Hi guys, Most of you are probably aware of my concerns with the way ashcans are being approached at the moment and especially the inclusion of money in any transaction. If not see this thread. The principal of ashcans, getting your game out there to get feedback and get some con awareness are all good. It is the money that holds the problem for me. Here is my alternative:
1) You produce an ashcan which you have playtested several times yourself and you believe is ready for public playtesting. More on how we define that later if this idea takes off.
2) You advertise the existence of the ashcan before the con you are taking them to, telling people that you will give them away for FREE to those who are interested in engaging with the creative process. They need to come and talk to you at the con.
3) You talk to those interested in playtesting your game and decide whether or not you would like them to playtest it.
4) You give a free copy to those people you want to playtest it, giving them some kind of refund code etc. that they use in playtest posts, that go direct to you and on various sites, that they can use to get money off the final product, or even get a comp copy. This 'coupon' is reliant on them giving good, constructive feedback.
Now this is just an idea, but it removes the initial transaction that I had a huge problem with. Basically I am looking to formalise a bit the relationship between deisgners when it comes to playtesting. Whether I take that further to 'playtesting contracts' and the like is a matter I hope to disucss here. Your thoughts appreciated as always.
Cheers
Iain
Giants vs NWoD Mage
Submitted by Neil Gow on Sat, 27/10/2007 - 11:28.
I looked at the Ashcan Front differently when I was at GenCon. I looked at the Ashcans as games. Not unfinished games - just games. Giants looked good, I knew about it beforehand, a flicked through it and chatted to Jeff about it for a while and felt confident to splash all of £5 on it. As it stands it is far more playable in its current form than say, New World of Darkness Mage which I find impenetrable and unplayable. I guess what I am trying to get at is that sometimes there seems to be an invisible 'finishing line' that games must pass to have officially moved beyond playtest, however we can all name games that are in print that we're not wholly sure have ever seen the playtest stage. Hell, I can name one (WWE: Know Your Role) that I know had some of the kookiest playtest input and response I have ever seen but thats another tale for another day.
Anyway, I believe that part of the Ashcan Front schtick was that the financial commitment somehow tied the purchaser to their commitment to playtest. I'm not 100% sure that this is the case. Roleplayers are notorious for buying crap that they never play - if I splashed £30 on Nobilis and £25 on Weapon of the Gods and have never so much as done some character creation from them - and not felt guilty or stupid about that - what chance my guilt leading to a playtest of a £5 game?
That willingness to sacrifice my precious time to help someone else (and lets be fair, you get to a certain age when having your name in the 'Playtested by' section holds no thrill) has to come from an engagement with either the product or the designer. The first comes from seething fanboy fervour, the second comes from social contact, respect or a sense of community with them.
I'm sure that the Ashcan Front guys have had a lot of feedback for their games from people who bought them at GenCon but I wonder how much of it is generated by that buy-in and how much is generated by that designer-engagement - be that via familiarity with storygames.com, Sons of Kryos, Have Games Will Travel or playing games like PTA?
So, I guess, I agree Iain!
Neil
I personally have no problem
Submitted by Destriarch on Sat, 27/10/2007 - 12:28.
I personally have no problem with people selling ashcans providedd it is made very clear what they are. I don't indulge in the process myself, but I see no harm in other people doing it so long as the punter knows what he is getting. However, I would not be happy about giving ashcans away. If you tell people something is free, they'll all turn up asking for it whether they intend to help with the playtest or not. Sure you can give them an incentive to help in the form of coupons, but from their point of view they've lost nothing if they just accept the free copy and then don't playtest it. So they don't get a coupon, that's no big deal since they didn't have to do anything spectacular to get their hands on the game in the first place. Freebies go out of the door by the hundred, but people tend not to care so much about something they've gotten for free.
Now, sure, you've got control over who you eventually give the game to and who you don't, but this presents two problems. The first is how do you tell if someone is genuinely going to give the feedback you request? With the best intentions in the world, people still forget, or get caught up in real life, or can't find a playtest group and so on. The second is that you risk alienating potential future customers by telling them sorry, you don't want them to playtest for you. No matter what reasoning you might have, they could be excused for feeling a little offended. Well, maybe unless you ran out of copies.
All in all I think I'd rather stick to my own method of running my own playtests by and large.
Ash
If you check out the other
Submitted by Iain McAllister on Sat, 27/10/2007 - 16:25.
If you check out the other thread Neil you can see some of the feedback I have been getting from Paul and Matt. It is good to talk to them about it and see what they intended from the ashcan front.
Ash the principal behind ashcans is to get playtest feedback from people, in my opinion this should be at the public playtest stage. I don't see how people paying money for it makes them any more likely to provide feedback.
The question of how you trust people with your product is always going to be tricky but I would suggest it is up to the individual designer. All I am hoping to do with this idea is formalise parts of the playtest cycle that tend to be tricky to pin down if you cant get the feedback you need.
What do you guys think about starting a seperate site, specifically to cater for people looking for playtest teams, and playtest teams looking for feedback.
How do you run playtests at the moment ash?
Cheers
Iain
Mob Justice now available!
'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.
Perceived Worth
Submitted by Destriarch on Sat, 27/10/2007 - 19:50.
Ash the principal behind ashcans is to get playtest feedback from people, in my opinion this should be at the public playtest stage. I don't see how people paying money for it makes them any more likely to provide feedback.
Because they've made an investment, and if they want to see a return on it they have to put some work in. A person who hasn't paid has made no investment, and may not feel obliged as a result to earn their money-off vouchers. There's also the psychological factor. Something that has been paid for has perceived worth, because some money has gone toward obtaining it. I know I often pick up freebies from the internet, then never get around to properly reading them. However if I buy something it almost always gets read, even if it doesn't get played. It's the whole 'it tastes better if you've worked for it' principle.
Ash
Disagree
Submitted by Neil Gow on Sun, 28/10/2007 - 07:43.
I think that it's very much a matter of personal code here. In my eye if someone gives me something that has cost them money to produce for free and we have had a conversation where upon accepting the free product they would like me to playtest it, I would feel obliged to playtest it. I have received something for nothing because someone trusted my word.
However as soon as money changes hands my part in the deal is done. I have covered their printing costs and then some usually which they can then go and spend on pizza and beer. I have purchased the game. Now it might sit in my pile with Weapon of the Gods and Nobilis or it might get worked over like Pendragon and PTA, but thats my decision.
Of course there is a third way - paid playtest. No, don't laugh, paid playtest is used all over the CCG world. You playtest the game and when it is produced you get a slew of the cards. Not just a couple. £100s worth of cards. Over the playtest time the company gets its value for money from you but if you do a decent job you get product. I'm not sure this is applicable in the rpg world but I thought I should throw it into the mix as it is the forgotten third way.
I think the idea of a site where people who actively want to playtest and people that are seeking playtests can come together is an amazing idea - and a great way to create word of mouth for a new game too!
Neil
Good way to put it
Submitted by Iain McAllister on Sun, 28/10/2007 - 08:21.
However as soon as money changes hands my part in the deal is done. I have covered their printing costs and then some usually which they can then go and spend on pizza and beer. I have purchased the game. Now it might sit in my pile with Weapon of the Gods and Nobilis or it might get worked over like Pendragon and PTA, but thats my decision.
Of course there is a third way - paid playtest. No, don't laugh, paid playtest is used all over the CCG world. You playtest the game and when it is produced you get a slew of the cards. Not just a couple. £100s worth of cards. Over the playtest time the company gets its value for money from you but if you do a decent job you get product. I'm not sure this is applicable in the rpg world but I thought I should throw it into the mix as it is the forgotten third way.
I think the idea of a site where people who actively want to playtest and people that are seeking playtests can come together is an amazing idea - and a great way to create word of mouth for a new game too!
Neil
Thanks for crystallising my problem with bought ashcans Neil. I hadn't quite managed to articulate it outside 'I don't like it'.
I am really up for doing this playtest site and am going to be contacting some people to help me out. My knowledge of forums and the like is weak to say the least.
Cheers
Iain
Mob Justice now available!
'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.
Playtesting Site
Submitted by Destriarch on Sun, 28/10/2007 - 10:36.
I think the idea of a site where people who actively want to playtest and people that are seeking playtests can come together is an amazing idea - and a great way to create word of mouth for a new game too!
I think it'd be an interesting experiment at the very least. I know I always struggle to find playtesters simply because everyone is always engaged in games of their own. If you do set it up, drop an anchor to it somewhere around here as I'd like to take a look.
On the other points, we shall have to agree to disagree. No doubt the actual state of affairs is that some people will fall into one mindset, and some the other. Sadly there is no easily achievable way of finding out since people who fall into one mindset may claim to fall into the other when really they don't, so a poll would be out of the question. The only way to test the theory would be to try it and see. I will say that I have tried the 'giving away free copies to playtesters' method before and, out of five groups that accepted it, none of them ever provided any data and all of them seemed nice, genuine people to me. However that really isn't a large enough sample to test on, so I'm not claiming that proves anything one way or the other.
Ash