I'm interested in finding other people working on games/interested in games to both join a playtest for my multiplayer game and/or allow me to playtest theirs and trade feedback.
#Add a #play-testing channel
tiny trout
still frost
Use the Job Board if you want to find individuals to test your games.
Take a look at the #instructions channel for more information on how to use it.
tiny trout
I think this is different, i'm essentially looking for a community of people who are building games that want to playtest eachothers games and give feedback. I don't think that type of person would go to a job board and try to find posts about playtests, because they're not exactly "looking for a job" like that
Do you disagree that this type of person exists / this is a real problem?
still frost
This community is made up of people exactly like yourself. Eager to find help for themselves. A "play testing" channel is likely to simply result in everyone looking for people to join them, than the other way around. Using the Job Board also formalizes the process in some way.
There are other considerations to be made, namely the added difficulty in ensuring that anything shared within the channel is not NDA or even so far as project files being potentially malicious.
tiny trout
If everyone is looking for playtesters, then it feels like there is a lot of immobilized resources. Do you figure everybody wants playtesters but nobody is willing to playtest other's games?
still frost
The whole notion is problematic. Providing little benefit.
still frost
If everyone is looking for playtesters, then it feels like there is a lot of imm...
That is how I foresee it yes.
You find play testers in gaming communities, not game dev communities.
This is not a gaming community.
still frost
Thats not what I said.
tiny trout
I made one post about this in the general chat in Game Dev League, which also doesnt have a channel like this, and multiple people reached out to me FYI
still frost
You are free to make your request in the Server, in the appropriate channels, I just disagree that there is a benefit to adding a #play-testing channel.
tiny trout
you're the boss
game devs all want playtesters but nobody is willing to play anybody elses game
trail adder
pretty much. Not many people view view help communities as transactional, i.e. give and get.
I think it'd be safe to say that most people here come to get their help and that's that, they don't offer their own in return. Not that they need to, nor is there any expectation of that on my end (and i hope no one else's end of course), but the people that give and take are definitely the minority in my experience.
I've always found personally when window shopping for stuff like that, it's always been more effective in traditional sub4sub communities.
Not to mention Matt's point about malware. The "playtest" my game discord scam is ever popular and such a place would be an open invitation, and a lot of moderation burden.
I do kinda wish there was more help4help sort of things, but I with so many people distributing malware through such means, as well as scammers it's sadly something that's understandably a niche.
tiny trout
FWIW I distribute my game to my playtesters through steam, which does provide a certain level of safety, and if this existed I would probably only playtest games that were distributed in that way. As I said there's a proven need here based on my multiple responses at a random time in a random forum channel. Game devs are decidedly willing to do this because it's mutually beneficial and IMO exactly the type of connection an admin running a game dev discord should seek to create. Whether it needs to be policed, like a 'seed' 'leech' style torrent system that ensures fairness or something, i'm not sure, maybe.
trail adder
FWIW I distribute my game to my playtesters through steam, which does provide a ...
I get where you're coming from. And for what it's worth I like the idea of help4help. It's just not that much of a need, at least in this discord.
A channel normally gets made when it's a super popular requested topic. I can count on 1 hand the people that have come into #ue5-general looking for playtesters in the past few months, and if I was a betting man I'd be willing to bet that few of those would offer their testing in return.
I think perhaps this thing works better in tighter knit communities where you see the same faces over and over posting updates of their project, as opposed to a widespread general help forum like this. When you've got some sort of consistent communication and vested interest between each other, I'd say the incentive is stronger.
Again, there is that policing to factor in too. If this was a popular request, you'd have to have people vetting the uploads to ensure that people aren't posting malware. You could say restrict it to itch.io and steam only, but that's less useful for games that haven't been "officially" announced I guess.
I'm also sure a lot of people would game the system and offer their help but ghost after they've got their needs filled. A bit cynical, I know, but hey :P
The other thing to remember is that this isn't exclusively an indie dev, or even game development discord. There's people here just getting help for their AAA day to day work, there's people here that just want career advice, there's people that are doing virtual production, archviz, product renders, animations, movies, etc
Of course this is just all my 2 cents, I find it an interesting discussion to have :P
tiny trout
At the end of the day if you see your community as inherently just a bunch of leeches looking for quick help, then you can't possibly grow it past what it is. Any community, whether its gamedev or not, is the result of the intentional reflection of those organizing it.
trail adder
For what it's worth I am in no moderation capacity, nor is this in any way my community.
But I think it's an unavoidable fact that in large communities many people come to get their help and that's it. Whether they're beginners and aren't comfortable offering their own help, or whether they just don't have the time or interest, it's normal and expected in any help-based community. I wouldn't call anyone a leech, just that people do a normal thing in help communities.
In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a place that doesn't do it. Whether it be crafter servers for MMO's, forums online or places like here
I do get what you're saying though. At least I think.
That nothing can change, or grow if there's no attempt to embrace said change?
still frost
At the end of the day if you see your community as *inherently* just a bunch of ...
Yes, you are right, we as Moderators spend all of our time convincing all 117k+ members of the server to be leeches.
🤦♂️
still frost
1 1 7
tiny trout
you can design the community to be whatever you want it to be. i get that it's not your paid job to run this discord, but there are organized communities of that size around the world that are incentivized to help eachother
still frost
I'm glad they are able to manage it.
trail adder
At such a point though, when does it become easier to just go to a community built around that, or put some general feelers out in the recommended section here, as opposed to trying to implement such change, especially when this is primarily a server dedicated to technical help with the engine.
worldly narwhal
isn't #1054845120236757103 perfect for this request?
also "gamers" normally want to play fun games that are completed, playtesting games isn't always fun especially really early ones
tiny trout
Yeah exactly 🙂
sinful flax
There is kind of a math problem here as well. When the transaction is 1:1, like I play test yours, you play test mine the exchange is mutual.
But let's say you have 50 people, in order for you to get 50 people to play test your game, and you want to maintain that 1:1 exchange, you will need to play test 50 different games.
These types of systems typically work well with low effort, low time commitment tasks, but there is a threshold that the task can reach, that breaks it. Play testing is definitely far beyond that threshold.
That being said, I do hope it works, perhaps you'll figure out how to incentivise it while preventing it from being self cannibalizing, and getting an original core group of people to seed the culture of that imbalanced effort vs output ratio.
It's going to be challenging of course, but it'd be awesome if you pull it off. I really do hope it works out!
tiny trout
50 people play testing your game is kind of a lot. If you want that, you need to create a community around your game or hire playtesters. The shape of this type of play testing is very different, and it doesn’t replace creating a community around your game, playtesting with friends, or playtesting en masse
But it’s also important and powerful. You can playtest 6-12 other people’s games to get a lot of high quality feedback on your game. We as indie devs spend much more time than that to acquire much lower quality playtesters, not to mention being invested in other indie devs games is a high quality and invested connection in and of itself
There’s no reason to try to scale that to 50 in order to make the point that this doesn’t scale
None of us can make it on our own, all of us need this, and all of us already spend a lot of time trying to get this