❓Is there a particular reason why some Alpha Games don't have a Topic thread? ❓

[TestBot]

I noticed that there were a few games that I am Alpha testing that don't have an announcement topic. I was trying to search for them in this Alpha forum but couldn't find a matching Topic title.

For example:

Zombicide 2nd Edition

Village Pillage

YRO

Nuclear War

Echoes of Time

Is there a particular reason why some games don't have a "<Game> is in alpha!" game announcement topic from their respective developers?

I found it particularly strange for Zombicide 2nd Edition, as it appears to have went into Alpha fairly recently and is very well known game.

[Tisaac]

I noticed that there were a few games that I am Alpha testing that don't have an announcement topic. I was trying to search for them in this Alpha forum but couldn't find a matching Topic title.

For example:

Zombicide 2nd Edition

Village Pillage

YRO

Nuclear War

Echoes of Time

Is there a particular reason why some games don't have a "<Game> is in alpha!" game announcement topic from their respective developers?

I found it particularly strange for Zombicide 2nd Edition, as it appears to have went into Alpha fairly recently and is very well known game.

Let me put it the other way : why would there be a forum thread for each game in alpha ? This is not an automatic thing so it's completely up to the developpers

[TestBot]

Ah that makes sense, thank you for the context, this is helpful.

I thought it was a standard practice since the Alpha games: general information (read this first) announcement post has the following line:

"You can reach out to the developer (the player who announced the game in this forum) in this forum or by private message"

But your reply clears it up as an optional item that developers can choose to participate in or not.

On an unrelated note, appreciate all the games you've developed on BGA, I've played quite a few of them!

[KuWizard]

I thought it was a standard practice since the Alpha games: general information (read this first) announcement post has the following line:

"You can reach out to the developer (the player who announced the game in this forum) in this forum or by private message"

But your reply clears it up as an optional item that developers can choose to participate in or not.

Almost everything is optional for us, devs And we voluntarily choose where to promote our games. If we want more people to join - we are announcing it everywhere. Sometimes we don't want to, there might be various reasons

[Kayvon]

We sometimes don't post announcements for alpha games that we know will already be popular. We'll get plenty of qualified reviewers playing and testing when they see it go live. Meanwhile, a thread just invites people to ask to be manually added (takes dev time) who aren't otherwise qualified for being reviewers (lower quality reports) who are there to play rather than test and won't officially report bugs. In other words, sometimes the post doesn't offer us a lot of upside.

[CesarFP]

I used to have the same question, which is now answered
Btw, so happy to see Echoes of time and Yro unexpectedly in that list thank you so much for the effort!!

[TestBot]

Ah, got it. Thank you both for providing the additional context, this is very insightful!

So from the developers' perspective, the ideal type of playtesters is the QA type testers, similar to that of video games. I didn't realize there was a potential downside to a making thread post, such as having to deal with lower quality reports, but the way you explained it here makes perfect sense. Thanks!