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I wonder if any IF authors have suffered the same experiences as I (and my fellow ADRIFT author Finn Rosenloev) have in my efforts to find beta-testers?

As well as a request on this forum, I have posted a call on the game-testing.org website requesting beta testers for my ADRIFT game "The Fortress of Fear". I have had more than a dozen replies to this call, I receive an email saying "Dear Larry Horsfield, I am interested in playtesting your game. Best regards, etc."

I reply immediately to the email address given for this person, thanking them for offering to playtest my game and I ask them a couple of questions: "Do you have ADRIFT installed on your PC" (I ask this as if they do, I can send them the game as a blorb) and "Have you done any playtesting before?". I then send the email.

What has happened for the last 7 or 8 occurances of the above (I do have two playtesters who replied to the call who have been testing the game for some time, btw) is that I hear absolutely nothing more from them whatsoever, they don't even reply to say "Sorry, I don't think this game is for me." or "I don't have time to playtest" or whatever. My first thought is whether I have offended them somehow in the questions that I have asked? I showed the email I sent them to my wife (a schoolteacher) and she said that she would not be offended by the email.

My next thought is why on earth do these people bother to answer the call and then do not contact me ever again? Why has it happened time and time again, it doesn't make any sense to me. Are they just messing me about for the sake of it? Are they genuine playtesters or just trolls? As I mentioned above, this has also happened to a fellow ADRIFT author and he has sent his game to several "testers" and never heard another word from them.

A fellow drifter on the ADRIFT forum has argued that anyone replying to my call is not obliged to reply or do any playtesting even if I send my game to them, as I am not paying for their services. However, I would have thought that common curtesy comes into play here, surely it is not too much effort to send a quick email explaining why?

I would be very interested to learn if any other IF authors have had similar experiences? Are there any playtesters who would like to comment on this?

Thanks for reading this.

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Available now: "The Fortress of Fear" - Programmed using ADRIFT, over 275 locations and 30+ characters.
W.I.P.: "The Axe of Kolt" - Conversion of the original 4-part Spectrum adventure in one big game.

Well, hmm.

First of all, as you're probably aware, testing can feel like a big commitment -- particularly with a rather large, old-school game.

So, there's always Life Happened, which comes up more often than you'd expect and could just be random bad luck. Likewise, you could have hit on people who haven't done any testing before, try it out, and decide they don't like it.

Testing can suck if you don't develop a good working relationship with the author; I've faded from a few testing projects because I didn't feel valued or listened-to or comfortable, or I didn't trust the author to actually make the necessary improvements. (And if I'm close friends with someone ) But it seems as if you're losing them too early in the process for this to be the reason.

I've also faded from testing projects when the author's been great to work with, but the game itself has been really tough going -- not necessarily terrible, but weary-making, difficult, not as rewarding as it could be. I suspect that this is a fairly common tendency among testers -- games that are already pretty good will have an easier time retaining testers and getting good work out of them. So if you're getting a lot of betatesters dropping out immediately, that might be a sign that your game doesn't have a strong enough opening. (People fire up the game, and play for fifteen minutes; fifteen minutes doesn't really seem like enough to produce a play report, but it's more than enough to guess that playing on is going to be unpleasantly hard work. If you don't really know the author yet, it can be hard to find a diplomatic way to say 'your game is boring me to tears', so it's easier to say nothing.)

And the way it usually goes when I fade from a project: I always mean to get back to working on it. It's just never a good time, but I feel like I really should work on it sometime, and then I realise that it's kind of too late to politely tender my regrets. (Yeah, this is lame. But IF people are geeks, please remember. Our communication skills may not always be the finest.)

Hi maga, thanks for replying. What gets me is that they haven't done any testing, I haven't even sent my game to them, they simply don't reply after I write back the first time. I was a bit annoyed after the first couple of times, but when it has happened several times, one after another, I start to wonder what the hell is going on here?!

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Available now: "The Fortress of Fear" - Programmed using ADRIFT, over 275 locations and 30+ characters.
W.I.P.: "The Axe of Kolt" - Conversion of the original 4-part Spectrum adventure in one big game.

Okay, I've got no idea about that. I suppose that your order of doing things is a bit more fiddly than normal; generally if someone agrees to test and you've got a testable version, the next step is to bung them the game file and whatever instructions the need; if you think that they don't know what an interpreter is or will otherwise need help to get the game running, you include that information when you send them the game.

But that seems like a detail, really; shouldn't be enough to explain the whole thing.

Another thing you could try is approaching specific people and asking them to test or at least give you an opinion, rather than putting out a general call. In my experience, people directly approached that way are more likely to respond in some fashion -- they may say they don't have time, but if they do commit, they're more likely to follow through.

How do you mean, "specific people"? Where do I find these specific people? Do playtesters ever post messages offering their services?

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Available now: "The Fortress of Fear" - Programmed using ADRIFT, over 275 locations and 30+ characters.
W.I.P.: "The Axe of Kolt" - Conversion of the original 4-part Spectrum adventure in one big game.

By "specific people" I'm pretty sure she just means specific people, like a friend of yours, or a dude you know from another community who's interested in IF, or someone who has a reputation for being a good beta-tester, etc., etc. Try to think of people you know that you'd think would be interested in your game and contact them. I've had good results with this in the past.

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Before this I was thinking I would consider it a 6/10, but now? It's a solid 5.

My best guess is that your second question, while not being technically offensive at all, might have had an unexpected intimidating side-effect. People might be understanding that they're expected to be experienced testers or that this is an imperative requisite. If that's not their case, they could feel that their feedback would be less than wellcome and might chose to silently step back.

If you're actually targeting testers with a high level of expertise it would be wise to state it clearly in the first announcement. If not, I would suggest adding a few lines after the question explaining that you will be happy to give some guidance to newbie testers on what kind of feedback you expect. That could help in lowering your exagerated early-dropping rate.

Anyway, this is just my guess. You might be right and they might be just trolls, after all.

I've had your experience in the right opposite proportion. My testing request received four answers (which was four times more than I expected, being a total stranger and newbie here). Only one of them disapeared without saying a word, while the support and encouragement I received from the other three (together with useful, clever feddback, opinions, bug reports, and corrections) was so awesome I could almost describe it as one of the more rewarding experiences I've ever had in my whole internet time (yup, my little wip went into limbo for some star conjunction of sad and wrong reasons, but it will see the light one way or another, as it would be a crime if their time was spent in a never-released thing! )

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English posts in my blog!

Very occasionally play-testers do post advertising their services, though it's not super common.

But yeah, I meant "pick out some people you know and email them." That might be friends of yours, it might be people you've talked to on this forum, people who have reviewed your work in the past, people for whom you have yourself beta-tested previously, whatever.

Once you've written and tested a couple of games, you may find that you have a few repeat testers who are an especially good fit for you: they like to play the kinds of games you like to write, or they're extra-thorough thinking of ways to break your simulation code, or they give thoughtful commentary on your literary themes, or whatever it is you're looking for in testers. Those people are as gold, and you want to do everything you can to make testing for you enjoyable and rewarding so that they'll keep saying yes when you ask.

The game being in ADRIFT is an additional hurdle for testers to overcome, since Inform is more popular--still it's not fatal. I'd think there is a simple illustrated install guide as well with how to take transcripts, etc.--if not, there should be. I know that I had trouble getting ADRIFT running and wasn't used to its quirks when it did start running. The error messages were different, etc.

It's difficult to know what to say when asking for testing. Maybe a few sentences like "This is what the game is about" or "this is what you might not like about the game" beyond the initial description.

Also stuff like "It's ok if you don't have the time or don't like it" is good, as well as "Just let me know what parts flat out aren't fun." I don't know what's in your letter and it's not really any of my business, but a small thing like that can go a long way.

But from your signature, I suspect one problem may be that there is too much to do (275 rooms, 30 characters as in your sig is a lot--as is a potential 4-part game. This may make people wonder if they are obliged to, say, work on part 2-4 after part 1) & people don't know where to start & may get swamped by that many rooms--or feel silly they only got to a few of them! That on top of installing a new app can be tricky.

Now I've had good transcription logs and discussions after telling testers (granted, people I already know) something like: Beyond Room 3 is off limits unless you're really having fun. Just try to get to room 3 for starters and let me know. We can do the rest later. Stop when stuck for 10 minutes because that's valid data on the gameplay, too.

Or: Grammar bugs are good if you see them, but the narrative is still not set. So focus on what's fun or confusing in the big picture and don't worry if you have a lot to say that's subjective. And don't feel guilty hammering on a theme. If I'd have seen it, I'd have fixed it.

Or, and this is as noncommittal as their offer to you: I would be glad to return the testing favor if I have time.

Maybe there should be a general suggested boilerplate for authors seeking testers to use? And they could tweak it as needed? I mean, I've seen basic outlines, and you don't want to sound like a form letter, but...just having it there would help an author know what to expect and what to ask.

Because (and this is a bit off topic) I have to admit, for my first game, I was clueless too. I found cold-calling for testers a little scary, and I feel very fortunate some nice people answered my late beta call before IFComp 2011, but that was probably more generically helping someone in need out.

ETA: misread your sig.