So here's my dual dilemma for alpha (with Skyward, or really any game).

[iozay]

It really depends on the kind of people you recruit for the Alpha, some people simply do not recognise the fact that the game is not finished yet and that they are there for criticism.

Personally I would not blame anyone if a feature is not "perfect"(or misses for that matter) during the alpha but I would expect that constructive criticism will be taken into consideration

One risk that you take with releasing the alpha too early is that you will miss the perks of a fresh impression. With a fresh impression the human brain is usually in a "learning mode" and is able to create better criticism considering they are not used to it yet.

My advice: Do what feels best. It is alright to implement additional features during the alpha(and beta). But please make it clear to all testers that the game is subject to change(Which is obvious for Arcen but people don't tend to read that note, even if it is there with capital characters).

[x4000]

All good thoughts, thanks folks.

I suppose one of the big worries I always have is accessibility, though. That's why I like to do things in tiers in alphas. I can't stop all the core fans from jumping on a beta day one, and so if I want first impressions of accessibility it has to be during alpha. And right now there is NO tutorial at all, although I think the UI and tooltips are clear enough hat only matters somewhat.

And... well... If you've been following the game closely you probably don't need a tutorial based on how much I've written about it. So my pool of testers is probably poisoned in terms of that form of first impression anyhow.

Coming up with a tutorial is always tricky. For AI War, I actually used it on my mom and sister, who are not really gamers, and watched to see what they struggled with. The rest was just intuition of what players would find confusing, and then belated additions to the tutorial after 1.0 came out and I got feedback from a wider audience.

Here there are probably various spouses and so on that can be used again, but that's such a small pool. Ah well -- the curse of being open with the game early to players. Potentially alpha testers can rope in THEIR friends and family for 30 minutes to see where the sticking points are, once the tutorial is in place. If we can't get someone having fun in 5 minutes here, we're doing it wrong. If they don't have some measure of (misplaced, from an advanced standpoint) confidence without 30 minutes, we're still doing it wrong.

[Aquohn]

That's okay. I confess that I haven't read all too much about Skyward Collapse (sorry! There was just so much...so fast...) so I should be largely unspoiled as a tester.

Assuming I get selected, of course.

[madcow]

Yeah I've mostly skipped reading the details of things, once I saw the broad strokes of it. Didn't want to spoil too much of the mechanics!

[x4000]

Well, okay then.

[madcow]

On other random notes

Re: dwarf fortress. I'm with others on wanting to learn the game but it just being too dense to penetrate.  Clockwork Empire is a game I'm really hoping breaks it down into a digestible formula, and I've been reading their blog weekly, awesome surf even though the game is probably 8 months off, I'm still excited about it if they can do to DF what thy already did to roguelikes with dredmor.

Another random topic: I'm kind of amused that your alpha is coinciding with the (ending) of an alpha on my own project . It's not game development though, and we don't really use alpha/beta for it, but still the same sort of state!

[iozay]

The posts do indeed partially "poison" the testers pool but most of the posts I have read so far are most likely placed after the start of the game where tactics/strategies tend to come in the game. It does however not prevent people from getting stuck at an early point during the alpha

Personally I would not worry too much about it but please make sure that the tutorial states the overall purpose of you inside the game, this will most likely solve 90% of the issues. It is important for new players to know this before they even start

[x4000]

Personally I would not worry too much about it but please make sure that the tutorial states the overall purpose of you inside the game, this will most likely solve 90% of the issues. It is important for new players to know this before they even start

Definitely.  I just realized that this morning, humorously.

[Cinth]

h about it but please make sure that the tutorial states the overall purpose of you inside the game, this will most likely solve 90% of the issues. It is important for new players to know this before they even start

This comes probably form someone who has never went to a game rental store, picked up 5 games on a 3 day (all with no manuals) and proceed to fumble through them all.  Good times those were. (Back in the early 90s)

[x4000]

h about it but please make sure that the tutorial states the overall purpose of you inside the game, this will most likely solve 90% of the issues. It is important for new players to know this before they even start

This comes probably form someone who has never went to a game rental store, picked up 5 games on a 3 day (all with no manuals) and proceed to fumble through them all.  Good times those were. (Back in the early 90s)

I well remember doing that for years back in the late 80s, too.  Good ol' PharMor (sp?).  They had incredibly battered boxes for NES games, and you'd bring the box to the counter and they'd give you the cartridge for something like a dollar for three days.  Then when you brought it back, they'd put the box back on their rinky-dink shelves and someone else could pick it up.  It was an... interesting situation.

But I had grown up with the Atari before that, where there was never any explanation on anything at all, so it just seemed normal.  Critically, the games were simpler, though, on both platforms.

[Cinth]

I actually got to participate in the 90's, picking titles and such with my uncle.  Before that, I was stuck playing what I had

I remember a game that we played for over 3 months (weekend play), Nightshade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightshade_%281991_video_game%29).  That game had it in for us....

[PokerChen]

For us in the orient, it was purchasing one cartridge with 100 or 1000 NES games on it and working out what those squiggly english / Japanese letters was intended to convey.

Rest assured that you'll have an understanding crowd. You can always tell us the specific areas to test for - apart from that it's not all that hard to figure out which buttons do nothing and which buttons make the world explode.

[x4000]

Cheers.

[tigersfan]

Ok folks, so, we changed things up a bit....

We're going to be sending an invite to everyone I've gotten a PM from to this point. If you've already sent me a PM, check your forum inbox. If it's not there, let me know.

That said, I'm not going to be taking any more invites right now. We've got enough people for this round. I'm not sure yet if there will be another round of alpha or not, but either way, beta should be coming out very very soon.

[Aklyon]

Related to rentals, I remember this one N64 game where you were a crane operator. (you never saw you though. only the crane), and the guy on the title screen (and most everywhere else) shouted gibberish at you as you did the subgames to get jobs done. But I can't think of the name of it anymore and thats probably the most memorable game I'd ever rented.