DICE: "Maybe we shouldn't do a beta"

The Battlefield 3 beta has run its course and suffice to say, there has been a lot of negative feedback. At the same time, a lot of gamers have had good things to say, but sadly, many have been unable to look past the fact that the game is currently not finished, and the entire point of the beta is to get it ready for launch.

Speaking specifically about the PC beta to Kotaku, DICE developer Patrick Bach vented some of his frustrations at the overly negative feedback they have been getting from certain players.

“The problem with having a beta is that you hand out a product that is not done. Deliberately. You do it because you want to get feedback on not only what the players think, but also on how things are holding up, what can we read from the network traffic, how is everything holding up, how are all of the systems that are brand new holding up. You could argue that maybe we shouldn’t do a beta,” said Bach.

When asked about a potential solution to all the negative feedback, Bach responded quite simply, saying “One way of fixing the problem is… don’t make betas. At least not open betas.”

“Because often when you see betas, sometimes they are actually demos. But they call it a beta, to sound cool. This was a real beta, and I don’t think people are used to it. They get the product, and they think, “you have to entertain me,” because it’s an entertainment product,” said Bach.

Puting a positive spin on the negative feedback, Bach claimed that DICE should have fixed around 90% of the problems found in the beta in time for the game’s launch later this month.

He even compared it to the Bad Company 2 beta, which also received horrendous flack for a variety of problems. “It was a complete disaster, according to the forums, it was the crappiest game ever. And then we patched it and fixed some issues,” said Bach, going on to say that “Battlefield 3 is much better today, day one, than Bad Company 2 was, day one.”

So there you have it. In a nutshell: haters are gonna hate, and we should all calm down and stop judging the game based on the beta, because it’s not yet intended to be an “entertainment product.”

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