Let Him Who Is Without Sin into Beta
There is a bit of a hubub over at FoH because the folks at Flagship Studios announced that you will get a key to the Hellgate: London beta if you purchase one of the fancy Weta Collectibles figures, which run $225 and $250. Can you guess what the noise is? That’s right: “OMG they’re trying to sell beta keys for $225!!!”
Okay purists, climb atop your mountain and pontificate about how evil the Flagship people are for doing this, and be sure to go after any other company (such as defacto MMO whipping boy SOE) that has offered beta keys to one of its products if you make a related purchase. But you better save a little ire for yourselves, because gamers are as guilty as anyone for today’s effed-up beta climate.
Yeah, I’m a gamer too, and it sucks that betas have become marketing opportunities instead of development periods used for polishing an unfinished product. Somebody with more spare time than I do can trace the history of how this came to be, but for purposes of this discussion it really doesn’t matter. However it came to this, betas are a fiasco that often do as much harm for a product as they do good.
But it isn’t just greedy CEOs or crazy marketing departments that foster this atmosphere. A hell of a lot of players want betas to be their way to try an upcoming game for free. If they don’t like the beta, they won’t buy the game — even though the entire premise of beta is that the game isn’t supposed to be done yet. That’s like biting into a half-cooked steak and assuming it won’t taste good once it’s finished cooking.
Look folks, though it sucks, this is now standard operating procedure for the industry. Getting holier-than-thou about it isn’t going to change anything, and at this point it’s more than a bit questionable whether anyone has the right to get bent out of shape. Because like gold farming, companies wouldn’t go for PR opportunities like this if gamers weren’t eating it up.
For the record, I think those Hellgate figures are pretty damn cool. I think giving beta keys away is just a nice gesture toward statue buyers who are obviously pretty dedicated to their IP, so I have no issue with it. If Flagship was trying to use beta as a revenue stream, it would be easy to come up with a couple dozen ways to do so more effectively. I think those complaining about this move need to check the locks on their glass houses.
If you think it best to get feedback from the IP’s hardcore fans while there’s still time to do something with it, (i.e. “beta”), that’d be one way to identify some of them.
“Keep the bird in hand, then go for the two in the bush,” rather than, “Release bird, then go for the (now) three in the bush.”
Not saying I agree with it, just that I could imagine reasonable people arriving at the conclusion that people buying $250 dolls are big fans that they definitely want in their beta.
But… It may be that releasing the bird in hand would allow you to catch from one to three birds; while that keeping the bird in hand pisses-off the two in the bush, so they split and one’s all you get.
We have an emotional sense of fair-play that overrides logic, so it’s a tough call.
That is: A guy getting nothing wants everyone to get nothing. Even if he personally is getting nothing regardless. We views it as unfair as losing something others get to keep. Even as unfair as if others gain the thing we lose.
You want your hardcore fans, but don’t want to piss-off all the other fans, some of whom are also hardcore… well, ’til they feel you treated them unfairly.
And sometimes you might not think a person is entitled to the sense of injustice they’re claiming; so discount the negative impact of the decision as though whether it should be so has anything to do with whether it is so.
Like I said, tough call. Might have been best not to advertise the decision to throw-in a beta key. It hurts feelings, and can’t possibly sell that many more figurines. Can it?
If so… well, geez, just sell beta keys for $200.
That sounds better than “trying to” anyway. And hey, $200.
The thing is, though, that I have never seen an MMO in beta that got noticeably better by release. Less buggy, maybe, more stable, maybe, but different enough that I can’t judge how it will turn out? Nope.
By the time they start letting in lots of testers (I’ve been in several closed betas and several more open ones, but never super early on), they’re just doing bug catching and load testing and such. If the game sucks during that phase of the beta, it’s gonna suck at release.
By the time we launch our game will have been in closed beta for nearly two years. During that time we’ve added the player-driven economy, added sword-fighting, made three or four major retuning passes on ship combat, and massively upgraded much of the art. Now only a small number of our beta testers actually witnessed those changes because we knew the game wasn’t ready for large numbers of people to see it, but those people who were invited gave us incredibly valuable feedback and helped shape the game.
Of course no changes of that magnitude will happen in the last few months before launch. If you are spending that time fixing bugs and polishing up your tuning, you are adding loads of risk to your launch. That makes what you say essentially true. If you’re only seeing the last few months of testing, you are seeing a game that’s feature and content complete and is just polishing up and load testing. It’s in the months or years before that where the real magic of beta happens.
Once upon a time the difference between the small closed test and the big open test would be that one would be called Alpha and the other would be called Beta. I don’t know what happened to alpha tests, but these days everybody seems to call them “beta” too. I blame marketing.
This isn’t the first time you’ve tackled this subject, Steve. Remember “Beta – What Is It Good For? (Absolutely Nothing)”?
“Now granted, part of this is the industry’s fault. Somewhere along the line, PR and marketing people got into the mix and decided that beta makes a great tool to draw attention to an upcoming game. They started staging contests to win beta slots and made it possible to buy one’s way into beta by preordering the game (or perhaps other games by the same company). And since these tactics have proven successful no matter how much they may be maligned by purists on message boards, they are likely to keep on happening.”
You were right then. You’re right now.
Beta is marketing. Ironically, I think we’ll see the same thing at 38 Studios when it comes time to “Beta Test”. I dare you to prove me wrong, Steve.
And to be fair, overhyping a beta and selling/giving away slots to pre-orders or various contest winners does come with some significant risk. If your game isn’t ready for prime time, you’re going to see some angry folks whispering lots of bad things about your title, before marketing would like them to (NDA or not).
Like anything MMO related, it always seems to come back to RvR. This seems pretty balanced to me.
So alpha is the new beta and beta is the new gold?
“Beta is marketing. Ironically, I think we’ll see the same thing at 38 Studios when it comes time to “Beta Testâ€. I dare you to prove me wrong, Steve.”
A beta key with the purchase of X BoSox tickets? Hmm. Sounds like a winner to me
[...A beta key with the purchase of X BoSox tickets? Hmm. Sounds like a winner to me...]
I’d hit it.
[...] discussed the change in perception about what beta means before, and Garriott’s interview illustrates my points nicely. Clearly the marketing [...]