Hermitworks Entertainment Blogs

It’s so time for a blog entry. It’s a really busy time for us here at HermitWorks. The fellows over at Garage Games and The Great Games Experiment have featured Phil Daigle and Space Trader on their websites, and it’s driving a nice stream of testers our way. This is an invaluable resource, and it’s great to have their support.

It’s a bit of a shift– going from only us knowing how awesome Space Trader is, to hearing feedback from strangers. Sometimes, you can’t tell whether a feature is awesome or sucks, because it’s just the eight of us. We are a positive bunch, so we tend to think everything is awesome. We have done a couple of things to avoid groupthink:

• Tasks: While testing the game, there is a set of questions that cycle and display at the top of the page. This helps slothy testers give us feedback because its easy as pie. The statistics are tracked, and we get instant feedback. It’s a little weird, like having a crystal ball…”Oh Great Gazoo, is this lighting too strong?”
• In game reporting: For the more advanced bug reporters, there is a built in reporter that registers the input as a thread on the forums, and an entry into our in house bug database. This is super slick, and we can collect more detailed runtime info.
• Forums: The forums are in full swing, and for those that love that way of communicating there they are! I can’t think of why someone would begin a bug discussion this way, considering the previous two options, but I’m not judging.

What this all adds up to is a lean, mean user-feedback machine. This should accelerate our progress and ensure a solid release when we come out of beta. Once users play Space Trader (and the realization of a 3-D engine running in the browser sinks in), they get really excited. This is the fun part. When people start writing things about us, it isn’t just our hype, and that is a very nice feeling.

Well, back to it,

Jordan