Just a thought...

Lately I must think about how to get your indie game as hobby-no-name developer tested. My experiences with players who test your game are rather poor. ~4000 downloads => ~50 comments => ~15 tester => ~3 who gives useful feedback.

But I think, that I'm not alone, that many hobby devs seek testers, so what about testing each others game. I know, as devs we don't have much time, still we are forced to test our own games all the time and we develop a tunnel vision over time. So, with some clear, simple rules it should be possible to test each others game and give some useful feedback. Maybe not representative for a larger player community, but atleast
an other view.

A major issue of this approach would be 'But, how do I prevent that developer X steals all my unique ideas ?'. Well, I would want to avoid something like a NDA or some other legal process. Most will be covered by copyright and the potential license your game already have. If you want to avoid that a certain idea is not used by others, then either disable this part in your test-build or don't ask for testing. Think about a public beta restricted to a few dev-testers.

A game testing project could look like this:

General requirements:
- Your game can be downloaded without barriers (no registration, eg. use dropbox links).
- Your game should not require compilation or other uncommon kind of preparations.

- The tester don't need to sign a NDA.
- You should be the owner of the game and game content.
- The tester should not talk about the game in the public, and he should respect copyright and given licenses.
- As tester you should describe your own game in this thread.

Game: Xyz
Download/Contact: PM me to get in contact and a download link
Requirements: Windows, dedicated GPU(<6 years old), just install it, maybe you need to install DirectX, if not already installed (see readme).
Gametype: strategy game much like X or Y
Expectation: Please install and play the game for ~1-2 hours and give me some feedback.
Focus: please focus on the general gameplay and game feeling. Feels it right, do you like it, what is boring, what is fun ?
Offer: I will test your game for ~1-2 hours and give you feedback.
Preferred games: I like FPS,strategy,turn based games, I never played casual games, I can test only on PC.

Opinions ?

I really, really like this idea. I do think the paranoia of ideas getting stolen would be the largest roadblock despite the low risk in reality (I'd just guess that most devs are mostly worried about other devs, which would be the entirety of the pool of testers here). But, I agree an NDA probably isn't the best solution, and probably wouldn't assuage any paranoia either.

It's possible people really aren't worried about it though. In reality, games take a lot of time to make, and every dev has dozens of ideas of their own, and even if someone "stole" your idea, their game would likely come out completely different. Personally, I don't worry about it.

The benefit though, is great. You get testers who are knowledgeable about game making and could probably provide better feedback, both technical and otherwise.

How would you go about implementing this? A forum on this website, or creating a separate website?