Ron Gilbert (GrumpyGamer)If you ask 10 game dev friends to play your game's prototype/alpha, 5 Won't even download it, 3 of those who download it will boot it once and say "looks great, I'll try it this weekend" and never do. 2 will give you feedback, only 1 of those will give you useful feedback. Cheer up, It has nothing to do with how good your game is, it's just math.
Jari Komppa 🇫🇮@grumpygamer
todo: get more game dev friends
todo: get more game dev friends
Wolfmic@sol_hsa haha sadly, as a gamedev my self I remember a friend asking me to playlets his game.
this post reminded me I forgot to install it 😔
this post reminded me I forgot to install it 😔
Ric
Emil Oppeln-Bronikowski@grumpygamer same thing with showing your writing.
Exilian@grumpygamer Making a time to sit with them while they're doing it and have them stream it to you is nominally more time consuming but in practice often works much better for alphas than just sending it out: it makes it a more social activity, and also lets you see what they're *not* doing whilst playing.
Simeon Nedkov@grumpygamer “friends”
dasparadoxon@grumpygamer ( well, never show your product to ppl who do the same stuff if you want to avoid that pattern. same in music, writing, etc. )
Hunter Gough 🍦🌹@grumpygamer I got fantastic results from playtesting @MayorMayKnott by scheduling a time for people to play it, and then having them stream it over video chat while they played it. I got tons of great feedback in real time, got to see exactly how people played it, and caught a whole bunch of bugs. I highly recommend it!
George Laskowsky@grumpygamer Sorry to hijack the topic :) I was wondering if you could share some thoughts about new games idea exploration and how this looked like for you currently compared to doing it within bigger teams or companies.
Bernd Kilga@grumpygamer It's a bit reassuring to see that you're having the same problems we all face. Getting proper feedback is really hard.
PS: Congratulations on this one friend. Play his/her alpha as well.
Die4Ever@grumpygamer damn 50% actually download? I need better friends, I think mine are below 10% downloaders
Thorsten 
@grumpygamer let me be the one of three!
Akolade@grumpygamer I promise to play it and provide probably useless feedback
Fulvio@grumpygamer You should refrain from seeking honest feedback from your friends or family - this is known as the 'Mom Test'. The concept runs deeper, though; there exist strategies to solicit genuine opinions from customers, but it is quite a challenging task.
@fulvius This isn’t my first rodeo. I’m not looking for validation feedback. These are designers who opinion I trust and am looking for specific feedback.
@grumpygamer I get what you're saying - while I wasn't referring to your particular situation, I merely wanted to build on your point about testers and feedback. Looking back, I wish I had learnt sooner how to efficiently glean valuable input from users. It could have saved me some time and prevented a couple of business mishaps :)
@fulvius It's a skill you have to learn by making the mistake.
The Slight Misgivings@grumpygamer same is true in music. Don't have enough music friends to make the maths work, so I gotta just ignore it all and assume everything's great.
Farbs@grumpygamer I find you can bolster those numbers by giving super detailed feedback on their games first (if they want it), but it still only bumps you up from 1/10 to 3/10.
ailurux@grumpygamer i'll add to this, don't *just* get feedback from game devs, especially for a puzzle game. i thought i'd made my game too easy only to release it and see most players struggle.
martin@grumpygamer
"alphapartners" might be worth a try. "if you try/feedback mine, I'll try/feedback yours".
"alphapartners" might be worth a try. "if you try/feedback mine, I'll try/feedback yours".
@grumpygamer It reminds me our professor at University who suggested us to hold "play testing" events in café to make people try our games directly.
Additionally, we had to export games on handled devices to let testers be able to try "right away".
We had far better reviews this way than with friends who try to be sometimes too nice on their reviews.
Additionally, we had to export games on handled devices to let testers be able to try "right away".
We had far better reviews this way than with friends who try to be sometimes too nice on their reviews.
Jason Maltzen@grumpygamer TBF, I've seen an IGF submission have judges play for <1 minute total. Was an online game, so we had the stats.
fenomas@grumpygamer I'm in this mode now! My non-gamedev friends install at a somewhat higher rate, but somehow once they're in the game they forget how technology works and start asking things like "what do I do with this button? Click it? With what, my mouse?"
Dr.Hogan | Hammer&Ravens@grumpygamer this is so true it hurts 😂
@grumpygamer for some reason, getting people to test your chocolate out is much easier 🤷♂️
Pedro Medeiros@grumpygamer That's EXACTLY how it is for us too :P
DansNull@saint11 @grumpygamer I know the feeling all too well… then years later you get the “Hey how is that game you made doing? Did it do well? What was it called again?” 🙃
Kale @grumpygamer I always figured it was a 10% rule.
10% of people will click a link.
10% of the people who click the link will download and run the thing.
10% of the people who download the thing will give you feedback.
So 10% of 10% of 10% - or, to put it more bluntly: you want to remove every single point at which someone might 90% out of the process for something you want to do.