Not Just a Waste of Time

The New York Times recently published an article about Large Animal Game's testing program. The company finds their testers via Craigslist and opts to pays them $25 dollars per 45 minute session...

The testers are asked to provide unique feedback after trying out a suite of Large Animal's social network games. The ones mention in the article are Lucky Strike Lanes, Bumper Stars, and Banagrams, each of which are currently available on a variety of social networks such as Myspace and Facebook.

A brief excerpt from the piece:

“As a developer of a particular game, you tend to have a bias, you see it through a narrow focus,” Mr. MacDonald said. “That’s why it is important to gather unbiased opinion and reaction from people who do not have the same attachments to these games as we do.”

It would be cool to learn how other smaller casual game companies perform user testing. Do they pull in people from the street; utilize in-house QA, possibly a combination of both?

Make sure you check out the entire article found here: "When Playing Video Games Is Not Just a Waste of Time"