If you email mary AT choiceofgames DOT com, I will see your email and respond to it.
In general, when you report a continuity bug post release, that gets passed to the author. Then it’s up to the author to fix it and drop the files on us. So we (staff) don’t ignore them, but we’re also not the ones to fix them.
Maybe we could spin off the discussion about beta-testing in general into a thread of its own? It seems like there’s some really important things being raised here, that I for one would have missed if someone hadn’t directed me to the thread?
I’m going to strongly suggest that the beta-testers, both past, present, and future are consulted on this. I was so surprised to read [quote=“jasonstevanhill, post:51, topic:22299”]
Right now, we have “Runt of the Litter” up; I’ve had exactly two people sign up for it.
[/quote]
There’s so many people testing games on these forums. If they’re not signing up to test the official games, then it feels like there must be something broken in the process.
I’d really like to see a topic, or some polls, or both, on how to make the beta-testing experience better. And finding out why people aren’t signing up, or aren’t providing the quality of feedback that’s being looked for, and what sort of incentives could be provided to change that.
Well here’s something I’ll offer. @jasonstevanhill has (when recruiting beta testers) specified exactly what email address he wants people to send their participation request to…and many folks do not email the correct email address. If the level of attention to detail is such that you can’t email the right address, it’s hard to say “Sure! You’ll make a good beta tester.”
Well, folks are talking about it here. I’m saying we need to have a staff discussion about it, and that’s not something that can happen this weekend, this exact minute. We’re reading this thread, we’re going to talk about the beta process.
Yes, This isn’t even a thread specifically for discussing beta-testing though. I only knew about this thread because someone specifically messaged me and told me about it.
I think we need a thread specifically dedicated to discussing the beta testing process and acquiring people’s opinions on the subject. I’m not saying everything needs to be implemented, just it should be discussed in the proper thread for it.
I’ll stand by what I said. We’re on a forum where the majority of people are actively testing games. There’s a lot of extremely active WIP threads. But the style of feedback Choice of Games are asking for is completely different from the style of feedback all the WIPs ask for. Email vs Forum is part of it. Some people seem to like the community nature of the WIP threads. The beta-testing as a team communicating with each other and the author.
We’ve got people on this forum with a lot of beta-testing experience. (Not just for CoG but for other companies too.) I think it’s important to listen to them. I think it’s also important to listen to those who’ve tested only one game and then decided not to again. And that it’s important to find out why people aren’t signing up for the beta tests.
There are plenty of people on this forum who’re exceptional testers. Who provide lots of thoughtful, insightful and valuable feedback. There are those who’re good at squishing bugs and whatnot.
I never said that it should happen this minute. I do think it’s important to also include us in part of the discussion though.
Right, sure. We may be talking past each other, though . . . Discussion is what the forum is for–we’re reading these responses, we’re responding to them, we’re having that discussion. I’m literally saying “Jason, Becky, Adam, Rachel, Dan, and I have not gotten on the phone to talk about this yet, but we will.”