When/How to expose/release game?

[PompiPompi]

When you make a game, you usually need players to test it and give you feedback.
This is especially true if your game is competitive or player vs player.

However, there are disadvantages(and advantages) to release your game early or expose it to people.

When you do so, you are open to criticism. Also, on most stores/website, the first few days or weeks gets the most attention, if the game didn't get tract in the initial period it might never recover.

There is a very big advantage to releasing a game only when it's finished, because then you get to create the maximum hype and impact.

So how do you get people to test your game and give feedback without throwing off a lot of people from an unfinished game?

[Gimmick]

Closed beta testing, invite a small group of people to play the game as beta testers.

[PompiPompi]

At 11/7/17 08:13 AM, Gimmick wrote: Closed beta testing, invite a small group of people to play the game as beta testers.

Sure, where though?
From my experience people aren't really eager to play games in direct invitation.
If you make it a close beta you will have a hard time finding people to play and give feedback, unless this beta is public and has good exposure.
I think there is no open beta in newgrounds?

[Gimmick]

At 11/7/17 08:41 AM, PompiPompi wrote:

At 11/7/17 08:13 AM, Gimmick wrote: Closed beta testing, invite a small group of people to play the game as beta testers.

Sure, where though?

That's a rather difficult question to answer. I guess you could say that finding people for closed beta also requires hype and marketing, and vice versa. That is, games that have hype building up for them will benefit from closed beta (to build more hype) and those games that have hype will also find a lot of people for beta testing. So finding people for closed beta comes after having interest taken in the game, which would be done via teasers, videos, screenshots etc.
If it's a sufficiently high quality game you could try sending it to livestreamers, they have a pretty good following and it could be mutually beneficial.

As for newgrounds, the facility exists (in the Project Manager) but the audience is not there, just like it's not there anywhere else.

[JimGiant]

At 11/7/17 05:05 AM, PompiPompi wrote: When you make a game, you usually need players to test it and give you feedback.
This is especially true if your game is competitive or player vs player.

However, there are disadvantages(and advantages) to release your game early or expose it to people.

When you do so, you are open to criticism. Also, on most stores/website, the first few days or weeks gets the most attention, if the game didn't get tract in the initial period it might never recover.

There is a very big advantage to releasing a game only when it's finished, because then you get to create the maximum hype and impact.

So how do you get people to test your game and give feedback without throwing off a lot of people from an unfinished game?

I'm only speaking from my experiences here and observations of other people's projects but there is definitely a problem with releasing games too early. If you put it up here and it gets poor ratings in the first few days chances are it will never recover.

You can always release another version as a separate project to mitigate this but this but this can have various pitfalls too especially if player losing their save or you have leaderboards.

I've found player feedback to be incredibly useful here and NG seems absolutely fantastic for getting free game testing. Players aren't always the best people to listen to for solutions but they are great at finding problems.

You have to remember though they are players NOT professional testers and sometimes taking their advice is against your best interest and often you are best sticking to your guns. The most common request I got on Flying Snake for example was more levels. I knew this would result in slower development, more testing, slower build time etc than if I worked on refining a single level to a level I was satisfied and adding more levels at the end. I eventually caved to their demand and I've ended up severely regretting it since.

You can get away with (and probably should have) primative placeholders if you're working with professionals but when you have public access you need a higher quality place holders which can mean more work for you in the long run.

[CaptainJackTHAC0]

I invite literally everyone in the world to test it. A handful show up, send me their feedback, and the games improve. My series stands at over 100k views and counting so this method works for me

[PompiPompi]

At 11/18/17 06:07 PM, KungFuSpaceBarbarian wrote: I invite literally everyone in the world to test it. A handful show up, send me their feedback, and the games improve. My series stands at over 100k views and counting so this method works for me

Thanks everyone.
Yea, the issue is with 1 vs 1 games, as balancing is a lot harder to do with two equivalent foes, then games like Golden
Axe where it's 1 or 2 characters vs many weaker characters.
But your approach seem to be right. Eventhough I would prefer one really good dedicated tester over many who just pop up once in a while.
But I think I got more hopeful. When I don't have testers I need to think hard how to improve the gameplay on my own, and when I think of something, it's an AH HA moment.
I still need testers, but I think if I gradually build it up and improve even when not having testers, eventually I will have many more testers. I think.

[MSGhero]

I can't remember which indie with a popular game said it, but they said that they weren't going to start promoting the game until about 70% completion. In your case and in general, that seems like a good balance.

Edit: on the other hand, early access is different, but it doesn't seem like you're focusing on that.