hmmm most interesting part is on t he bottom ;)
so what games are you beta-testing?
I know how painfull is playing a messed up game (there are some in my steam lib, games that crash with "no reason" every 10 minutes/ every save ...) so playing a game which have high probability of being messed up even more, may really hurt your mind ;P
about the main topic, same case, different position
I am the winner of a broken gift, guy switched key, but both of them were used - sh1t happens
we are canceling GA today
the GA creator was good enough to give me something else in return, but even without this other gift, I see no reason to not cancel it
I can have the same situation as a giver and I hope to meet someone who can understand this situation, when it happens ... hopefully never.
P.S.
I am a programmer (not a game programmer), I know what it means fighting with BUGZ in the nest, you have built :(
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First question and NDA strike at full force. I will be allowed to mention titles when games will be relased. Not only games but DLCs and patches to. I can say that company test games for multiple devices, not only ones that are dedicated for games.
It's not even about playing a messed up game. It can be worse. Imagine playing Half Life 2 as a tester. Enemies are non existent because you have to check how map works. Now roam on them for week (or even longer), 8 hours a day, and check shadows, lights, all the fun stuff. You will probably have a checklist. How long - depends on game, developers, etc. "Confirm that the user is able to jump on boxes" - PASS, "Confirm that user can see sky while looking through windows in ceiling" - PASS. "Confirm that player can see his shadow all the time" - PA... Oh damn, I can't see my shadow in that corridor, let's write a bug.
It depends on a stage of production but you can even test a game that is in very early alpha. Like, you don't have any game in the game - you have to check that menu works and that WASD controls are working.
Fun thighs start when you will find a bug. You can't create a raport and move on. You have to reproduce it, few times at least, describe it with details, create "Steps to reproduce" so devs will be able to find it, in most cases you will have to create a video of it. You don't know how to reproduce it? Congrats, now you know what you will be doing for next few hours.
You have to be really picky and report almost everything that might be considered an issue. Credits are scrolling to fast? Watch them. Watch them few times, write a bug. Company logo is too small? Report. There is an redundant space betwen word and coma? Report it.
You know, I'm not saying it's bad. I enjoy my work. I'm still too fresh to be able to tell more about it, I only tasted a small piece of that cake. Also, there are many, many more things that might be annoying but I can't talk about them. Only thing that really sucks is when you see a comment from developer that say "Won't fix" or "As designed". Company that hired me is known for its quality and I will report every single stupid little thing like a bush deep in the woods that have a wrong colour but when I report something that I, as a gamer, would consider a real bug it's not cool to see one of dev's comments mentioned above (especially when I have spend few hours working on it).
Other things worth mentioning: regression - dev claim fix on some bug and you have to go back there to see if it was actually fixed. Surprises and amazing ideas - game is working fine but devs decided that it will be better if gamer will be able to connect his game profile with FB. Game becomes unplayable, crashes every few seconds. Why? Who knows.
Last but not least - do a playthrough. Cool. It would be nicer to be able to move progress through builds because playing same mandatory tutorial everyday third week in a row is little boring but who cares? Not devs, obviously. Oh you want a debug to progress faster? Lol, nope.
But seriosuly now - it all depends on project. I listed a bad things, I kinda overreacted to show that it's not so cool as people might think. Still cool things also happend. For example I have reported a bug that was more like a suggestion and in latest build I saw that it was changed. You know, it feels amazing to know that game, that will be realsed on whole world, will have a function that was created thanks to me. Not my team. Me. Sure, people won't know about that but I will and it feels great. Also it feels really nice when our lead tell us that devs said that we did a great work and they really appreciate our work. That don't happend too often.
Also, there is a chance for working on unrelased devices to check start-up games. Imagine playing a game on a console that will be relased in few months*. I mean, how cool is that, right? :D
*Actually we don't have anything like that, but in few years when nexter (lol) generation will be announced - who knows ;)
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ok, let's start with the end (read it at the end, so I remember it better, it's easier to answer ;P)
it's obvious that game dev companies have access to prereleased devices (especially consoles, but also GPUs, CPUs), because it's hard to start selling new PS10, XBox7 etc without ... new games that will run on it. I know that those devices are usually compatible with their older models, but ... those games will not show full potential of that device, so whole fan-made advertising on youtube, fb etc. will say ... boring, same as previous but costs more money ... well, depends if the fan is not a fanatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90r1YCO2WB0
about the rest of your "article" ;) I know how it looks from the inside, even if I wasn't a beta-(or like you say, alpha-)tester of a game
wait wait, I was one, about 13-15 years ago, I signed for betatesting of a game, installed it, it was shit, abandoned :P I was too young to understand the whole testing stuff, now I don't even remember it's title
now I know how it works, because like I wrote, I am dev, that actually has to test my own apps
it is good that at least you have your checklist ;P sometimes I don't even know what I should look for
anyway, good article for all those guys, that think, that by signing for beta-tests, they will be able to play finished games before they are released (partially true), and maybe they will be able to tell everyone, that they are playing GTAVI before it was anounced ;P
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Well, it might by alpha, beta or pre-relase testing :P I was participating in few beta programs myslef in past and honestly, this beta games that are relased for people are far more finished then most projects in my company :P
BTW, I don;t know about beta programs for gamers but for example I can't say that I play xxx before it will be announced. I will be able to say that after premiere :P
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well, it was "working", so probably it wasn't marked as alpha
it was basically some online ccg like game
i had weak internet connection at the time so the MP aspect of this game was a bit out of reach for me - I think that it was main reason to abandon it
all ccg I have played later, made me hate that type until I have played game that I would create myself if I was able to - Rise of Mythos, exact type of ccg that I described to my friend, when we tried to play Kongai (Kongregate.com's own ccg)
I signed for a beta testing, knowing nothing about the game ;P kid had no money, just wanted to play a free game ...
I only knew that it will be a polish game, so I will be able to understand it ;)
of course you have to test it at much earlier stage, I can understand that ;)
but I wonder, have you had an occasion to play-test 3D game in it's vertex graphics stage? without any textures ;) or maybe there is always texturing (at least simple) to make it hmmm ... "playable" (not asking about the great journey through the menu ;) but the main part of the final product)
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i once had that for one of my GAs, i got the key donated by a friend but he didn't knew if it was used or not, the winner messaged me (10 days after the ending) and i tried to get a new key from the friend. he had another spare copy and gave it to me and i gave it to him :)
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oooh game testing huh? i thought of getting into that a couple years back, what are you testing atm?
about the GA... i'd have thought it's common sense, if something doesnt work at least try to fix it
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wow... what are the odds >< thats so silly lol
also.. its not even like a somewhat new user
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I know, right? I mean, I wouldn't belive that if it wouldn't happen to me. It's one of things that you shrug off and say "meh, it's near impossible, I will think about it IF it will happend" ;P
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Yup... pretty much what i imagined... although there are a couple thing i did not think of/didnt know. All in all i still think its amazing being involved in the evolution of a game :) thanks for the little insight into your everyday life :P
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"key is not working" ? ... who can't recognize the difference between "key already used" and "you have this game already" messages received from steam when trying to use the key ???
good, that you have checked it ;)
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It happened with me once. The key didn't work out for the first and I just told her that it didn't work.
She was lovely (as always) and sent another key right away...
I really don't get it why people are so affraid to add someone to solve their mutual problems... or even to chat or whatever.
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you can check when the game was added to your account, unfortunetly can't check for other people
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Yeah it's quite annoying when the first sign that a key doesnt work is the winner marking it Not Received.
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They just have to type in the giveaway "I already won the game, please re-roll." It takes less than 10 seconds to type that. It's not like they have to hunt you down on steam or something. I have no idea what they were thinking.
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He won the same game twice.. he should have contacted you about that too.. That's 2 strikes already in my book.
Did the same exact thing for Contagion too.. won the same game twice and marked second as not received. For someone who's been here for 2 years and who gave away more than he received you'd expect more common sense.
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I feel your pain. There was the time when I thought that the more level requirement is set for a giveaway, the less unfortunate accidents it may cause. Though I fail to see how it is not calling out. We all can see the guy who marked one of your giveaways 'not received' and you say he's got the game after all. Wouldn't it be more appropriate just to remind people about contacting ga creators if something went wrong?
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Game testing isn't really fun. Even if it doesn't crash, it's playing pre-alpha or even worse stages all day and writing assloads of reports on what is working and what isn't. Replaying the same small level or portion of a level hundreds or more times to see if the balance or the mechanics or the scripts are working in every situation.
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Depends on the type of office job you are doing. Testing is mostly paperwork too: document what works, what isn't, what exploits/bugs you saw, what happened exactly, and if you are unlucky, you also have to dig around under the hood to file a proper report. On top of that, it can be super repetitive, re-watching the same sequence over and over to test every scenario.
Sometimes it may be fun, especially in late stages when it is mostly balance work and glitchhunting, but nowadays it is done by "closed betas", leaving the horrible part only to the testers.
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For them game reviews can be a more rewarding one, although it has disadvantages too: if you get a terrible game to review, you still need to play through the entire thing, no matter how buggy or bad it is, then write a coherent article on it. And if it is a larger game that needs an entire page, sometimes it's difficult to even get that many words out.
And if it is supposed to be one of the main page titles that month, you then need to somehow twist its badness to something above 75%… This is why you can see many gaming magazines literally spend 2-3 columns on graphics alone on many corridor shooters, to avoid talking about actual gameplay as much as possible without alerting the reader that you are not reviewing a graphics engine tech demo but something that is sold as a video game.
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To be honest. I never considered being game tester as cool or fun in any way. It always sounded brutally tedious to me for many reasons. You have to play anything they tell you to play. You have to continue even if you don't like it. You are not playing for fun but rather analyzing the game and breaking it down to the point where it will definetly feel like work. You probably have to document everything you are doing and finding like a lot of bugs. And in worst case you have to play specific parts of a game over and over and over again.
Combined with my rather picky attitude concerning games that job would tire me out pretty fast O.o
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Well, that is true enough. Sitting on a PC 14+ hours a day writing and correcting the ever same document does wear out as well -_- But I would considered it more horribly if you have to do something tedious associated with something you normally do out of fun. Sometimes those habits can transfer over to your free time.
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EDIT3: Problem was resolved. Live long SG support!
EDIT2: Witness that: User have won my GA for Pressure. He marked it as received, activated it, everything is fine. The same user won my other GA for the same game, and instead of contacting me he marked it as unreceived. WTF?
This is the original post:
Yo!
This is only a friendly reminder. Over a week ago I created few public gibs. Since I had multiple keys for same games (live long Indie Gala HappyHour!) I tried my best to send working keys to winners. Unfortunatelly it looks like I have made one mistake and I have send an used key to one of my winners. Sorry about that dude.
So what you should do?
Well, if key isn't working the only logical way to resolve the problem is to contact the creator, right? I did it twice, everything was resolved on good foot, no harm intended.
Wrong.
It's better to wait a week and mark as unreceived.
Like seriously? I have checked my keys, I actually have send a wrong key, my bad. Why not ask about it? Creator won't know she/he made mistake untill winner will say so. I have added winner on steam and hopefully, after I will deliver good key, GA will be marked as received but I kinda can't understand why wouldn't you contact the creator to ask about it.
So, what's the point of this thread?
IF YOUR KEY WON'T WORK, IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, BEFORE MARKING IT AS UNRECEIVED - CONTACT THE CREATOR
No gib this time.
BTW: Working as a game tester isn't as cool as some people might think but so far it's good ;) You can try and ask about something but don't forget that I have signed an NDA so "My lips are sealed".
At least in few topics ;)
And it was EDIT1
Fun fact: Winner already have a game in his library. WTF? I wish we could check WHEN game was added to library. Ticket do support is being created.
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