How TinkaTolli selects their beta testers

Heya Tinkas,

Today, Kevin posted a great insight into Tinkatolli, and how they choose their beta testers. I think it is a really helpful FAQ, so check it out! 😀

We’ve had a lot of kids asking when they will get to be a beta tester, and what they have to do to be a beta tester on Tinkatolli. We thought it was time to answer some questions and explain a bit of what goes on behind the scenes.

First, why don’t we just let everyone be a beta tester?

Even though beta testers expect that some things won’t work, we really want to make sure every player has a good experience. We would LOVE to be able to open the doors for everyone right now, but that could lead to a bad experience for everyone. Letting too many kids in at once might cause our untested server to simply crash. We don’t think this will happen, but we have a lot of other things to test before we test whether our server is ready for thousands of kids at the same time.

How do we pick beta testers?

The picking of our beta testers is based on a combination of a few factors: How long you have been waiting, where you live, and how enthusiastic you seem to be.

We’ll explain why we do it this way.

How long you have been waiting
This one is obvious. It is only fair to take the kids who have waited longest. Most of our first group of testers waited for many months before getting in. If you just signed up, you certainly won’t have to wait that long, but please don’t be upset if you don’t get an invite tomorrow.

Where you live
We want to make sure that when players are in the game, there is good chance that they will get to meet and interact with other players. To do this, we look at what time zone you live in, and try to select groups of kids from the same time zone. If we notice that some testers have been on a lot without meeting many other kids, then we try to invite more from that time zone next time.

How enthusiastic you seem to be
It is important for us that the kids we invite as beta testers, are really interested in Tinkatolli. The quickest way for us to find all glitches and fix them is to have testers who are enthusiastic enough to really give the game a run for its money. What we found with our early testers, is that the ones who had been the most enthusiastic before being invited (either by making tinkas, or blogging, or tweeting, or chatting with us) were also the most enthusiastic about testing, finding glitches and giving feedback. We are extremely grateful that these testers have been on A LOT and given a lot of great feedback – their enthusiasm has enabled us to make many important changes.

When will you get your invite, and will everybody get to be a beta tester?

As we squash bugs and make changes, we invite more kids, and we usually invite more everyday. But please keep in mind that we have a couple of thousand kids on our list who want to be testers. We hope to invite everybody on the list. But at some point, when all of the known glitches are fixed, and the server is ready, we are going to stop inviting, and just open the door for everyone who wants to be a beta tester.

We are thrilled that so many kids are so excited about Tinkatolli, and we’re working as hard as we can to get everything ready so we can open the doors for everyone.

Look forward to seeing you in Tinkertown!

Thanks Kevin, this was a really helpful FAQ, even for me as a tester! Haha.

-Space