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Survey questions for playtesting your PvE multiplayer gameplay
Survey questions for playtesting your PvE multiplayer gameplay

A selection of tried-and-tested survey questions to use and adapt for playtesting PvE multiplayer in your games

Gareth Lloyd avatar
Written by Gareth Lloyd
Updated over 2 years ago

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.

It was clear how to initiate multiplayer/co-operative 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

Compared to other players I played with in the game, overall I felt..

Multiple choice (single selection)

1 – Much more skillful

2 – Somewhat more skillful

3 – Slightly more skillful

4 – About as skilful as them

5 – Slightly less skillful

6 – Somewhat less skillful

7 – Much less skillful

I was able to communicate with other players to complete our shared goals

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

Compared to other players I played with in the game, overall I felt..

Multiple choice (single selection)

Middle-optimal

1 - Very underpowered

2 - Somewhat underpowered

3 - Slightly underpowered

4 - Neither overpowered nor underpowered

5 - Slightly overpowered

6 - Somewhat overpowered

7 - Very overpowered

I understood the goals that I shared with other players

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

It was clear how to end multiplayer/co-operative 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

I always knew when I was playing alongside bots

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

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