In recent times, I have participated in the Heroes of Newerth beta (don’t judge me) and the Gears of War 3 beta, and with any luck and lots of prayer I will soon get to play in the Dota 2 beta.
I would have played the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations beta if I had a PS3, but sadly that is still a pipe dream for me until I can convince myself to stop buying more and more games and just save up for the damn console.
The online beta is a very useful technique that developers have implemented well, of late.
It’s an overwhelmingly win-win scenario, with the public able to get their hands on a component of what is an otherwise retail title, for absolutely free (albeit for a short period of time) and the developers able to play-test and complete the necessary fixes and changes that are required to streamline the game’s performance prior to release date.
Previously, what would happen with developers is they would get a group of people called play-testers, shove them into a room, and make them play a game all day long while asked various types of questions that dealt with either their reactions to what was happening in the game, their feelings over aspects of the game, their criticisms, remarks and finally whether there was something happening that shouldn’t in fact be happening. Read as: Glitches.
Despite seeming glamorous from the outside, since they get to play the latest, greatest games long before anyone else, the job of Play-Testing is in fact just that: a job.
A tiring and tedious one that requires days of non-stop gaming and then interrogation over what they had just played.
Of course, it wasn’t always as unpleasant, with developers like Valve previously stating that Play-Testing was done far more casually and less in-your-face, and that style resulted in far more useful feedback for them. It’s no surprise then that most Valve games don’t really have open betas. Their system continues to work, and well.
Other developers were not so fortunate, and though Play-Testing on certain games would be deemed adequate to a point, upon release it would seem to the public that the necessary Play-Testing had never even occurred in the first place, what with all of the glitches, balance issues and other such problems experienced.
So developers looked to their most vast and untapped resource. Okay I lie, they’ve been tapping this resource – in a manner of speaking – for ages, and just recently, they found the most apt way to do so and certainly one that never actually harms the resource itself.
The open beta came into effect by introducing gamers to – usually – the online component of a game, providing them with a few maps and necessary inventory items (be they weapons or wands, bows or blades) and then allowing them to go wild, while the background metrics meticulously worked to record every single possible aspect of statistical information that could be acquired.
Online betas started off as pretty much free experiences, and some still are, but then – and I’m just assuming here by calling out names – the publishers no doubt came in and saw the potential for income, and decided to add incentives in order to get into said betas.
Gamers are addicted to games and we’d do anything short of questionable online practices to get our hands on the games we love. Even more so if it’s before said game even releases.
So incentives were introduced to the beta systems that developers used to publicly Play-Test their games. Pre-order this game now and get a free beta code! Pre-order a sister title and get a free beta code for an upcoming game!
Pre-order, pre-order, pre-order. Commitment issues, publishers?
Has nobody questioned the fact that publishers ask you to commit to their titles before they will let you into their betas? What does that then say of the game that is releasing to beta? I can of course, just go ahead and cancel my pre-order if I hate the beta, so let’s excuse this for now.
The second incentive that was introduced was that of the free beta code for a certain game that comes inside the Limited Edition version of another title by the same developer or publisher. Most recently this was done by Epic Games when they released the ridiculously over-the-top and awesome Bulletstorm to the public, with a free beta code for Gears of War 3 packaged inside each Epic Edition box.
There are two inherent flaws with these practices.
For one – the most obvious one at that – an open beta is meant to be a public Play-Test. There are still issues with the game that need to be addressed, and that should imply a possibility for error either with the game itself or the game’s interaction with the platform that it is running on.
This is usually why the Terms and Conditions of open beta software are so extensive and indemnify the developer from any harm brought to the gaming platform through the open beta.
The problem with this then, is that publishers are placing unnecessary emphasis on the open beta of a game by offering it up as an incentive, effectively justifying having less of the usual, cooler bonus content found in the Limited Edition or pre-ordered versions of games, like extra maps, missions or character and weapon skins.
And for what, exactly? To put our consoles at risk of error? Really?
The second flaw relates to the first in that because of the pricing of Limited Edition version – always higher than the standard retail version – you end up paying for the beta anyway. Which is to say, publishers call it an open beta, a free-to-play trial-run of the game just for you mister Limited Edition purchaser, but really you end up paying for the game anyway.
Now, because the Limited Edition versions – and indeed the pre-order versions as well – come with not much else apart from the free beta code (Bulletstorm for example offers extra multiplayer experience and not much else in the Epic Edition) it effectively kills resale value because you will have paid a few hundred rands more for the Limited Edition, yet you won’t be able to sell it for a cent more than what the standard retail edition resells for, because nothing in the Limited Edition can be re-used to set it apart from said standard retail edition.
This compared to a Limited Edition box that has posters, soundtracks, maps, game guides and much more.
The Beta Syndrome has taken over gaming as we know it. It’s up to you to decide whether that’s a good thing or not.
The Beta Syndrome << Comments and views
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