Playtesting

A playtest answers a different question from a QA pass. The build may work perfectly and still lose the player at the third screen, and only watching someone play shows it. The work is in preparing a session around a clear question, keeping quiet while it runs, and recording behaviour rather than opinions.

Analysis is the harder half. A single player getting stuck is an anecdote; five out of eight missing the same affordance is a design problem, and the result has to reach the team as a change proposal rather than a list of complaints.

Designers run these sessions as part of their own iteration; user researchers run them as a method with sampling and protocols. Both are distinct from QA testing, which asks whether the game works, not whether it is understood.