I’m looking for beta testers for my short game. I estimate that it’s only about 15 minutes long, so it won’t take too long. I don’t want you to try everything possible to break the game, just play through it normally and tell me if you find any major bugs, puzzles that you get stuck on for too long or any other frustrations you have while playing it.
Note this will disqualify you from judging my game in the IF comp 2012, and you’ll need to provide me your real name so I can inform the comp to prevent any conflicts of interest.
Note for clarification: Beta testing a game only prevents you from submitting a score for that particular game; it doesn’t disqualify you from judging the whole competition.
Also, I doubt that the comp organizer cares to check off people’s names to see who is judging which games, and besides, the IFcomp site doesn’t require a real name, so your requirement only stops honest people who would rather not give out their real name, and an honest person isn’t going to cheat in the first place.
That said, I’m happy to test your game, and I’ll PM you my email address.
I put that bit in there about real names because I noticed that in previous competitions, some judges have refused to judge games that did not supply a named list of beta testers.
I’m pretty sure that named list of beta testers just means a list of beta testers with names, either real or non-real (I know a number of people who prefer to not use their real name for various reasons). The “named list” thing just means something that says something like “Thanks to Kevin Jackson-Mead, Frodo, and Mr. Wendal for beta testing” rather than “Thanks to my beta testers”.
Agreed with Kevin; what people care about is that the game has been beta-tested at all, not that they know the testers’ names. For instance, the original IFComp version of “Cold Iron” contained these credits:
and I don’t think anyone refused to play it for that reason.