Hypothesis Testing in HTML5 Game Development

It’s easy to think that game development works as it did decades ago: make a game and release it, move on to the next project, rinse and repeat. But modern game lifecycles span years — and players expect games to act as SaaS (software-as-a-service), receiving continuous updates with bug fixes, new features, and gameplay additions.

There were good reasons for this change: today’s technology is much more dynamic and interconnected, which is very unlike what retro videogame platforms were like. In 2022, we have online game distribution platforms that make it possible to roll out updates to all players at once, so the game’s release no longer marks the end of development but merely signifies a new development stage.

Cool, but What Is Hypothesis Testing?

The term itself originated in statistics. In the context of game dev, it means putting your ideas out there to see how they fare in the real environment before refining, reworking, or scrapping them entirely. How do players like the new levels? What about this experimental form of in-game ads or microtransactions? Do the results correspond with your expectations? Hypothesis testing is the way to tackle these and many other questions that any developer might have. With hypothesis testing, you can gain insight into the players’ immediate impression, squish game-breaking bugs before they affect too many players, and collect vital feedback.

The Importance of Public Testing

Gaming is a fun industry, for players and creators alike. But that doesn’t mean that game dev never gets tedious: just as a grindy game can become unenjoyable after a few hundred hours, so can a dragged-out development process. For small developers especially, QA is such a laborious task that many choose to opt for an alpha release. In game development, this practice is broadly known as early access and has many perks going for it. Even larger studios no longer shy away from it!

In the run-up to a full release, games with polished enough core mechanics can still take full advantage of public testing. An open alpha makes it possible to spot issues more subtle than you might expect. Bugs, audio and video glitches, or performance dips in certain browsers and hardware are obvious examples. But what about another one: seasoned players are crafty and can find unexpected ways to play the game, which helps you rule out exploits that provide an unfair advantage — such as those allowing to cheat the leaderboards.

Testing Your Ideas With Yandex Games

Since our platform doesn’t bind you with any exclusivity clauses, you can publish your game on Yandex Games and have the player audience help you flesh out the kinks before the game is ready for release on other platforms, such as mobile. When you first submit your game to Yandex Games, we perform a quick moderation check, primarily to catch any critical errors and major problems with integration. Then we publish your game — just like that! — and give the game some free traffic by attracting real players to try out the new release. It’s a perfect opportunity to collect user reviews and preliminary analytics to get an understanding of how your game might do in the future.

Naturally, you don’t want to stop at just publishing, as Yandex Games has plenty of ways to connect with your audience in the long run. Among them are comments, feedback forms, and reviews. In fact, you can build a popup feedback form right into your game, which proves especially useful in the early weeks after the game’s release.

Of course, quantitative data is also one click away: you’ll know how your game performs in terms of monetization, player traffic, and general popularity. All of these metrics and extensive configurations can be accessed in your Developer Console.

Let’s do a quick wrap-up: whenever you want to release a new game or expand an existing one with new features, it’s best to collect feedback and data to get a clear picture for timely fixes and adjustment. Get your game published on Yandex Games and test the waters: check that the game works correctly, analyze player behavior, and read user reviews to collect feedback. Implement new ideas into your game and let your audience play around with them. Subvert your players’ expectations by listening to what they have to say. With proper hypothesis testing, the only way is up! To get started with Yandex Games, check out our Developer’s Guide — it has all the info you’ll need.