Build your beta testers list
4 11 2007One of the biggest advantages of working with a publisher or a big portal is the ability to use their beta test groups. They usually have a lot of people interested to play games and send feedback. What’s more important, those are not random people, but casual players.
You need your own army of beta testers ready to play your games. You need to hear honest answers from people that are not your friends and never played your game. This will let you catch a lot of stuff that is so obvious that you would never think of it ;-)
Start building your list today. It’s easy and once you set up this there’s little for you to do. By the time your game is ready you will have a lot of people ready to test your game.
It doesn’t matter if you use your own custom forms to collect emails or newsletter service provider. You need to make it automatic and collect: first name, email address and operating system (Windows, OSX or Linux). I use ymlp.com and it works great for me.
Setup a page “Become a BETA tester”, put a link to it on your website, give people some incentive (like a free game for valuable feedback or big discount). That’s it. But don’t forget, once your game reaches beta stage mail those people and listen carefully. If you mail them once your game goes gold then it’s too late.
I wish I started building my bete testers list when I started developing games. By now I would have 300 or more emails instead of 42.
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