Do players understand my game?

While working in an agency for human-centered design and as a part-time game developer (Zeitglas), I gained valuable insights into user research. The Agency, Zeix AG, has been doing user-centered design since 2000. When I started to work in UX I was fortunate to learn about evaluating user-interfaces and supporting the user experience from a very experienced, diverse team of psychologists, designers, and programmers.

I've adapted the methods and techniques used in UX research for games. In this talk I want to help designers conduct playtests on prototypes. Get early insights into what guidance players need to understand the game without boring them with a flood of unnecessary guidance texts, paths, and arrows.

I would like to show designers how they can reliably test their tutorials and onboardings with players and how to conduct comparable testing sessions that help to gain actionable insights. Not just by numbers, statistics, and analytics of thousands of players, but also with a small sample of players.

This talk helps designers to find answers to the following questions:
- What should I watch out for in a playtest of a tutorial?
- How many people do I need to find out what’s working or not?
- How to get comparable feedback?
- Is the game engaging enough, and how do you know if the tutorial slows players down?

This talk is an extension of my game space talk from March 2026. https://youtu.be/n178RCZ90A4?si=rOHkPe7h1trXbwtU
I specifically focus on how designers can create good tutorials and how to identify potential hurdles for players or how you can mitigate hurdles you see players struggling with.

In a workshop setting, we use techniques of UX Writing (applicable for English and German) and paper prototyping for a tutorial / onboarding.
To get the most out of it, you ideally have a concrete prototype (even an analog / paper prototype is enough).
Together we will answer the following questions:
- How much tutorial and when? What do players even read / listen to?
- What needs explanation in-game, and what doesn't?
- Techniques to show players the mechanics by progressive disclosure and existing patterns.