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[Fenrir]

I would like it known that my post was typed with the supposition that he was actually testing a game, not merely playing the beta version of a game. If such was a reason to give compensation, Mr. Adams has many checks to send.

[quinnr]

And to legitimately answer your question: No. A real game tester spends hours doing repetitive tasks. If you start spending 8 hours a day, doing everything in the game over and over slightly different ways in the search of bugs, then you can ask for compensation. Casually beta testing it, though? No.

Not necessarily at the repetitive part, I know I was paid $80 to be a part of a 'Focus Group' for one day..I had to play the game FOREVERS for a week, and then talk about it for an hour. I was...13 at the time, and one of my church friends was there when I showed up too, so it was pretty fun. And I got to play a -decent- game (It was Disney's Pirates Online) before it required money to do anything.

But yes, the typical person that tests games as a job does completely annoying repetitive things to find bugs...and beta-testing a game that is available free to do so is not doing their work for free. Rather, it's giving them feedback on how to improve it for a final audience. It's not like your spending your entire time looking for bugs is it? No, you're playing the game for entertainment. There's a large difference. 

[Fayrik]

I've got some very strong opinions on this matter.
For starters, yes you are doing work for them - for indie developers who do not charge this is a null point anyway. But it's still work regardless.
But for larger companies, I feel this has actually started to detract from the quality of games.
Public Betas do not cover anywhere near as much ground as a proper, thorough beta stage. But companies chose it anyway, because it promotes the game, gives the "beta testers" a better epeen, and doesn't cost them a penny. Or makes them a ridiculous amount of money for basically just being able to say "The game might break at any point, but it's not our fault if it does" ala Minecraft.

I just dread the upcoming beta phase of the indie project I'm working on. The founder wants us to go public as soon as possible, but I really think we could do with some time in a closed, controled play testing stage.

[JoshuaFH]

I've only read about 1/3 of the thread, but this is how I understand it:

It all comes down to whether you payed for the game first.

If it's a freeware game in development, and you point out a bug, you're owed a 'Thank You'.

If it was a game you payed for beforehand, and you point out a bug, you're owed an apology.

[Felius]

I've got some very strong opinions on this matter.
For starters, yes you are doing work for them - for indie developers who do not charge this is a null point anyway. But it's still work regardless.
But for larger companies, I feel this has actually started to detract from the quality of games.
Public Betas do not cover anywhere near as much ground as a proper, thorough beta stage. But companies chose it anyway, because it promotes the game, gives the "beta testers" a better epeen, and doesn't cost them a penny. Or makes them a ridiculous amount of money for basically just being able to say "The game might break at any point, but it's not our fault if it does" ala Minecraft.

I just dread the upcoming beta phase of the indie project I'm working on. The founder wants us to go public as soon as possible, but I really think we could do with some time in a closed, controled play testing stage.

This problem only happens when a developer only have one or the other. The "correct" way would be to do a closed test first, then when it's mostly polished and stable, do a public beta. Indier games could, of course, do with a public development cycle, although some intern testing is nice before doing the actual release, at least to catch the worst of the bugs and CtDs.

[Sowelu]

Online games absolutely require a (semi)-open beta.  Otherwise, they get hammered by load issues, because while yeah you can test a lot of scenarios with a lot of simulated players, you can never get the simulation quite perfect.

[olemars]

Anecdote: I was a volunteer tester for eve-online and actually got somewhat compensated, although probably not much compared to the hours I put into it. In return for general testing, deleting bug reports from the rabble (i.e. players), verifying fixes from the devs and some other menial tasks, we received the release package (when they got around to actually releasing the game), a free account on the main server, various merchandise, a vague sense of superiority over regular players, debug command access on the test servers, a private test server, chatting with the devs on IRC as much as we wanted (icelanders are funny when drunk), and in some cases a framed piece of concept art (mine looks like an early version of sansha drones).

CCP had a pretty small staff during the main development phase, and the QA department was particularly limited, so recruiting volunteers was the only way they could manage with the workload at the time. Some of the volunteers eventually got hired full time, I know of at least two that are still on the programming staff.

[Moron]

I agree with those who say that playing a beta version of a game for enjoyment is not the same as actually beta testing.

AFAIK, a good example of this was the release of the Paradox game Hearts of Iron III. They got fans and forum members to volunteer to beta test the game, but it turned out that most of them just wanted to play the game before its official release and weren't interested in proper testing and searching for bugs. The result was that on release, the game had many bugs and many players were disappointed with it.

Note: I don't have incontrovertible evidence that the above is actually true, as all the beta testing volunteers had signed NDAs and so couldn't actually reveal details of what they were doing. It's just hearsay based on what I read on the forums.

[Shades]

Based on my own experiences at my previous job people who get to play the game for free are very poor at actually finding bugs. We had to get our in house testing team (who were of course paid) to reproduce what testers had thought they had found, and more often than not it wasn't a bug as such but something we had poorly explained. Although this was useful it was certainly not cost-effective, just having people around to answer on forums and sort out install/setup issues cost more than the amount of testing was worth.

However the data collected on how people got stumped by the UI and the load they placed on our servers was very useful, and the main reason I'd recommend open betas to companies making games. Also the hype generated by those that liked it making youtube videos of there play can't have hurt.

Although it's true most players just want to play and not really find bugs I found that if I asked on the forum for people to test a certain area a lot of them would respond, so the fault is generally a lack of direction than a fault with the free testers.

[Beeskee]

Penny Arcade did a comic about game testing...


Should professional game testers be paid? Absolutely. It's a job. People get paid for jobs.


Should casual alpha/beta testers receive something nice for their efforts, above and beyond getting to play a demo of the game before release? Sure, it improves the company's relations with their potential customers and expands awareness of the game, serving as free advertising.


Should the two of those things be confused? Absolutely not. There's a big difference between casually playing a game in whatever way you want and maybe filling out bug reports if you feel like it, and being a professional tester who has to fill out detailed reports and test specific things the company wants checked out in a game they probably don't care about.


Yes, I've done casual testing, and I try to be professional about it, giving as much info about the bugs that I encounter as possible, but I don't think it compares in any way to actual game testers and the upper levels of hell that they go through.

[sneakey pete]

A small developer recently said something along the lines of "short of a server stress test, a public beta is just advertising". Can't say i disagree.

though i'd put games like Minecraft, KSP and DF in a different barrel of fish to that all anyway.

[Max White]

That sounds like programmer talk to me and small developers are often programmers that play games, not trained games developers.
Public beta provides a lot more than advertisement and load testing. They have for race/class/ability/whatever balancing, as well as understanding what the target market likes or dislikes, and maybe even redefine the target market. They help the developers mass test a thousand different play styles, then watch evolution in action to single out any action, intended or unintended, that is over or under powered. It also helps get feedback on artistic direction, because players will comment about the graphics or the music, and what parts they like or dislike.

What your small developer meant is that beyond testing server capacity, it is useless to programmers, but priceless to developers.

[Shades]

That sounds like programmer talk to me and small developers are often programmers that play games, not trained games developers.
Public beta provides a lot more than advertisement and load testing. They have for race/class/ability/whatever balancing, as well as understanding what the target market likes or dislikes, and maybe even redefine the target market. They help the developers mass test a thousand different play styles, then watch evolution in action to single out any action, intended or unintended, that is over or under powered. It also helps get feedback on artistic direction, because players will comment about the graphics or the music, and what parts they like or dislike.

What your small developer meant is that beyond testing server capacity, it is useless to programmers, but priceless to developers.

You'd be amazed how much feed back about 'nerf this' from a beta test group is all but ignored by designers in a game company. Although to be fair unless the test group is very large the balancing data tends to not be that useful (unless something is obviously overpowered) which is why this tends to happen in patches after the game is released.

In fact you'd probably be horrified how little is allowed to be changed between beta and release purely due to legal issues and the length of a QA process in a big game development company. (Not that we didn't sneak changes through, but some things just need to be fixed (and if we modify the code there is very little the average manager or legal bod can do to remove that code )

Professional game testers of course are a different kettle of fish, and should be respected for the amount of pain people like me put them through demanding they test obscure problems a few billion times until they can provide me with detailed reproduction steps (it's very hard to fix an issue, or rather be able to prove you fixed an issue, that you can't get with reasonably reliably). It's not a well paid job, and will kill your love for the game your testing but it's very important imo.

[Tilla]

I've worked at Electronic Arts for 6 months on a QA contract. Studio testing is NOTHING like beta testing something pre-release. You have to follow strict guidelines and generally have a huge list of tasks to complete. You generally aren't having fun at all when you're doing real testing.

[Flying Dice]

Also, I would never hire someone who can't fill out a real bug report or spend hours looking into a tough issue.  No obligations = no pay, it's that simple.

This. Most people who play beta and alpha versions, at least for big-name games, aren't going to give detailed feedback on issues that come up, beyond bitching about "X did Y u ned fix it nao". At most, public beta testers will give leads for the people who actually debug the game to follow.