I'm just curious about the whole Playtesting process.
How did you become a playtester? How are you contacted by a gaming company to come in and try a new product? What do you do once you're there?
I figure these are just general questions that could be answered without asking you specifically about Armada, which I know you probably have a Non-disclosure clause.
Are you not even allowed to reveal if you are a playtester?
While I do not, nor have I ever play tested for FFG or AMG, I did do a lot for another company that is no longer around. We went in to their offices every saturday and chose one of the games in dev and played several hours using latest set of changes and reported back results and thought as well as suggestions. Sometimes thing went really well, other times... let's just say we got to see something very different the next week. We were not allowed to disclose what we were doing at that time and you had to be invited in by one of the chosen few. After 8 hours of solid testing, we would take a dinner break then come back for a HUGE mini game. Era and scale always differed but the game table was about 4'x30' with rough 8-10 people per side. The game might have been one of their in dev or just something everyone wanted to play. Full terrain and hundreds or thousands of minis depending on the actual game. Miss those days. Pretty certain most other companies have something similar in their offices. Last note, not everything we worked on made it to production. Somethings were just inherently broken while others just did not really do anything to add to the game and they got scrapped. A few thongs were designed to only be a testing product so special rules could be better tested, think SUPER ssd. Silly and absurd but allowed for finding odd edge case rule issues. Not directly related to the op questions but general insight into the industry.
Cool. Thanks everyone!
How did you become a playtester? I was invited by a playtest leader that was forming a playtest group. How are you contacted by a gaming company to come in and try a new product? There are groups not located where the game company is based that participate. You're given instructions on how to test the product. What do you do once you're there?
Assuming you don't travel to the game company's location, you have a set timeframe and schedule to play games with your group. You playtest the games in secret in private homes and are absolutely not allowed to play outside of private homes or to show any information to anybody else not also bound by an NDA. Yes, this includes wifes, friends, etc. Anybody that walks in with no NDA is a fun game of "throw a blanket over everything". Your group submits reports and feedback about the experience of what you play test. Rise and repeat for the entire testing period.
Are you not even allowed to reveal if you are a playtester? You can reveal that you are a playtester, and thats about it.
I was a tester for wave 9 and *believe* at least some of these questions can be answered to a limited extent.
How did you become a playtester? How are you contacted by a gaming company to come in and try a new product?
I was not directly contacted by FFG at first, but would imagine that had to occur for someone.
What do you do once you're there?
No comment.
Are you not even allowed to reveal if you are a playtester?
You can say you have tested already released content (like I just did; the tester's name is in the credits anyway.)
Yes they are. We know of a bunch of playtesters in the community, some of them are on this forum. I know they have been asked questions similar to the above in the past, I think most are somewhat NDA-related despite their generality, but I think eventually a playtester will swing by to at the very least say that nothing can be said.
Arent the playtesters named somewhere on each new wave? Like the rule booklet or packing or so?