What's with all the Beta's in PC gaming ?!

[Zenoth]

I've been in PC gaming for only four or five years, or so, but I can't remember when was the moment when game developers started to offer their not-yet-released games as Beta/Alpha forms for public testing (either public for free, or still public but only if you paid for a web-site's services like FilePlanet for example).

When did it all start anyway ?!

Maybe I am not searching deep enough in my memory, but the only game for PC I can remember seeing a Beta/Alpha/Pre-Alpha for was Half-Life 2, and no, it wasn't official at all, it was leaked by a German student to the public, I know. But that was back in 2003 was it ? But before that, which games were available officially in Beta forms ? Do you guys remember ? I'm not "against" Beta's, by the way, I think it can definitely help alleviate the weight of testing phases and the time it takes to achieve a "relatively bug-free game" for the developers, if they offer it to the public. We, PC gamers are numbered by the tens of millions, so if within that group even just 50,000 people take part of a Beta test, then it's still better for a company to let those 50,000 "virtual employees" test their game for free, rather than actually pay 50,000 people to do it ... that's for sure.

But I created this thread because I've noticed that during the past year only I think I've seen more Beta's for the public than any other years combined together. I mean there must have been a dozen of such Beta's on FilePlanet alone during the past 12 months. Do you guys remember seeing that many two years ago ? Or three years ago ? And since it seems to be present in even greater numbers each years than what will it be next year and the consecutive years ? This year there's a surge of Beta's left and right. Even Universe at War has reached Beta and is now available for the public, I mean those guys developing that game are mostly from the beloved but defunct Westwood Studios, but Westwood Studios in their past NEVER gave any Beta's of their games, ever. So the mentality is changing, and not only Petroglyph Studios are concerned. There's also Hellgate: London, which is being developed by most of the team behind the original Diablo, but back then was Blizzard ever giving Beta's to the public ? I don't think they ever did.

What do you guys think about all this. What do you think about the surge of Beta's everywhere ? Should the developers keep their products internally ? Is the public-Beta concept now more of a business than anything else (how much money did FilePlanet make when they announced Crysis MP Beta was exclusive to them until they screwed up their subscribers by giving it to the non-subscribers like they did also with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s MP Beta) ? What's your personal point of view ?

 

[lupi]

Increase in speed/bandwith of the net, increase of advertising for the publisher, revenue means for the file sources for those that pay for exclusives.

 

[Canai]

I beta's heat.net back in the duke nukem days... it was a free online match-up service for a host of games. I've also beta'd Counter Strike, Caesar III, Earth & Beyond, EVE, and more. Betas are nothing new, it's just that before you had to be 'in the know' and register on the game's beta page and hope you got in.

 

[Fenixgoon]

games are bigger and more complex - the more people you have testing, the more likely you will find bugs.

broadband internet - with faster connections, it becomes cheaper/easier to distribute the necessary files.

 

[Oil]

Originally posted by: lupi
Increase in speed/bandwith of the net, increase of advertising for the publisher, revenue means for the file sources for those that pay for exclusives.

All that plus what a beta is initially for: to find and fix bugs before the software goes gold

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: OSx86

Originally posted by: lupi
Increase in speed/bandwith of the net, increase of advertising for the publisher, revenue means for the file sources for those that pay for exclusives.

All that plus what a beta is initially for: to find and fix bugs before the software goes gold

People didn't buy buggy games, so the companies figured out they could make more money betaing the game for a while, and letting some people play it before it came out, than they could by patching a broken game that no one bought It also gives them a very large number of paying playtesters.

It helps a lot sometimes (ET : QW), but doesn't help at all other times (S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but that was one of the first big betas FilePlanet ran in their current surge, and was pretty broken.)

And the number of people getting in is very small when compared to the number of units the publishers are projecting to sell. I don't have any numbers on this, but I'm pretty sure they would expect at least 250,000+ units sold, with some of the bigger name games preselling in the millions.

Some of the beta's I got into recently (I don't think I can say the name, I respect the NDA agreements I agree to, but let's just say that playing it is like relaxing on a tropical island ) have let out a very small number of keys at the first release. There were three US servers for the first two stages of the beta, and one of them was usually full. It stayed this way with just a few regulars playing until the beta went 'public' and a bunch of people who just wanted to try the game out but didn't really care about the bugs came in and filled it with noobish shenanigans. Grand total I think they release a few thousand keys, with the upper limits being 20,000 for the larger ones.

With such a diverse and loyal userbase, the devs can record hardware profiles and associate the profiles with accounts to see how the game runs on specific rigs. Takes out some of the guesswork.

It's not just places like FilePlanet doing it, either. Look at Microsoft's beta of Halo3. Firefox recognized Halo3 as a word They do it so they can begin building a fanbase before the game even comes out. And people won't care as much about bad bugs, since it is a beta, after all

 

[coloumb]

Most beta's seem to be released to paying subscribers first, then [maybe] released to the public at a later date. What a better way to get people to subscribe to services such as fileplanet or pre-pay for a game [ie: orange box]! Mof the beta's are multiplayer, so you're really not getting a good idea of what to expect in the single player part of the game.

I think public betas benefit both sides of the fence [companies and consumers] - companies save a ton of money for "free" testing and the consumer ends up getting a better product [less buggy] when it's released.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: coloumb
Most beta's seem to be released to paying subscribers first, then [maybe] released to the public at a later date. What a better way to get people to subscribe to services such as fileplanet or pre-pay for a game [ie: orange box]! Mof the beta's are multiplayer, so you're really not getting a good idea of what to expect in the single player part of the game.

I think public betas benefit both sides of the fence [companies and consumers] - companies save a ton of money for "free" testing and the consumer ends up getting a better product [less buggy] when it's released.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. hardly applies to that, but that game has been a fiasco anyway (although the modding community is literally saving the whole thing, since they pull out some very good ideas and results so far from what I've seen and tried myself, like the ABC Mod, for example, which is beyond excellent). I still play it at times, but only in single-player, since the multi-player part is filled with bugs, high pings, unexplained slow downs and other technical issues that were reported during the testing from the Beta MP test but were never fixed, or barely fixed much later on (like for patch 1.0004 which was just released recently).

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

If I remember correctly, iD released one level of Q3 as a beta so they could stress test the net code and deal with hardware issues.

 

[Stas]

Betas own. You get a chance to play the game long before it comes out, feel the performance and judge for the need of upgrade accodringly. In the end users buy games with fewer bugs and more optimized code. I just hope that they would quit the stupid key-activation thing. I mean, I understand that all those FilePlanet/Gamespot/etc sites want to make money out of air (who doesn't?) but I really disrespect the game producers for such policy (most likely imposed upon them buy the aforementioned sites).

 

[natep]

It seems like it's ramped up in the past couple of years tenfold. I used to only hear it advertised for MMO games, but it seems to work for every genre now.

I've participated in quite a few betas after, and I have to say I don't like being a part of them anymore. Seeing the game in an unfinished, buggy state stays in my mind when I go to buy the game even if it has been fixed, or when I'm playing the retail later.

 

[Zenoth]

Indeed.

And the actual developers' intention, perhaps after saving (or making) money with a public Beta, is still good. The intention (as I said, either it comes in primarily or secondarily) is to offer a bug-free game, as much as humanly possible within the development period and budget they have.

BUT ... there is a major down side to public Beta testing (even with so called "more serious" subscribers) and is it the kids (or immature adults) who don't care about actually testing the Beta per se, and just consider what they installed as being a "game", and simply mess everything up. They cheat, violate NDA's, they spam the chats with useless capital letters, they team-kill on purpose, they block one-way entrances, they destroy vehicles for no reasons ... briefly said, they are useless themselves to the whole concept of Beta testing. The best example I can find is how badly the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. MP Beta test went (I know because I've been part of it, until I "quit" it myself due to lost of interests thanks to the kids without parents caring for them nor friends at all).

And, currently, another decently good example is the Crysis Beta test, which I joined due to it being available for the non-subscribers for a few days. I play it and I do try to test it as I play. I have submitted a bug report (but unfortunately it was a known bug already). But I do my best to be civilized during game-plat, to be mature ... to be myself. But I see that sometimes (much less worse than it was with STALKER, thanks God) some people will screw everyone else's experience and concentration. In that sense, keeping Betas internally might be more productive in the end.

 

[Modelworks]

Back when pc gaming first started to grow the only beta testers a game had were ones that were in house.
There were job ads for paid beta testers.

The first beta I joined was for westwood and there online service.
Games now have to run on a much wider range of hardware than before , making in house testing not work too well. Its just cheaper to fool people into thinking they are special or priviledged to be a beta tester, when before it was a paying job

Imagine if ford came to you with a new car design and wanted you to test it for them.
The only problem is that it might stall, engine might break, lights might not work sometimes, etc. I bet you wouldn't want to do that for free

 

[JBT]

It started like 10 years ago. Open Betas are NOTHING new to PC gaming. Sure there are MORE now but thats just because its really only been the last few years that it is easy to get the content out there. Broadband makes this sooo much easier.

 

[Drift3r]

Marketing ploy plan and simple. Open Betas are not Betas in which the average user can actually have a big impact on the changes/course of the game. Real betas are closed betas where the bulk of the bug testing, player input, etc.. are really made.

Open BETAs are just gimmicky marketing ploys to sell pre-order boxes and Fileplanet subscriptions. If the game is a buggy POS game odds are a Open BETA won't change that once it launches.

/points to => Vangaurd : Saga of Bugs and Incomplete content.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

I wouldn't say that open Betas are necessarily gimmicks, Drift3r. They're often for the sake of balance, or to test game mechanics.