Adjustments to the Alpha Games review process

[Een]

(NB: this post is a copy in the forum of the announcement done in the reviewer group)

Dear reviewers, following feedback received in December, we have made some adjustments to the Alpha Games review process:

- a minimum of 3 games played are now needed to give your approval for a game;
- reviewers (and only reviewers) can now invite other players to their alpha table to facilitate playtesting (invited players are granted access immediately). Thus, reviewers can now have a more active/leading role in organizing playtesting. Please note that there is a limit to the number of invitations, and that we may rollback this feature. We will do so if we see that it is abused to just grant early access to popular games without actual benefit to playtesting for less popular alpha games;
- since the purpose of alpha is to gather feedback, the new rating system will now prompt players for feedback at the end of each alpha game;
- since ratings are now merged with the common rating system, approval is now just giving your go for beta when you think the game is ready (no more rating at this step).

From some of the comments, we would also like to remind you that the goal of alpha is NOT to rush games to beta. It is to IMPROVE the games until they are really good and can be SAFELY AND CONFIDENTLY opened in beta.

Thanks for your help in playtesting, and have fun!

[Mobius88]

Today I tried to create a standard tournament of an old game (Can't Stop) and after having sent out few invitations (50 maybe? I do not know) I received a message "invitation limit reached" or something like that.
It is the first time this happens to me.

Is it possible that the limit you put on alpha and beta games is affecting also the creation of standard tournaments?

[Een]

Today I tried to create a standard tournament of an old game (Can't Stop) and after having sent out few invitations (50 maybe? I do not know) I received a message "invitation limit reached" or something like that.
It is the first time this happens to me.

Is it possible that the limit you put on alpha and beta games is affecting also the creation of standard tournaments?

No, this is separate. I answered this on the thread about tournaments.

[Hellboy4711]

- reviewers (and only reviewers) can now invite other players to their alpha table to facilitate playtesting (invited players are granted access immediately). Thus, reviewers can now have a more active/leading role in organizing playtesting. Please note that there is a limit to the number of invitations, and that we may rollback this feature. We will do so if we see that it is abused to just grant early access to popular games without actual benefit to playtesting for less popular alpha games;

I tried that tonight but the friend I invited got an error about a non-existing game. What went wrong there?

Other than that you are doing a great job with this.

[MoonGoyal]

Based on the recent games updates

"- reviewers (and only reviewers) can now invite other players to their alpha table to facilitate playtesting (invited players are granted access immediately)"

Is there a reason that some people seem to be able to invite other people to play a game with them, and others cannot.

For example, I am unable to invite non-reviewers to a game, but my friend jreakins can.
I have gotten an error "Unexpected error: BGA main website stilgar.boardgamearena.com did not respond" every time I try to do it. Even though I am a reviewer.

should I submit an official bug report for this?

[ciciplays]

How many games are reviewers permitted to create with non-alpha players? I haven't created that many, but we definitely have been playing them and leaving bug reports.

[Chauff]

- since the purpose of alpha is to gather feedback, the new rating system will now prompt players for feedback at the end of each alpha game;

Maybe you could add this prompt in case of collective abandon, often in alpha it is because of a bug that prevents to finish the game, and even if many reviewers probably use the bugs reports you may still miss some valuable insights

[dexdouglas]

Argh, I’ve been pushing to get to 500 games played for the last 4 months, trying to get Reviewer status. Finally met the milestone last night, went to Alpha reviewer page and now it’s 750 games played!
When did it change? Are there any plans to raise it again? 500 seems like a pretty hefty number to achieve in the first place, I’m surprised it raised to 750.

[Een]

Argh, I’ve been pushing to get to 500 games played for the last 4 months, trying to get Reviewer status. Finally met the milestone last night, went to Alpha reviewer page and now it’s 750 games played!
When did it change? Are there any plans to raise it again? 500 seems like a pretty hefty number to achieve in the first place, I’m surprised it raised to 750.

Sorry about that, but everyone accumulates games over time, and it would not make sense to have alpha visible by everyone (as the games may still be unstable technically and functionally, it would make managing this phase difficult to get a disproportionate level of games and feedback). It has to stay manageable.
It may change in the future if the growth rate of the reviewer group becomes too quick relatively to the overall website growth, but 750 is already a high number, so it should not be soon. Also, there is a lot of games getting to beta every week to discover, that should satisfy the appetite of most players without needing to get the alphas on the menu too

[dexdouglas]

Thank you for the reply. Yes, you are totally right that there are plenty of games in alpha, and just games in general on BGA. I was just excited to be able to help out on testing some new ones too. No biggie. Plenty to do until I get to 750. Already at 512 so it’ll go by quick I’m sure.