How to use these questions
Where possible, we try to provide survey response option scales that include:
Five or seven response points, in order to provide a reasonable trade off between granularity and ease of response,
A central neutral option,
Negative responses below the neutral response, and positive responses above it.
This structure allows us to assign positive, negative or neutral scores to responses (from -2 to +2, or -3 to +3) which can be helpful in visualising and communicating outcomes later on.
Some questions are scored in specific ways:
Where questions are reverse coded, this means that responses on the upper end of the scale are negative. If you want to compare these questions directly with other questions that are non reverse coded, you will need invert the scores.
Where questions are middle-optimal, this means that the most positive response is in the middle of the response scale. The lowest and highest scores here represent negative extremes: e.g. 'too hard' or 'too easy'.
These questions are not formally validated or part of a single tool or scale, so feel free to use individual items or modify questions for your current research goal. However, you might find more value in them by using them repeatedly, whether across multiple playtests, or in some cases, on multiple days on a longitudinal playtest. This way you can track changes to these responses over time, especially where you have enough players to aggregate responses.
In the time that I played, the puzzles were..
Multiple choice (single selection)
Middle-optimal
1 – Much too easy
2 – Somewhat too easy
3 – Slightly too easy
4 – About right in terms of difficulty
5 – Slightly too hard
6 – Somewhat too hard
7 – Much too hard
In the time that I played, the difficulty of the puzzles increased..
Multiple choice (single selection)
Middle-optimal
1 – Much too slowly
2 – Somewhat too slowly
3 – Slightly too quickly
4 – At about the right pace
5 – Slightly too quickly
6 – Somewhat too quickly
7 – Much too quickly
I always understood new puzzle elements as they were introduced
Multiple choice (single selection)
1 – Strongly disagree
2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree
4 – Neither agree or disagree
5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree
Overall, the puzzles were..
Multiple choice (single selection)
Middle optimal
1 – Much too simple
2 – Somewhat too simple
3 – Slightly too simple
4 – About right in terms of complexity
5 – Slightly too complex
6 – Somewhat too complex
7 – Much too complex
The game taught me everything I needed to know to play
Multiple choice (single selection)
1 – Strongly disagree
2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree
4 – Neither agree or disagree
5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree
New puzzle elements were introduced..
Multiple choice (single selection)
Middle-optimal
1 – Much too slowly
2 – Somewhat too slowly
3 – Slightly too quickly
4 – At about the right pace
5 – Slightly too quickly
6 – Somewhat too quickly
7 – Much too quickly