Shufflecomp deadline is almost here and the testing period is about to start, but where to find testers? Let’s test each others’ games! With maga’s blessing I’m organizing a beta testing ring for authors and people who didn’t participate as authors but are interested in testing.
Here’s how it works: You send me your email address using a Google form (links below). On May 2nd, one day after the comp deadline, I shuffle the testers’ addresses and assign them to the authors. The authors and testers are then mailed each others’ addresses and they continue from there. (That is, authors send their game directly to the testers, not through me.)
There’s a separate form for authors and testers. The author’s form includes signing up as a tester as well. The forms ask how many games you’re prepared to test, so you can participate regardless of how much time you have to donate.
The author’s form asks for the game’s type, parser-based or choice-based. The reason for this is that I’ll assing roughly the same ratio of each type to each tester, so that someone doesn’t end up with 4 parser games and another with 3 choice games. In any case each game will be assigned the same amount of testers, regardless of their type.
Finally, if you have some restrictions about game types (can’t play Windows-only games, for example), you can write that in the form as well.
If you’re in, the deadline is by the end of May 1st. You can sign up later but testers will probably be busy with the games they were assigned to initially.
And yeah, people have pseudonyms… but you’ll see the e-mail addresses, right? I guess I could create yet another e-mail account somewhere and set it up for forwarding… or, hmm, is there perchance a service for that on the internets? Or maybe it doesn’t matter for testing.
Yeah, you can open a throwaway email account somewhere but that’s only if you want to keep full anonymity yourself. As far as the comp rules are concerned it doesn’t matter if the beta testers learn who you are. (At least that’s my interpretation.)
I got the comp deadline wrong: sign up to the testing ring at latest on May 1st, and testers are assigned and mails sent on May 2nd. Original post is edited with fixed dates.
I have now sent all the mails to testing ring participants. If you didn’t receive yours, and the mail is not in the spam folder, send a private message here and we’ll sort it out.
Yeah, just be careful if you do this – if someone tries to send you their game through there rather than just a regular email it may not work, and you’ll need to either use another account or go open an anon yahoo/gmail/etc. account or something to receive the attachments.
I hope it’s ok I’m piggybacking on this thread; didn’t have my turned in game at a state where I wanted it when this went up. I would love to exchange games with a couple of people for beta testing however, so if you’re interested let me know…thanks much.