Everyone loves them and is in high need as they are rare to be found. Alpha Game testers that taking their time to find and report ongoing bugs with the game before release. While everything seems to be super easy and everyone always wants to Playtest a game, playtesting a game is not just playing a game and enjoying it a few weeks before the actual release.
Being a playtester comes with responsibility. Your objective is to find the problems in the game that could lead to disadvantages towards other players or even game-breaking bugs. One of my main jobs is playtesting games and reporting my findings. In my gaming career, I have played many games and the early stages and I have done many reports about the problems I faced.
Once, I found a crucial problem, making it possible to duplicate items on the game [REDACTED] while the game was live and running. Even though a quick hotfix was needed, it’s still a major find as it’s a game-breaking bug.
Sadly, I also encountered bugs and problems on games where they didn’t do anything about it. Deadside for example. They dont have an experienced testing team, but a handful of fans and 90% of them dont know how proper playtesting goes. A great example is their latest update, where swapping weapons could lose your weapons out of thin air. Where was that bug report? Something super simple to spot, yet the whole testing team failed to find it.
I have asked a friend of mine to go online on deadside and see if my last bug reports were dealt with. Sadly, no success. From duping items to mantle issues inside buildings and from clipping inside rocks to flying in the air. None of the bug reports I had made has been resolved. They or never arrived or they just dont know how to resolve it. Just as the “you have been banned from the server” message that keeps popping up for years by now. I provided them several times with a solution, yet they didn’t do anything with it.
When I playtest, it’s because I love the meaning of the work that’s behind it. Seeing actual games struggling because of the amount of problems they keep facing just makes me sad.
