If you want people to find your game, you need it to be on the front page of the Text Adventurers web site. If it is getting five star reviews great, but even if your game is the best ever, that will take time. Before that, you need to get you game on the "Latest" list. And if you get your game beta-tested, that is not going to happen. You upload it as unlisted while it is beta-tested, then, a few weeks later, when the problems are ironed out, change it to be published.

But the web site considers its release date to be when you first uploaded it, and by the time it gets past moderation, it will buried five pages back in the list of latest releases, lost in a morass of untested Quest games and games written in other systems.

So do not get anyone else to test your game, just put it out there and hope; at least for a short while it will be on the front page, and people will play.

This sounds like an odd conclusion...

But at any rate, to work around this quirk of the Quest publishing system, you can always upload an initial game to use for beta testing (maybe even with "Beta" in the title), and then once the code is "ready for release", upload the game again for public release. Just be sure to generate a new game ID on the "game / Setup" page so that the website will allow it to be uploaded again as a different instance.

This is my plan. I have set Deeper back to unlisted, and will upload again later as a "new" game.

My point here is to highlight an issue that actively discourages beta-testing of Quest games. Anyone coming to the Text Adventures web site and looking at the latest releases will find a bunch of Quest games that are not beta-tested, and a bunch of games from other systems that probably are (because they will only come to this site once the game is satisfactory, and then, only if they think their game is half-way decent). They are then likely to conclude that the other systems are better for serous games.

I understand what you're saying. I guess I just don't see it as an "active discouragement" of beta testing. To me, it's just a minor issue, and sometimes issues have unintended effects. I doubt Alex coded the site in a way to discourage beta testing (or even had testing in mind). And in my experience, throughout my work with spondre, both in developing, testing and releasing it, I never encountered (or perhaps noticed) what you're referring to.

I had more success with actually letting people know my game existed (via forums, etc) rather than relying on a fairly transient mention in "Latest" to make players aware of my release. If that helps...

It is indeed an issue. I just find your title a bit sensationalistic, especially since they are only tenuously related and there are workarounds if it matters.

The first thing I thought when I read the OP, was that simply generating a new ID when you're ready to publish publicly, would avoid this problem... wouldn't it?

If you email me a link to the game I can update its published date in the database. I can fix up any data on this site if you just ask and let me know what needs changing and how.

I know I need to tweak how publish and categorisation dates are handled - see also Peter Pears's constantly-updated thread in the Site Announcements and Feedback forum. I do get round to improving how the site works occasionally, as spare time and my own priorities permit. Some suggestion-making styles work better than others.

So uploading the game with a new ID is not the answer then?

You can do that if you want.