or above your skill level. People praise difficulty over design in the I wanna be community, leading to more random number.

etc.