What print-on-demand COULD mean

DeathInABottle wrote:

The playtest process isn't necessarily a problem now, but an open playtest would generate more feedback. If it were handled properly, that increased volume could be very useful.

I am not sure more feedback would be created (as opposed as having several time the same thing). Adding people to a process is not alway helpful, so saying that "more people would improve it" look like a wish for me more than any kind of affirmation.

At the very least, in video game, the number of playtester bear little effect on its quality ; and sometime (not alway) you actually have less useful feedback with additional people.

I think the biggest constraint would be filtering the feedback and collating it - but it might be possible to this through a survey route (so you have some numerical scoring that collates automatically followed up with a load of boxes for comments, descriptions, game data etc)

I'd be interested to hear what the marketing bods thought work wise for the surveys they ran.

Squidalot wrote:

I think the biggest constraint would be filtering the feedback and collating it - but it might be possible to this through a survey route (so you have some numerical scoring that collates automatically followed up with a load of boxes for comments, descriptions, game data etc)

But wouldn't the energy expanded in doing such a system (and in the non-trivial analysis of its result) better spent on current feedback and/or other improvement ? That's why doing large-scale open betatests tend to be more PR stunt than actually useful phase.

Ohlmann wrote:

DeathInABottle wrote:

The playtest process isn't necessarily a problem now, but an open playtest would generate more feedback. If it were handled properly, that increased volume could be very useful.

I am not sure more feedback would be created (as opposed as having several time the same thing). Adding people to a process is not alway helpful, so saying that "more people would improve it" look like a wish for me more than any kind of affirmation.

At the very least, in video game, the number of playtester bear little effect on its quality ; and sometime (not alway) you actually have less useful feedback with additional people.

I agree: more of whatever isn't necessarily better. That's why I chose my language carefully: more feedback would indeed be generated, and it could be very useful if it were handled properly.

Squidalot wrote:

I think the biggest constraint would be filtering the feedback and collating it - but it might be possible to this through a survey route (so you have some numerical scoring that collates automatically followed up with a load of boxes for comments, descriptions, game data etc)

I'd be interested to hear what the marketing bods thought work wise for the surveys they ran.

You are imagining too much work. There is no need to filter and collate. Players can openly talk about it on the forums. The Playtest coordinator should read some or all of the discussion, and report anything of interest to the design team.

While there is some quantifiable data, feedback of this sort cannot be reduced to numbers or statistics. A survey format would not be useful at all.

Ohlmann wrote:

But wouldn't the energy expanded in doing such a system (and in the non-trivial analysis of its result) better spent on current feedback and/or other improvement ? That's why doing large-scale open betatests tend to be more PR stunt than actually useful phase.

Maybe it would be a PR stunt. Would that be a bad thing? Hardly. And posting black and white print and play cards for general use isn't a lot of effort. And neither is providing a place (forums!) for players to give feedback on. The work would be on the playtest coordinator to read and report findings... which is what the playtest coordinator does anyway!