Of course there's a typo in my original post and I didn't see it until 4 posts later. Never fails. 🙃
Anyway, I should probably tag this thread. 🫡 #ux #gamedev #uxresearch
"400 tests a month" makes me think that they're cutting corners and trading volume for quality.
There's no shortcut to improving usability. If you want the benefits, you have to do the work. And if you farm it out, make sure that the results are actionable, because otherwise it's just opinions.
You don't even necessarily have to pay your community members to get them to play your closed beta, and they'll happily fill out a post-play survey. Sure, you need to analyze the results, but you have to do that anyway if you expect to generate any actionable findings.
Is doing this sort of testing useful? It's probably better than nothing, but it certainly isn't efficient, and the results are probably not very useful. You'd be better off just going into your community Discord (you do have one of those, right?) and getting people to sign up directly for playtests.
I guess maybe they can feed transcripts into a LLM and generate summaries that way? But I'm guessing they aren't actually doing any actual gameplay analysis, which is what playtests actually are. The reason you watch people play is that they will say one thing and do another.
It isn't quite a scam, but it's definitely a middleman play. They charge $20/hr. to farm the work out at $10/hr. Who's being recruited? Who knows. My guess is responses are fed into an online form which spits out spreadsheet averages. That's how I'd do it if I wanted to do the least work possible.
So presumably, people are being sent a pre-release copy of the game and told to record their experience, along with a list of things to note and report on? What, like via a survey? And then the session is being transcribed ... somehow? And who's doing qualitative coding of results? Anyone?
Oh no. I skimmed this thread, and it's full of red flags. It isn't clear what's being tested. 400 games? One game 400 times? 20 games 20 times?
Post says implies they're doing 30-180 minute playtests with transcripts. Implication is that the testers are being paid $10/hour to self-report?
Durandal? The *door control system*?
How randomness adds value to games
That place is... online 🎺
It's an online conference this year folks
Post your stuff, tag us, we'll RT here and Mastodon, and put it on the site.
Also join the... Discord (for now, sorry)
Let's make it a fun, welcoming alternative to whatever GDC is calling itself these days.
job please money need
I'm not going to #GDC, but one of my secret fears is that nobody would want to hang out with me, because why would they?
I know friendship isn't supposed to be transactional, but I also feel like I'm in the liminal gamedev space and unsure which cadre I claim membership in. Old timers?
pink bubble letters spelling out "bubble sort studios" and a black circle with lime green and aqua outlines, with the letters GDOC inside the circle. more monospaced text spells out games showcase wednesday, march 11 2pm - 7pm 78 gough st, sf
excited to showcase some cool games by game devs of color in collaboration with @gdocexpo.com next wednesday!
rsvp here! luma.com/2v2mgk41
Durandal? The *door control system*?
"Partially-written rules" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. They range anywhere from "I have decided on core mechanics" to "completed subsystems but not end-to-end complete." Typically this also means I haven't crafted physical parts yet. Anyway, it's a *process*. 😅
Of the 3 playtestable projects, 2 are not in active development because I decided they are flawed in some way that would require "significant" work to fix. I mean, they're fixable, but I could also work on getting one of my half-written projects into a playtestable state.
This is normal, right? 🤔
I'm reviewing my list of "in progress" gamedev projects right now. It's basically 20 subfolders, each earmarked for a project. 10 of these folders are empty or contain a single document with less than a paragraph of text. 7 have partially-written rules but are unplayable. 3 are fully playtestable.
For some reason I'm suddenly reminded of Stonekeep, and oh shit you can actually get Stonekeep on Steam.
What's the bells->gold conversion rate? Asking for a certain tanuki crime boss.
Leeloo Dallas multiclass
Thankfully I'm not in a fragile mood right now and all I could do was laugh at the accidental juxtaposition, so thank you for that. 😆
❤️
🫠
I guess maybe my "role" these days is that of an ambassador, a social connector that binds sub-communities together. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm just an impostor who has managed to infiltrate places where I don't technically belong, and I'm starting to feel very self-conscious about it.
And yes, the journo-to-dev pipeline is real, but I still feel like an interloper. I have some accumulated institutional knowledge, and I like to think that maybe I'm fun at parties, but unsure if that's a good foundation for inserting myself into the conversation.
I'm "retired" from data work, which overlaps with UX research and old-school NPC behavior (formerly "AI"). Maybe the writing community, but on the journalism side, and I haven't done that in a decade. Indie dev could fit, except that I haven't published yet and I feel self-conscious about that.
I'm not going to #GDC, but one of my secret fears is that nobody would want to hang out with me, because why would they?
I know friendship isn't supposed to be transactional, but I also feel like I'm in the liminal gamedev space and unsure which cadre I claim membership in. Old timers?
My bad idea du jour is that games should be intentionally janky. And then you give players the option to make it less janky as a power tradeoff.
Is it bad that I want this to happen so I can watch it burn to the ground? 🔥
