next »

[PompiPompi]

While developing Sumerian Blood I have found how important play testers are.
In SB it's a 1 vs 1 game match, so balance is very important. The thing is, I can't just pick up any player and play with him. It's important that he have been playtesting quite a lot with me in the past to be able to help with balancing new features.
I have about 3 core playtesters.
PandaraRA is one of them, and he helps me a lot. I think the game wouldn't be the same without him helping me out.

So, where do you get play testers? How often do you play with them? Basically, share all your experience with playtesting, your tips, how it affects your game and etc. I think I am mostly curious about how you get good core playtesters, but other things might interest others.

[ink.inc]

just recruit your unwitting meat slav- I MEAN FRIENDS AND FAMILY HA HA HA

[PompiPompi]

Well yea, that might be good for a first play through when you want to see how they react to the game. How they learn to play and etc. But you really need a dedicated tester early on if you want him to help you balance the game. Especially if it's multiplayer.
So how much do you let your family and friends play test?

[Dragonmaw]

You can always post a build into Feedback. Or, if you want to keep it secret from the general public, Minus World.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i have the people who pre-ordered the game, people who sign up to playtest, people who have helped playtest my previous games, and various indie game dev friends (from irc or eo). but i don't playtest my game as often as i should, because i want to feel as if i'm not wasting the playtester's time, and want the games i make to be fairly complete before i ask for much in the way of testing. i find that feedback on unfinished games is almost always in the form of "you should add [feature that you already plan to add] and fix [bug that you already plan to fix]", so i think the best time for playtesting is when i game is about 95% complete, not 25% complete or 50% complete. this is especially true because a lot of playtesters are only going to play your game once, not test every single version of it, and you want that "once" to be a moderately finished thing

[Irock]

I've found that its really important to watch people play my game. I have them share their screen over Skype and give me live verbal feedback.

[PompiPompi]

I guess playtesting should be handled differently for different games.
For a single player, story driven game I guess play testing make more sense in a more complete game.
I don't mind feature suggestions from play testers though, and I have also implemented some of the suggestions, although I have rejected others or said maybe in the future.
In a game like I am doing, you can't really have play testers play it once. Think of street fighter, you can't play test balance against someone who plays street fighter for the first time.
You need to play test against someone who already got past the learnning curve, and already got the hang of the game. He should also be familiar with every character if you are to play test all of them.
I guess finding a dedicated good playtester is really golden, because not a lot of people have the time or willingness to play test your game more than a few times.
I have about two playtesters like that, and without them I would have had no chance to balance the game.

Irock: Watching people play is important, but maybe that's more for testing how they learn to play the game? Or how they deal with the GUI? Rarther than to playtest balance?

[Xienen]

Irock: Watching people play is important, but maybe that's more for testing how they learn to play the game? Or how they deal with the GUI? Rarther than to playtest balance?

I believe that to be true.  I would also suggest creating a stats/balance tool that you can use to analyze balance data that you spit out to a file from your game.  This allows you to have a bunch of playtesters whom you don't directly interface with, but create a large pool of balance information for you.  In a fighting game, you could track which characters they use, how many of each move they use for those characters, and whether or not they win(along with how strongly they win...and what character they were playing against).  This may sound complicated and perhaps like overkill, but this was an invaluable resource for us balancing Break Blocks, which has gotten a lot of positive remarks for the balance/progression in reviews.