@piers if we were to do this now, is there one way you would recommend? Should we make a separate game with Beta in the title and then make a new one when the official version is available or just make one version and update the beta to the official?
What I'd like to see is use of the "Make" category, which would allow users to download beta games that game developers want people to help test. Game devs could have the option to make their builds to either available to everyone, or groups and individuals they've selected (for a private beta).
@iSlandFace what SpoonThumb says is what I've been mulling over for many moons. We'd like to not have beta builds in the store, generally, because it can be confusing for users and if they're not savvy they may think your game stinks (depending on the quality of the build, feature-set, etc.) and once you release your amazing full version you've lost them. In addition to this we'd like to support all devs, but particularly smaller devs, in a way that doesn't put QA testing on others devs (i.e. "calling all devs, please check out my game"). And of course if OUYA did this and it's done right you'll get far more bugs, more important bugs, and bugs that you can read and reproduce. In a nutshell that's the dream.
Back to what Spoons mentioned....say I have a beta tester pool I can pull from and you say "Piers, I need 5 good beta testers". I'll get you 8, just in case 3 are total duds, they'll be granted permission to see your uploaded builds for a particular game in their Make / Builds area. At the end of the beta permission goes away, they're back to regular user, and hopefully inbetween you got all the bugs you could fix and more and your game is much better for it.
Other details like private forums on a per dev basis with the dev, us, and beta testers active in your project(s) in that forum would be part of this, as would a way for bugs to be delivered to you in a meaningful way, and of course a general beta tester forum (still private, but to all BT's, devs, us) with lots of useful FAQ's on quality bug finding/writing, good threads by users to help everyone out, etc.
Finally, and this is an if / per dev basis, if there's a way to reward beta testers who participated and did a great job that would be nice. T-shirt, recognition in your games credits, name a character in the game after a couple of them, who knows. This is a nice loop closer on any beta project, but not a requirement.
SkyVu
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Back to what Spoons mentioned....say I have a beta tester pool I can pull from and you say "Piers, I need 5 good beta testers". I'll get you 8, just in case 3 are total duds, they'll be granted permission to see your uploaded builds for a particular game in their Make / Builds area. At the end of the beta permission goes away, they're back to regular user, and hopefully inbetween you got all the bugs you could fix and more and your game is much better for it.
Other details like private forums on a per dev basis with the dev, us, and beta testers active in your project(s) in that forum would be part of this, as would a way for bugs to be delivered to you in a meaningful way, and of course a general beta tester forum (still private, but to all BT's, devs, us) with lots of useful FAQ's on quality bug finding/writing, good threads by users to help everyone out, etc.
Finally, and this is an if / per dev basis, if there's a way to reward beta testers who participated and did a great job that would be nice. T-shirt, recognition in your games credits, name a character in the game after a couple of them, who knows. This is a nice loop closer on any beta project, but not a requirement.
That's it for now :)