I agree about the social groups here. The handful of inexperienced testers end up flooding the channel with nonsense. I prefer email. It's tied with my iphone so I know I have an unread message quickly and can respond in turn. Also it gives a dev a more one on one handling of a situation. The dev can also get a better handle on who isn't contributing.
Yeah I agree with inferi. But on a side note im on ibetatest as well and I also reccomend that you use testers from that site as many of them have tested at least more than one app and thus have experience.
iBetaTest is a great idea and while I haven't had the time for it, its certainly a great concept. If you have 100 UDID builds I might suggest splitting it up between different sources. One option I might suggest is 50 to iBetaTest, 25 to TA and maybe 25 to the media. This will give you bug fixes from the 75 plus the TA folk will talk about the game, like they did for Zenonia. The media will also give you previews on the game
its great im a tester (and my id is looman9635 and have tested 2 apps) its a good idea to have a lot of spots because sometimes people will just go for it to get a free app. i have helped alot and the devs are helpful as are the forums.the other way to do it is like objective 3 they have done a facebook group for the testers to talk about fixes and whatnot
ah lololol ok i guess i should make an account then Also i love illusion labs games, they r worth every cent
We haven't decided yet if we are going to use ibetatest.com, so no need to register just yet. Glad to hear you like 'em!
I used ibetatest.com for Anomaly. I thought the site worked very well - the bug reporting was good. For incentives I offered to put their name in the credits. (But in the end sent promo codes to the US folks that did good testing!) The biggest problem that I see with the site is that you create a beta and then people apply to fill the spots. Spots fill up fast - but it doesn't mean that you will get quality testers... so you actually have to reject them, and then wait for it to fill again (which is litterally only hours). I would suggest that at least 80% of your testers should have 4 or 5 star ratings to insure good feedback (Or have a good reputation from sites like TA!) It also helps to be very clear in your expectations (timeframe, effort etc). For example: Beta test will be from June 1st to June 20th. Each tester should spend no less that 20 hours (1 hour per day) playing the game. Bug reports & feedback should be submitted by no later than June 22nd. And before adding any of their devices to your provisioning profile - I'd recommend that you email them and re-iterate expectations to get their confirmation! Overall the site is a fantastic resource for developers that don't have their own bug tracking software! I highly recommend it.
As both a dev and a tester on ibetatest, it is a good way to go. It is way better to have a 25-50 person slots of rated, experienced testers then to take 75 random people. And don't post an incentive even if you will give your testers one, because then most people will apply solely for that. Tester wise, only take people with at least 4 star ratings and a bio because that shows that they care, and will take time to type reports if they aso take the time to type a bio. Hope this helps!!! P.S. aboll09 on the site, look me up haha
Yes I plan to use it again. Well - the site doesn't really enforce it to be orderly... it just gives you big text boxes to put in your content. Setting clear expectations and timeframes is just my recommendation - I like to follow a pretty structured software development cycle and not all testers are necessarily up for that. (Since you can only provision 100 devices - its best to not waste them on people that can't commit to doing what you need to get done!) All that said - I'm not paying them to test so I can't set my expectations too high! Nice sig Vester!!
Of those devs who have used ibetatest do any of you give the new testers a chance? It seems like by refusing to use anyone who's unrated we might be missing out on testers who are really good but just new to the site. Maybe have an 80/20 ratio of rated to unrated or something like that and only choose unrated people who have gone to the trouble of putting up a bio as aboll09 suggests.
Oh, one other thing. You can usually weed out the ones that won't work to hard at it by asking them some info, such as how many days of the week they can work, how many hours of a week, apps they've beta tested, etc.
Usually the good ones wont apply, which is kinda annoying. If they don't have a rating look at two things: 1. Bio- They might put previous experiences here 2. Reason why they want to test or lack of- People who don't put a reason are usually a instant no-no. Look for reasons like "your app looks like a quality one and I would like to help you out" over "This looks really fun and I want to like test it and stuff." Sorry for the double post
