You're developing a new game. How do you ensure beta tester feedback stays true to your vision?

Seriously? There’s no situation where influencing test participants is something any developer looking to improve their game should be consciously engaged in, let alone seeking advice to achieve. Now I’m really curious about the origin of these questions. I’m going to guess unchecked AI spew. I get that LinkedIn is trying to foster engagement and knowledge sharing, but damn, leave the trolls under the bridge.

This is a typically bad take from an LLM. The goal is entirely broken. Beta testers are not going to give you feedback that 'stays true to your vision', and what's more, you don't want them to. You want beta testers to tell you what they think, not what you think or what you want to hear.

You shouldn't choose beta testers that are following your vision, instead, you should select an audience that is targeted based on the genre and the intensity of the gameplay. Example: If you build a hardcore PvP shooter targeted at younger, male Call-of-Duty-Players, choosing older female merge game fans as beta testers doesn't make sense. Services like Playtestcloud or similar services could be the better option to start with and later provide the right marketing materials before asking for Beta participation.

The gaming world is brutal. If there are flaws in your game, you can be sure that beta testers will spot them immediately and they will miss the areas where you actually need feedback. To get the most valuable insights, it’s crucial to choose your beta testers carefully. If you're developing an ARPG, for example, feedback from Action-Adventure players won't be as relevant or helpful.

I agree that this question needs to be revised. Feedback lets the team know whether the game's state is hitting the mark. The goal is not to implement measures to ensure that testers say what we want them to say. It's also worth mentioning that if feedback indicates that the vision has yet to be realized at the beta phase, something needs to be fixed with the game's development, like a three-alarm fire situation.

In game development, a group of diverse testers appeals more to me. I also make sure to include a mix of ages, genders, and ethnicities in my pool. I also have specialists who exhibit different play styles and skills, ranging from intensely aggressive, defensive strategists, detail- and boundary-testing people. Such groupings are picked from friends, close family, and even developed from local gaming shops and the online gaming community. This type of connectivity is extremely important for the creation of good testers.

I prefer a very diverse set of testers, in the following areas: 1 - Gaming interest: I always include casual game players along with “hardcore gamers.” 2 - Overall demographics: In terms of age, gender, race/ethnicity, and so on. 3 - Specialists: I have a tester I always use because I know she has a very aggressive play style…and another because he is a very defensive strategist. I have a tester who is a lawyer and who is very detail oriented…she asks hard questions and notices every flaw. And I have a tester who always tries to get around the rules, pushing as they’ll go. These come from friends, family, local games stores, and the online gaming community. If you want good testers, you need these kinds of connections.

You should aim for a broad range of players who have interest in the genre or games similar to yours. Knowing that genre and competative space should be something you look at at the beginning of your game dev not all the way at the end when you're in beta testing. You are building a game for players, ideally to sell. Not just for yourself.

If your group of testers is too diverse, you won't get much productive feedback. A person who doesn't like the genre you are making them playtest, won't have productive feedback for you. Pick your testers correctly.

Imagine you're developing a complex strategy game with deep mechanics. Having a passionate fan of casual puzzle games test it wouldn't be ideal. They might miss the intricacies you're aiming for and get frustrated. So Identify your core audience, Recruit testers with experience in the genre you're creating and Look for people who are genuinely excited in different age groups and genders and other possible variant of testers.

There are three key aspects to evaluate: 1. Gameplay mechanics 2. Story elements 3. User interface For each of these aspects, provide clear questions or guidelines to testers to direct their feedback effectively. This structure ensures that the feedback aligns with your vision and helps you focus on areas that matter most for improvement.

You can't, experiences are unique to the tester and his own vision and understanding of the game. If the feedback is not what you expected, that is an indicator of a misled on the direction you are going.

Listen and don’t listen to feedback. This is one of the design paradoxes. Elicit feedback from the player but don't respond to everything? Like the story of the 3M Post-it? notes; would sticky notes ever exist if they did a market survey to ask people if they liked a note pad with a glue that was not that good? However, pay attention to complexity factors of the game. How easily is the game understood? Did any rule confuse the players? Was the flow smooth enough? What you are looking for is user experience. Someone who is not familiar with game design can introduce ideas that will conflict with your intended lesson plan. Here is the part where you should choose what to listen to.

A feedback framework provides a structured way to collect clear and actionable information. You can, 1. Create a multiple-choice survey with sections for different aspects of the game (combat, story, visuals, etc.). 2. Offer answer choices with clear scales (e.g., "Very Easy" to "Very Difficult" for difficulty) and open-ended sections for additional comments. 3. Implement buttons within the game itself where testers can provide quick ratings or choose from pre-defined feedback options. 4. Create online forums where testers can discuss their experiences, share screenshots/videos of bugs, and elaborate on written feedback. This structured approach helps you gather quantifiable data.

That's a great approach! Structured feedback is invaluable for maintaining a clear vision. By using targeted surveys and questionnaires, you can effectively gather data aligned with your game's core concepts.

Games can be a tricky sample, often testers are driven by personal likings and emotions, that is why to ask them why or what would the change is a really difficult thing to do, instead you can establish some points of interest that are the main focus of the game, that every tester will cross path and evaluate does interactions and how they react to it.

Establishing a constructive dialogue with a tester can be challenging. While knowing all of your testers may be impossible, establishing a rapport with some of them is useful. This can be done through a series of emails, each asking them to elaborate or clarify. Eventually you get a feel for what the results really are. This takes time and effort. Another way is to have a small set of testers engage in conversations with each other. Assuming they know each other, they already know how to talk to each other. By guiding a discussion between them and listening to them tell each other what their testing has revealed, you can sometimes get a better description of results faster. This requires direction and moderation to remain constructive.

One thing I found interesting and at times priceless. Is the emotional response between a dev and players through dialog via a forum, sub Reddit, discord, or even via an AMA. The back and forth of the developers and players fosters a healthy level of trust , respect, and a clear understanding of the intent behind the game, feature , test or activity being talked about. With proper communication, training, and coaching most development teams can be active members of the community. The help of the community management team is crucial to ensure that these interactions happen frequently and respectful for the organization that the devs work for and for the players, always respectful with their emotions.

Constructive dialogue is key to truly understanding your testers' perspective and using it to refine your game. For example if a tester complains the game's tutorial is confusing. Don't just take it at face value. Engage in conversation. Ask them: "Which specific part of the tutorial was unclear? What information do you think was missing?" This helps you identify the root cause of the confusion and allows for targeted improvements.

Let players know that you’re committed to improving the product and value their opinions. Keep surveys concise—focus on essential questions rather than lengthy ones across multiple pages. Share changelogs based on beta testing results (it’s reassuring to know you’ve been heard). Identify barriers to feedback (like inconvenient surveys) and provide alternative channels (social media or email). Consider thanking beta testers with in-game rewards (unique hats or badges). Avoid arguing with negative opinions; those critics might regret not contributing to product improvement later. Think about the negative context, if it’s not there, only "a game is trash" then this feedback can’t help you.

What players actually want and are willing to play is actually more important than your vision. Players usually can't explicitly tell you what changes to make to your game but you should be seriously listening to their collective feedback. The game is for players who will buy it. Not just for you.

It's okay to say "no" to some suggestions if they deviate from your core gameplay idea. So when you get feedbacks from your testers, consider the reasons behind the feedback. Are many testers struggling, or is it just a few? Does the change truly improve the game, or would it remove a sense of accomplishment from overcoming the challenge? So focus on changes that improve the overall experience without sacrificing what makes your game unique.

It's extremely important to align your player goals with your business model. In other words, it's of no use to have a game that attracts large numbers of players but only for a few days if your revenue model depends on long-term engagement or repeated purchases. Like fast food vs. fine dining, you can't have it both ways. While both kind of restaurants have some customer overlap, everything fast food does is meant to attract their customer. Be that way. If your money is going to come from long term engagement, years of live ops, etc, write for those people. If you are a quick income short term game, don't waste time on "end game" players that won't be there.

When we have tested games in the past the feedback can get cumbersome. Structure and process is important to filtering through the feedback, weighing it for the impact against your objectives. If the responses are critically overwhelming based on the total feedback that the community is submitting then it’s a good idea to prioritize based on severity. There should be a production team and leadership involved and informed because feedback takes time to iterate on and implement changes to retest. Without a solid roadmap and testing process the balance of feedback that gets actioned against will cause all sorts of problems including delays and a muddled experience for the players. Communication to the players is key here with every change.

We look at feedback to identify things that are outside of our control. Such as, the themes of DLC that people are most interested in, or the issues that bother them in an existing core loop. The advantage is that you can agree that X is an issue even when you have people arguing for A, B and C as solutions, that may contradict each other – still, everyone agrees that X is not optimal, so you have a good idea of where to dig.

Use services like Keymailer for testing. You spend a little money to motivate dozens of small streamers to play your game before release. They don't have an audience, so you won't spoil the game for the main audience (unless you're doing a AAA title that everyone is waiting for). And you will get excellent playthrough feedback this way

Iterative testing is the most efficient in the alpha stage. You can get a bunch of trusted people to test out the alpha stages of your game and get their review on all the mechanics. It's important to involve other people in the prototyping phase of your game since their feedback can help fine-tune your gameplay elements and they can even suggest new ideas based on their gaming experience. As a non-developer entity, they look at the game without knowing any internal development details, so they will always give suggestions that 'feel' good to them. That's why taking feedback in alpha stages and performing iterative adjustments can help your game become really polished from the start.

Interactive testing can be a powerful tool to validate mechanics and ideas. Players will stay "true to your vision" by playing the game and performing, or not performing, as expected in specific features. Often, this doesn't require direct communication or feedback, but rather observing the gameplay. This scenario allows you to see what was supposed to happen versus what actually happens. From this point forward, you can gather valuable feedback and make adjustments. Staying true to your vision often means adapting it based on what players reveal while playing the game.

Conduct multiple rounds of testing, incorporating feedback and refining the game gradually. This iterative process allows you to test new features, gather additional feedback, and fine-tune your game based on real player experiences. Each round brings you closer to a final product that stays true to your vision while addressing player concerns and any other issues

We invented the RITE Method when making Age of Empires II by changing a game usability testing fundamental: What if the goal was to have testers understand the experience rather than record the number of times they failed? By having key decisionmakers (UIUX, Design, Test) in the observation together we could selectively iterate on key elements (instruction, reinforcement, challenge, etc) between tests with the goal of improving metrics for the next test cycle. Combining usability testing's structure with collaborative XFN design and rapid iteration helped make the game playable by a much wider audience than just core gamers.