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Ask questions that expose what players are trying to do, what they understand, where they hesitate, what they feel, and whether they know what to do next. A useful playtest is not a popularity poll: choose one learning objective, let the player attempt the game without rescue, record observable behavior, and use a short, neutral post-session interview to explain it.
The question set below works for a first level, a tutorial, a new control scheme, a boss encounter, or a complete vertical slice. Use only the prompts that serve your objective; asking everything can distract from the behavior you need to learn.
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Choose one learning objective before the session
Write a single question that the session must answer. Narrow objectives produce evidence you can act on, while broad requests for “general feedback” usually produce opinions that are difficult to prioritize.
Good objectives
- Can a new player finish the first level without help?
- Do players understand the dash move and when to use it?
- Can players identify the next objective after the opening cutscene?
- Does the boss communicate its attack pattern before players lose all health?
- Does the inventory interface let players equip an item without explanation?
The AI Game Dev uses objectives such as finishing a first level without help and understanding a dash move. Turn your objective into an observable success condition: “The player reaches the exit without a moderator hint,” or “The player uses the dash after seeing the tutorial prompt.” Decide in advance what would count as confusion, failure, or improvement.
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Prepare a short question plan
Game Design Toolkit recommends preparing questions in advance, making them specific, mixing open and closed questions, and keeping the questionnaire under 10 questions. A prewritten plan prevents a moderator from chasing interesting but irrelevant comments and makes different sessions comparable.
| Session phase | What you need to learn | Useful prompt types |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-up | Expectations and genre assumptions | What the player thinks the game is about and what they expected to do |
| Live play | Intent, comprehension and friction | What the player is attempting, what options they perceive and where they feel stuck |
| Post-session | Emotion, memory and priorities | Frustrating or memorable moments, desired changes and willingness to continue |
| Cross-session review | Patterns rather than isolated opinions | Objective comprehension, controls, tutorial, difficulty, pacing and continuation intent |
Ask about expectations before the first input
Start with the player’s mental model, not your explanation of the design. Do not reveal the intended solution before you know what they expect.
Warm-up prompts
- What did you think the game was about?
- What were you expecting to do when you started?
These answers establish a baseline. If a player expects stealth but the opening teaches direct combat, later confusion may be a framing problem rather than a control problem. Record the player’s own words so you can compare them with the game’s store description, trailer, title screen and opening moments.
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When a player pauses, repeats an action, opens the wrong menu or looks around for a long time, capture the moment. Ask about it after the attempt rather than supplying the answer.
Questions that reveal the player’s plan
- What were you trying to do just now?
- What did you think your options were?
- What did you think was happening in that scene or moment?
- What would you do next if the session continued?
Intent questions distinguish a design failure from an execution error. A player who knows the goal but cannot perform the input needs different work from a player who performs the wrong action because the goal was never communicated.
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Use neutral follow-ups
Good probes invite detail without suggesting a preferred answer: “Tell me more,” “What were you expecting?” and “Why?” GameDeveloper.com’s usability-playtest guidance emphasizes neutral moderation. Avoid completing the player’s sentence, naming the feature you hope they noticed, or asking whether they saw a particular button.
Find friction without turning the session into tech support
Ask about a concrete moment, not whether the game was generally “easy” or “hard.” Broad questions invite polite, low-information answers.
Friction and usability prompts
- What was confusing, if anything?
- Where did you feel stuck or unsure?
- Was there anything you wanted to do but could not?
- How well did the tutorial or first interaction teach what you needed?
Follow an answer with location and consequence: “Which screen or action caused that?” and “What did you try next?” This helps you separate unclear language, missing feedback, awkward controls, inaccessible timing and an intentional challenge the player simply disliked.
Ask about emotion, pacing and memorable moments
Players often remember peaks and breakdowns more clearly than a whole session. Ask them to identify a moment and describe the feeling attached to it.
Experience prompts
- What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played?
- What was your favorite or most memorable moment?
- How did you feel during the difficult section or boss encounter?
- Which part felt slow, repetitive or especially satisfying?
Schell Games published the first question above on June 5, 2026, as part of its playtest-question guide. Ask for the event before asking for a rating: “What happened?” gives you a design target, while “Did you enjoy it?” mostly gives you a verdict.
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During play, observe first and intervene sparingly
The default moderator behavior should be silence. Let the player attempt the task without explanation, correction or hints. The University of Michigan EECS sample script states: “If the player isn’t playing the game the way you intended, that’s your problem, not theirs.” Treat unexpected behavior as evidence about the design.
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If thinking aloud is part of your method, use a brief, neutral prompt such as “What are you looking at?” Do not ask a leading question such as “Did you notice the dash icon?” If the player asks for help, record the request and follow your predeclared rule: either allow one standardized hint for every participant or postpone assistance until the task is over.
When to wait
Wait through a reasonable attempt when the player hesitates, chooses the wrong menu, retries an action or searches the environment. Interrupt only when the session would otherwise stop, the build has malfunctioned, or the study specifically tests assisted onboarding. Ask for clarification after the moment so your intervention does not change the behavior you are measuring.
Use a nine-question post-session script
A consistent closing interview makes sessions comparable and still leaves room for discovery. The following nine questions cover the practical areas identified by Schell Games, IndieOP, Game Design Toolkit and the University of Michigan script.
- What did you think the game was about?
- What were you trying to do in the moment that stood out most?
- What was confusing or difficult to understand?
- Where did you feel stuck or unsure?
- Was there anything you wanted to do but could not?
- What was the most frustrating moment?
- What was your favorite or most memorable moment?
- If you could change, add or remove one thing, what would it be?
- What would make you want to keep playing, and would you recommend this game to someone who likes this genre? Why?
Ask the questions in this order when possible: comprehension first, then friction, then emotion and finally prioritization. Do not defend a design choice during the interview. If the player gives a general answer such as “It was fun,” ask which moment created that feeling and what they were doing at the time.
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Add a consistent rating only when you need comparison
For repeated builds, you can add one small closed scale after the open discussion, such as a studio-defined 1–5 rating for clarity or willingness to continue. Use the same wording and scale every session, and keep the open explanation as the primary evidence. The available guidance provides qualitative question examples, not a validated numeric benchmark for the number of players or sessions an indie studio must run.
Record behavior alongside what players say
Interview answers explain a player’s interpretation; behavior shows what actually happened. IndieOP, NVlabs Skill2Env and other playtest guidance emphasize combining both.
| Behavior to record | What it may indicate | Follow-up to ask later |
|---|---|---|
| Long hesitation before an action | Unclear objective, affordance or consequence | What options did you think you had? |
| Repeatedly trying the same input | Feedback is missing or the control is misunderstood | What did you expect that input to do? |
| Opening several menus or looking away from the goal | Navigation, signposting or interface hierarchy problem | What were you searching for? |
| Asking for help | Blocked progress, inaccessible information or excessive difficulty | What information would have let you continue? |
| Quitting or stopping early | Frustration, pacing issue, technical fault or unclear next step | What made you decide to stop? |
| Succeeding without prompting | Instruction and feedback may be working | What told you to try that action? |
Note timestamps, the player’s exact action, the apparent result and any spoken comment. Mark whether a moderator hint occurred. A player saying “I understood it” after receiving a hint is not equivalent to discovering the solution independently.
Compare sessions on the same decision axes
After each session, summarize evidence under the same headings so one memorable anecdote does not outweigh a repeated pattern.
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- Objective comprehension: Could the player state the goal and identify the next step?
- Controls and interface: Did the player find and execute the needed action?
- Tutorial effectiveness: Did the first interaction teach the required rule without rescue?
- Difficulty: Were failures understood as fair challenges or unexplained blocks?
- Pacing: Were there stretches that felt slow, repetitive or rushed?
- Emotional response: Which moments produced tension, delight, boredom or frustration?
- Memorable moments: What did players spontaneously describe after play?
- Continuation intent: Did players know what they wanted to do next and why?
Separate observations from interpretations. “Looked at the locked door for 18 seconds” is an observation; “the objective marker failed” is a hypothesis to test against other sessions. Prioritize issues that block the session objective, recur across players, or prevent progress. Keep isolated preferences visible but do not treat them as systemic problems without supporting behavior.
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Adapt the questions to the feature you are testing
| Test objective | Targeted prompts |
|---|---|
| Opening and tutorial | What did you expect to learn first? What did the first interaction teach you? What information was still missing? |
| New movement or combat ability | When did you first consider using it? What did you believe it would do? What stopped you from trying it? |
| Level navigation | Where did you believe the destination was? What landmarks or signals did you use to choose a route? |
| Boss encounter | What pattern did you think you were seeing? What caused your strategy to change? |
| Inventory or progression | What did you want to change or equip? How did you decide which option was useful? |
| Story comprehension | Who or what did you think was driving the conflict? What question did you expect the next scene to answer? |
These prompts are intentionally specific to a decision. They reveal what the player inferred, rather than asking them to redesign the feature for you.
Run remote sessions without losing useful evidence
When in-person testing is impractical, remote sessions can use screen sharing or recording. NVlabs Skill2Env and IndieOP describe remote observation as a workable alternative when the moderator can see the relevant gameplay and hear the player’s comments.
- Ask permission before recording video, audio or the screen, and explain who will see the files.
- Confirm that the capture includes the game window, inputs or controller actions when those are central to the objective.
- Use the same build, instructions, hint policy and task length for every participant in a comparison round.
- Keep a written event log even when recording; timestamps make later review faster.
- Note technical interruptions separately from design friction so a connection failure is not misclassified as a usability issue.
Common moderation mistakes and their fixes
| Mistake | Why it weakens the result | Better practice |
|---|---|---|
| Asking only “Did you like it?” | Produces a broad, polite opinion without a design cause | Ask for a specific moment, action and consequence |
| Leading the player toward a feature | Suggests the answer and inflates apparent comprehension | Use neutral probes and wait through the attempt |
| Explaining the intended solution immediately | Removes evidence about the original confusion | Record the problem, then clarify after the test moment |
| Changing questions every session | Makes responses difficult to compare | Keep a core script and add only objective-specific probes |
| Collecting suggestions without behavior | Players may propose solutions for problems they did not actually encounter | Connect each suggestion to a timestamped event |
| Running too many questions | Fatigues the player and dilutes the primary objective | Keep the closing questionnaire below 10 questions |
| Defending the game during feedback | Encourages socially safe answers and hides criticism | Thank the player and ask what they expected instead |
A practical 30-minute session flow
- Minutes 0–3: orient the player. Explain the task, the recording arrangement if applicable, and that the game—not the player—is being tested. Do not teach the solution.
- Minutes 3–5: capture expectations. Ask what the player thinks the game is about and what they expect to do.
- Minutes 5–20: observe the target task. Stay quiet, timestamp hesitation and retries, and apply the same hint rule to everyone.
- Minutes 20–27: conduct the post-session script. Move from comprehension to friction, emotion and the one change the player would prioritize.
- Minutes 27–30: verify a key interpretation. Ask one follow-up about the most important observed event, then stop before fatigue turns into speculation.
Immediately after the player leaves, write a short evidence summary: objective result, first major confusion, strongest positive moment, whether assistance was needed, and the next design question. Do this before memory smooths over the details.
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Do not treat every comment as an instruction. Cluster notes by the design axis they affect, then look for convergence between behavior and language. If several players hesitate at the same prompt and describe the same uncertainty, investigate the prompt, feedback and surrounding context. If one player requests a feature but uses the existing system successfully, record the preference without making it a priority.
The most valuable output is a testable change: rewrite the objective text, add feedback to the blocked action, reorder a tutorial step, adjust a timing window, or remove an unnecessary interaction. Define what you expect to change in the next round and repeat the same objective-specific questions. Qualitative playtesting does not provide a universal required sample size; its value comes from disciplined observation, neutral questioning and clear decisions based on repeated evidence.
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