UFL CLOSED TEST: AN INSIDE LOOK
For a game developer, every game development journey is filled with exciting moments, challenges, and difficulties. The intricate and captivating process of creating a game often takes many years, and UFL is no exception. After years of development, after overcoming numerous complex tasks and difficult challenges, UFL is finally close to its release date. The project has built up some hype in the past years, and is quite a hot topic of conversation in the world of football gaming. But the people are wondering: can UFL deliver on its promises? Will UFL be a brand new, fascinating and truly groundbreaking experience for its audience? Hundreds of seasoned pros have poured their hearts and souls into making this project a reality. With the release date now in sight, the game is currently available for closed testing. We asked the people in charge of the game to share their favourite details, talk about what’s happening behind the scenes, and answer questions about the project and the role you, our audience, played in the development process.
The release date is drawing close and the alpha tests have started. What is a closed “alpha” test? Why don’t you release the game without external testing, skipping alphas and betas?
Eugene Nashilov, CEO: Well, I'd say you don't have to bother with testing. Some studios don't. In fact, many don't. It depends on the game.
We're releasing an Alpha to get feedback. We actively want our audience—the players—to share their feedback on what we've done. We want them to communicate to us the elements they like, the ones they don't like—every aspect of the game. So it's about the core gameplay, the meta gameplay, everything.
We consider our dialogue with the community extremely important. That's our philosophy. The one we pursue and advocate, and we want to stick to it. That means we're going to collect lots of feedback and adjust and fine-tune the game off the back of it. We need the game to be loved by the players.
Max Chernega, CTO: In the alpha, we are testing many things for the very first time. For example, our servers and infrastructure. Before the test, we couldn’t be sure how it’d turn out. That’s why we needed to test them with a small group of people first. That way we can understand where the issues are—because we know there will be issues. We're bound to have done something wrong or forgotten some detail.
Through the feedback, we can spot those issues and fix them. If we do that, when the game is released, our players won't experience any technical issues, and all the teething problems will have been resolved.
It also applies to bugs. Even though we test the game internally, we could miss many things. Maybe we just didn’t test a specific feature enough or didn't consider the way some players will play.
Mike, how important is a closed test from the perspective of game design?
Mikhail Vovchenko, Head of Game Design: No QA can provide as much data or find as many issues as even a small group of enthusiastic playing testers. From a texture hole where you would least expect it to the perfect angle for a shot, they’ll spot more than your in-house testers no matter how hard you have tried. Believe me, these early adopters can spot issues that game designers or QA teams couldn't even imagine.
In game design, there's a classic mistake. You spend lots of time working on the same game and twisting and adjusting it to your taste. Then, ultimately you end up with a game nobody can play but you.
This game is all about what happens on the pitch. But lest we forget we also have a meta-game. I won't go into detail here but, in a nutshell, this game is different from other products in this genre. We've made some decisions, and we'll have to wait and see how people react to them.
Is it more important to invite alpha players with super-hardcore experience in football simulation games? Or would you say you're also interested in casual players who might log in and play maybe once a week?
Max Chernega, CTO: It all depends on the stage you're at in terms of testing. In the early stages, it’s our "core" audience. I mean people who are very active on our social media and who are looking forward to the game being launched. Later on, we'll expand the audience to get everyone's opinion, but initially, it’s those who'll provide us with the necessary data and feedback, so we can go in and fix the most obvious, most problematic areas.
I think we need a core of like-minded people; a core of players who'll stay with the game for a long time. Often, in successful games, those players who took part in alpha testing continue to play for years. I guess they feel comfortable and enthusiastic.
That means the main task is to select a group of good testers. The second task is to create a comfortable environment for them to stick with the game.
Eugene Nashilov, CEO: We want to show people the game, we want to test it with them. And, we have to do everything that will benefit the game. To be honest, there is no alternative. Working with the audience is the only viable option. So we want to let players into the game. In the end, we want to trust them, as they trust us, and create a player-developer relationship built on mutual trust.
How do game designers balance gameplay elements, given the unpredictability of player actions? Why is testing on a wider audience essential despite statistical analysis of specific scenarios?
Mikhail Vovchenko, Head of Game Design: Generally speaking, as a game designer, I'm genuinely intrigued. How can we objectively assess the balance, for example, between dribbling and tackling? Similarly, how can you correctly balance the passing, versus, say, the long-distance shot and interception?
A game designer can break down this situation and just arrange a 1-on-1 situation—for example, a striker against the goalkeeper—and take hundreds of shots to draw some stats and all that kind of data. But that'll never replace the live game situation. The latter always brings elements of surprise and unpredictability. Honestly, a player can create something that no one—not even the game’s designer—would ever think of doing, and all by pressing the same buttons.
No game designer can imagine all of the possibilities. That's the whole point of testing on a wider audience.
What are the expectations from the feedback?
Max Chernega, CTO: Talking about feedback, we're not saying that we're going to ask absolutely everyone about everything they did. There's no guarantee that that player will even be able to tell us what he did and which buttons he pressed at what time. However, we collect a lot of statistics, so we can get a pretty good idea.
We gather tons of analytics—everything from which buttons are pressed or not pressed and when. We'll be able to look at general patterns and understand what users don't like. Let's say, we added a particular feature, but nobody's using it. The alpha testing will let us find out about things like that and fix them before the release.
What can you say about the countries your audience is coming from?
Alexander Bogomolsky, Head of Publishing: As things stand, we don't know for sure how our player audience will be distributed around the world. Not everyone around the globe plays football, even in computer games. But talking about the ratio between the Western and Eastern hemispheres, 80 to 20, 30 to 70 or 50 to 50, whatever—well, we can't do that accurately either. At least, not yet. The same goes for the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
This kind of information is very important. Ultimately, it defines where we should place our servers so that players will have a satisfactory ping. It also affects who we invite for the subsequent stages of testing. We need everyone to have someone to play with, so we have to plan it carefully.
Your alpha tests have now started. That means you are receiving information and collecting telemetry data. At what point do you decide you've got what you wanted and you can move on?
Alexander Bogomolsky, Head of Publishing: The most important sign is when we see people enjoying the game. While in the alpha, the game is not in its final version. So fun and enjoyment aren’t really the point of the alpha test, at least not initially. But we’ll be adding more and more content and mechanics. In the alpha, we test whether people like to play it and whether they like the core gameplay mechanics. When the answer is “yes” with no asterisks, then we can move on to the next stage.
Closed testing is a particularly exciting stage for us. Thanks to our testers, we can focus on specific areas and see things that we would have missed without their feedback. We appreciate everyone participating in UFL testing. Thank you so much for your support!