Small independent (indie) game startups face fierce competition when developing games with limited time, budget, and resources. Continuously testing and experimenting with new ideas, features, and content is essential to validate and guide development toward a viable and successful game. Such continuous experimentation (CE) requires access to users and user data, which is often very limited in the early stages of development, both in general and, in particular for indie game companies. We provide insights and recommendations on how to perform experimentation and game testing in pre-release stages of indie game development based on an exploratory interview survey with 10 independent game developers from different companies. We provide a framework for CE that highlights key parts to consider when planning and implementing an experiment. Current practices for experimentation within indie game development are also described for the early development stages of ideation, preproduction, feature production, and content production. Our empirical findings offer insights and recommendations into how to conduct experiments during pre-release stages of game development, specifically for Indie game companies. Other software startups, particularly those with a value proposition centred around interactive and satisfying user experiences, can also benefit from our research.

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