Recently with my game(s), I wanted to do a non-biased user testing to get feedback on how the game mechanics were. I looked at multiple options from usertesting.com to playtestcloud. Below is a short excerpt of how I ended up getting players to test my game while trying to stay in my budget.
TL;DR
If you want gist of the article, I ended up using reddit community along with google forms and got amazing response. I did pay players to play test. It ended up around $150 for total of 15 users.
Game
My game was a mobile android game. I also had iOS version, but found it much easier to test android game. iOS has too many hoops for setting up play test.
Requirements
The game play time was anywhere from 7–10 minutes depending on how much the players liked the game. The demographic age was 18–34. I did not have any gender requirements since I wanted to capture information on broad audience. I needed at least 15 users to test out the game.
A word on existing tools
I researched usertesting.com, playtestcloud, antidote ux etc. I dropped usertesting.com since the process required “Request a trial”. From my experience, anytime you have to submit your email address for sales team for “demo”, the tools usually ends up being pretty expensive.
Playtest cloud had two free video tokens but every other token was $99. I knew this would not work after two video tokens. On a side note, I also found a reddit post for playtestcloud where they pay $9 for each play test to testers. While the post is old and the payout might change, I was surprised they pay the $9 and charge 10X. It is probably because their platform allows voice and game recording, surveys etc, but the cost and payout did not justify to me.
Antidote UX was a bit cheaper (~$50) for each user. Have not tried them since it was also out of my budget.
After I saw the post for playtestcloud, I decided to do the same and pay each user $10 on r/slavelabour. I told users that I would pay them via amazon gift card. However, for some international users, I also accommodated paypal.
Examples of my posts: post 1, post 2.
Fear of getting ripped off
I added code to generate a random unique serial number for each user. I would log the time played, highscore and serial number. I also asked users to email me a screenshot of their high score which had the serial number on it.
Feedback
For getting feedback for the game, I created form in google forms. The questions were pretty direct with one open ended question.
Response
The response was amazing. Players who playtested my game, did it so genuinely. I did not expect players to respond to open ended question. But they wrote me long list of things which sucked in my game, or could be improved. I had good conversations with them over email or on phone.
P.S — You can download and play my game (android, iOS). Would appreciate any feedack
