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Playtesting News

The latest Playtesting coverage curated for game developers.

1312 Interactive raises $1m in seed funding round

GamesIndustry.biz reports that 1312 Interactive has raised $1 million in seed funding to expand its publishing infrastructure. The India-based PC and console publisher plans to use the money for emerging …

News GamesIndustry.biz · 1 week ago
20 years of game dev mistakes in 12 minutes

Tim Ruswick distills 20 years of game dev mistakes into seven recurring traps that can quietly kill projects. The biggest lessons: stop overbuilding tools, avoid secret solo work, and know …

Video Tim Ruswick · 2 weeks ago
How you (yes, you) can benefit from 1-on-1 synchronous playtesting

One-on-one synchronous playtesting is getting renewed attention as a practical way to surface problems fast, especially in the early and mid stages of development. Brian Cronin is set to make …

News Game Developer · 3 weeks, 5 days ago
Ubisoft debuts Player Council platform to expand early game development feedback

Ubisoft has launched Player Council, a new platform meant to pull players into earlier stages of development. Members will be invited to try early concepts, prototypes, and live experiences, giving …

News Game Developer · 3 weeks, 6 days ago
Ubisoft announces playstest platform The Player Council

GamesIndustry.biz reports that Ubisoft has soft-launched The Player Council, a free playtest platform for early prototypes and live PC games. The goal is to pull players into development earlier, with …

News GamesIndustry.biz · 4 weeks ago
More Than 63% of IEEE VIS Research Liable to be Retracted?! Ethics Approval Statements Protect Participants (and Researchers!)

A new ethics audit of 255 IEEE VIS papers from 2024–2025 found that 74.1% involved human participants, but only 3.2% clearly reported ethics approval, an approval ID, and informed consent. …

Research arXiv cs.GR · 1 month, 1 week ago
Mistake: Wrong feedback is wrong

Wrong feedback can push teams toward the wrong fix, wasting time and muddying decisions. The practical risk is especially high when feedback is vague, biased, or detached from player goals. …

Video Tim Ruswick · 2 months, 1 week ago
Building a Simple Puzzle Solver: Lessons in Logic and Heuristics

A simple brute-force solver plus a decent heuristic can go a lot further than many teams expect. The article shows how simulating legal moves, scoring board states, and iterating on …

News sinanhuzaifa · 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Shifting from QA Testing to Analyzing Clip #2

Avowed’s narrative team is using joint analysis sessions to move beyond traditional QA bug-finding and into structured feedback on branching story content. That shift matters for designers and narrative teams …

Video GDC Festival of Gaming · 3 months, 3 weeks ago
Robo-Saber: Generating and Simulating Virtual Reality Players

Robo-Saber introduces a novel motion generation system for playtesting VR games, leveraging the BOXRR-23 dataset. This innovation allows developers to simulate diverse player behaviors and improve gameplay data synthesis, particularly …

Research arXiv cs.GR · 7 months ago
Ubisoft's AI NPC project can now deliver sarcastic GMs, helpful team-mates and hidden lore – and is being playtested now

Ubisoft's AI NPC project has advanced to include sarcastic game masters, supportive teammates, and hidden lore elements. Currently in playtesting, this initiative aims to enhance player interaction and combat experiences, …

News GamesIndustry.biz · 10 months ago