Comparison of playtesting and expert review methods in mobile game evaluation

Selecting an evaluation method for product evaluations depends on many issues, such as the development stage of the product, time schedule, resources, and money that can be invested on the evaluation. The user testing and expert review methods are probably the most common ones when productivity software is being evaluated. Conducting a playtesting with players is commonly used by game designers, but the expert review method has not received that much attention, although it has proven to be an efficient and useful method. In this paper, we present a comparison study of the playtesting and expert review methods in mobile game evaluation. Our objective is to compare the effectiveness of the expert review method with playtesting. Results indicate that the expert review method is able to identify playability problems as accurately as playtesting, but in addition, it identifies problems that are crucial for the playability of the game.