How do you treat playtesters?

I've been thinking recently how to recruit and retain people who are willing to test my games.  I have a handful of people local to me who are willing to help out, and am working on developing this group (see my previous post), and in the long term this will involve making sure I keep the playtest sessions fun for everyone so they remain engaged and willing to pitch in.  This is a big responsibility as people are freely offering their time and I mustn't forget that.  I could probably do with multiple groups, but I think this may prove even more of a challenge given all sorts of life constraints.  In fact, it took me quite an effort of willpower to bring myself to actually ask for help and make arrangements for a playtesting session.  I'm not the sort of person that is very good at this sort of thing.  It is probably a learned skill though and I have taken an early step.

Early playtesters check that they have the rules right.
(Image source: Wikipedia.org)

Alternatively I could recruit playtesters online.  This can be even more tricky: not only do I need to have the game developed further than I might need for a local playtest (it needs to have coherent written rules and components that can either be printed out or plundered from elsewhere), but I am also competing against all the other games they could be playing and it is harder to bring my sunny personality into play in order to persuade them to play.  I am asking people to go quite a long way out of their way to assemble and play my game, so I have some work to do.

But there is a community out there, and it is possible to attract the attention of people who might be willing to try my games for me.

I manage to playtest games for other people less often than I would like, but I have a go from time to time, and it can certainly be fun: often the games are good in their own right, but it is also interesting to see other designers at work, learn something more about the design and testing process and, possibly, to see an early form of a game that might turn up at the local games shop some time down the line.

There was one game I printed out the playtest materials for and tried out with a friend.  The game was essentially pretty solid, but we felt the rules had some holes in them and didn't explain some of the basic principles properly.  I reported back a guarded thumbs-up along with a few points where things felt awkward or we didn't understand the rules properly.  The reply I received back seemed quite blunt and pointed out that we had done something wrong and should have done it differently.  To be honest, feeling that I have been told off for not being clever enough has not disposed me to playtesting other games for this designer.

Another experience involved reporting on a couple of two-player runs of a game and reporting back that we liked the game, along with some basic statistics about the plays and a few other points that we felt were worth raising.  The response from this didn't include the word "thanks", but did include a request that we play the game again with different player counts.  This reply was polite enough, but just left me feeling that I was being taken for granted.

On the other hand, some designers fall over themselves to be appreciative.  I remember one in particular who wrote back, offering warm thanks an addressing each item in a list of points I had made, including one point that was replied to along the lines of, "You misunderstood that rule, it is meant to be XYZ, but I'll make sure I make that much clearer in the next version of the rules."

So the main point of this post is a note to myself to remember that if I want people to test my games I need to treat them like valued and appreciated members of the team, and ensure that they know that I am grateful for their contributions.  If they have been blunt in their feedback, I have to take it all as good information and still stay thanks.  After all, I need to nurture any sources of help I manage to get.

And no, I'm not going to name names.