Types of Playtesters

Hahaha. Even though it is true, that sounds so politically incorrect to say that it makes me laugh.
But it's absolutely true, though. As far as i've read, "The Sims" was the first (and only?) game in recorded history to have ever been played by more females than males.

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I would add the .. Basher.
The guy that, seeing someone opening to hear it's opinion, will go into senseless series of complaints, bashing down anything it can.
That can be an extremely unpleasent experience, hearing rude remarks or complaints that make no sense, and can even ruin the 1st time experience of others also testing the game. Still a usefull playtester, if you are able to filter senseless criticism and notice sensefull problems within the rants (preferably alone with that guy, preferably with you expecting senseless complaints so you can filter it better).

I have a problem. One of my friends is a playtester. He'll happily play any game I put in front of him, and he'll even put himself at a disadvantage by trying out new and wacky things that people wouldn't think of.

The problem is in the after-play discussion. He will come up with ways to change the game that I don't care for. I don't mean that a thing should be worth another VP or another dollar, or sensible things. I mean things that I specifically don't want because they're not the kind of game that I made, or they're just out and out offensive.

How do I keep him as a playtester but increase the signal to noise ratio?

I have one friend who is very close to me, our families are friends and we've been pals since we were in diapers. Luckily, he is very much into the gaming scene, every bit as much as I am. If I come up with an idea, he's usually the first guy in line to give it a shot. There are some things that I've learned from playtesting with both this friend, and my "friendly gaming group".

1. Never Underestimate a Solid Friendship
He's given me lots of "noise" feedback, and I've shot him down. Directly. To his face. He shrugged it off. He's a better friend than that - he's not going to tear up his notes and leave in a huff just because I told him that I didn't want to change this or that about the game. And he doesn't hesitate to return the favors. I recall writing up a variation on how to play a standard game, he took the rules home, studied them well, came back and exploited every possible hole in the rulebook. Won the game hands down, and told me flat-out that the game sucked. Not that it was "the worst I had ever done" or that "he expected better from me", just that it was the most awful thing we've ever played together. Point taken, no contest.

2. Friends can help a lot with design
A lot of people design games that *they* want to play. My frequent forays into Samurai themes for example. My friend isn't a huge fan of Samurai. He watches anime, he plays Dynasty Warriors, but he's not as into their culture as I am, to him they're just cool. Whenever I show up with a game featuring samurai, he usually asks if there's any way that I could write them out, or mitigate their role in the game. It has the effect of reminding me that not everybody likes samurai, and that I'll sell more games by taking a middle ground. He also tends to give me all sorts of cool ideas that I hadn't thought of, and help to steer the game away from my usual patterns. Of course, the two of us working together to design a game has created some patterns of it's own, but at least I'm not just stabbing blindly in the dark.

3. Good friend = forgiving playtester. You never have to Solo again!
When it comes to early playtesting, a lot of people slow themselves down by playing the game by themselves several times to "work out the kinks". Not my friends. I can sit down with a game and tell them, "hey guys, just wrote this up yesterday - BREAK IT". And they will. Halfway through, if we realize that we've forgotten a rule, or I never anticipated a particular event, we write it down and brainstorm ways to fix it - often implementing new ideas mid-game. Most people don't unleash a game on their friends until they've played it several times alone, and then their friends might *still* find new loopholes that they hadn't even thought of yet, so it's right back to the drawing board, 2-3 more solo-runs, and then back to the friends. Why waste that kind of time?

4. Lie to your Friends
My local friendly group aren't close friends of mine. Within that group, there is my best friend, and a few other close friends that I hang out with outside of our weekly gatherings. So whenever I show up to the LFG with a new game to playtest, I usually tell them that I downloaded the game for free. I have a habit of exposing them to print'n'play games already, like 'Canvas Eagles' and certain dice games. So if I show up with 300 black-and-white photocopy cards all glued to the face of MtG Lands, they usually think I just stole another rulebook pdf.
This lets me play the game and judge their reactions on *several* levels. First of all, I can take an active role in the game but they'll still rip to it pieces if they don't like it (this or that is stupid, unfair, too easy, boring, etc). Secondly, if they all start asking me where they can download the rules, or how much I had to pay for the rules, I know that I have a seller on my hands and that most of my playtesting is probably done. At that point, if I wanted, I could put the game on a PoD site and probably make a few pennies. Usually though I let them have the game for free, give them all of the necessary components, and tell them to keep it around. It's strange that sometimes long after I've given up on a project or gotten bored with it, I'll show up at the store and two or three new people are playing it with some of the veterans. They work out their own answers to the rules, they talk about "how cool it would be" to have certain cards or effects made available, and do a lot of the legwork for me. Little do they know that I'm the one who created the game, or that I'm "spying" on them.