Best Practices for Getting Testers
So what would be the best way to get testers to download your game and get testing?
What methods have you guys followed to get this working for your games? Is it just word of mouth ... do you take a shotgun approach and social media spam the hell out of it ... what.
At one stage I made a post and people said it was a wall of text and they didn't bother ... the other time I tried a more subtle approach and did some updates over the course of the post ... and that hasn't worked either.
Ultimately every game needs someone outside the team to do some testing and give them critical feedback in order to imporve the game ... or the whole point is moot.
So what practices do you guys follow?
Is there some secret club that I am not aware of?
What have you found that works for you and your projects?
Thanks for any enlightenment that I may receive. 8-}
What methods have you guys followed to get this working for your games? Is it just word of mouth ... do you take a shotgun approach and social media spam the hell out of it ... what.
At one stage I made a post and people said it was a wall of text and they didn't bother ... the other time I tried a more subtle approach and did some updates over the course of the post ... and that hasn't worked either.
Ultimately every game needs someone outside the team to do some testing and give them critical feedback in order to imporve the game ... or the whole point is moot.
So what practices do you guys follow?
Is there some secret club that I am not aware of?
What have you found that works for you and your projects?
Thanks for any enlightenment that I may receive. 8-}
Comments
1. Make your game attractive. Whether it's video or screenshots or other people saying it's good, you gotta make it attractive.
2. Focus on the good bits - this speaks to the same as point 1. Having a lot of screenshots or a lot of video of stuff that's not very exciting isn't conducive to getting people interested. Focus on the good bits.
3. Show people having a good time. Videos of people playing having a good time helps. If it's genuine all the better.
4. Accessibility - making it accessible (least steps/effort to getting the game working) is important. Web builds are king for this, apparently, though I still have had mixed reactions to web builds.... But there are other factors:
5. Meaningfully accessible - multiplayer games are hard to make meaningful to players because you either need other people to play with (hard) or you need AI (hard). I want to make a system where people play each other on web builds easily, but damn that's not easy.
6. Ludum Dare. This is the holy grail of playtesting - it's a bunch of people who want to get their games seen, and to be seen you have to play other people's creations. It's a fantastic system.
7. Putting it in the right place/as many places as possible. I don't know the right answer to this, but there are MANY places you can get eyeballs from. I don't know what the best practice is. Gamejolt, Itch.io, makega.me, here, tigsource... To name a few that I know.
8. Use linebreaks. (sometimes I forget about that myself)
It's not easy. But I think the important "attractiveness X factor" is important.......... from playtest through to selling. And that's half mysterious.
I'm not some marketing space-guru with a silver bullet, alas. I can only outline what makes ME try a game out (and I realise you have done some of the following, but hey, best to be holistic :P):
- The thread title, believe it or not. "So I made a game guys" or "Testing wanted" is not a thread title that gets my attention. Something like "[prototype] Prana-Yam: root vegetable yoga puzzler" is more likely to attract my attention.
- It has a good succinct pitch in the OP that concisely communicates what the game's about without getting into unnecessary details. "Please test mah gaem" gives me no reason to want to test. Neither does a wall-o-text.
- It has a couple of illustrative screenshots or, better still, a quick gameplay vid that shows me what's going on. Needn't be fancy, just needs to get the point across.
- It's easy to get hold of and play. A web-player link or a standalone EXE that I can pull down and test in a couple of minutes is a big help.
- No need for pointless spam-bumping with irrelevant stuff, but updating the thread as you go keeps the game visible, and I tend to be attracted by games that make progress. What looked dull initially may mutate into something rad and appealing to me as it goes.
- I'll playtest games that appeal to my tastes. Can't do much about that as a dev, alas.
A captive audience helps too. :P Hence the MGSA meets. Try showing your game off there if you can make it to one.
I've also found that talking about your game and posting videos and updates on the Social Media-trons gets a bit of attention, especially if you have a bunch of game fans or game devs following you. Once again, getting that mindshare by showing people progress, videos, screenies, all of that helps when you eventually announce a playable version. In my case it isn't even a calculated marketing ploy. I enjoy yammering on about my game. :P
Hope that helps a little.
A great way to figure this out is to listen to other people talking about your game, especially if they introduce others to it, that's gold. A lot of testing is about you getting out of the way.
Part of doing this is about figuring that out for your game... Another part is learning how to tell if your game prototype CAN actually grab people - sometimes they just don't. I've had loads of those, and I suspect that after DD a bunch of protos I make will get zilch interest at all and I'll get all depressed about that for a while ;)
Please keep more coming if anyone has more insight ... for now I am going to look at this info and then look at my project and make some changes.
Thanks again ... this has been most helpful. Good luck with all your projects. 8-}
- Asking questions that people feel able to answer. Posting and saying "Here is my game, what do you think?" is difficult to answer. But "Here is my game, do you think the enemies move to quickly?" Or "How do you feel about the jump height?" is much easier, and more likely to get responses.
- Thanking people. You already seem to know about this (from your last post :) ). People are going to be more likely to post if they anticipate being rewarded. Being thanked is a small reward, but most of us are here to help (I hope) and it's the reward we seek. Seeing other people being thanked encourages further people.
- Test and offer feedback for other people's games.
This last one is the most important thing I can say. Obviously people will be more inclined to reciprocate with feedback if you give them feedback (particularly useful feedback).
But more than that, posting feedback on people's games encourages a culture of feedback giving, after all we want a culture where feedback is given generously, and we don't want a culture where the only way to get feedback is to skillfully manipulate visitors into playing your game. And so in giving feedback yourself you'd be part of the solution.
I see you haven't been posting feedback on other people's games here. I don't know if you've been helping test people's games off site. But in any case, if this forum isn't giving you as much feedback as you'd like, maybe try taking the first step and helping someone else.
(In closing, I really hope you don't end up giving a ton of feedback and no-one gives any back in return. I'd feel pretty sad about that result after giving this speech)
I am going to endeavor to test other people's games and provide feedback, regardless if I get any back on my own.
Thanks again to everyone who commented, you have given me a lot of food for thought. 8-}