If what Owen Davis from Evolution Research says is correct, you may one day find yourself testing games from your living room couch. That will show your mom, who said that you “would never get anywhere with these games.”
Davis belives that the future of game concept testing lies in letting Xbox Live users giving titles a spin, giving them access as early as the concept stage.
The opportunity here is a delivery mechanism for early stage game play footage across a popular and easily accessible platform. In the future it will be possible to quickly and securely deliver limited access to these types of media to a large number of gamers. After exposure to these media we will be able to effectively measure gamer interest in game play mechanics as well as other key measures related to game concepts. Data collection on the Xbox 360 is particularly interesting because of the range of input devices. Gamers will be given the ability to use their controllers to provide response to closed-ended questions. Use of the headset and vision camera will be utilized for important open-ended responses about their experience.
Davis goes on to say that this could be a cheaper, quicker, and more accurate method of testing game concepts. The sampling of the audience would definitely be better than that of a small group in a focus room.
Would you be open to downloading and testing alpha and beta builds of games on your Xbox 360? Would our poorly detailed “tighten up the graphics” test reports be of any benefit? Wait, shouldn’t we get paid to do this?
[Via Next Gen]
