When Is A MMORPG Beta Not A Beta?

Thanks to Skotos for its editorial discussing the definition and previous use of the 'Beta phase' in relation to MMO titles. The writer argues, overall, that "The problems [in Beta] arise because of the differing agendas of the parties involved in bringing the games to and through the Beta process." He then posits that, "well before the full featureset is in place, the complexity surpasses the point where internal QA processes are adequate to cope", but "on the other hand, for the purposes of getting high-quality feedback that tells you what is wrong and where to look in order to fix it, Beta sucks." So, it's suggested, the end result is that "[massively multiplayer] Betas become exercises in community management, usually long before the team is ready to make the transition from developing a game to operating one. Meanwhile, an increasingly jaded marketplace is judging the Beta against the same standards they judge games at launch, or even years past their launch." What, if anything, can be done to ameliorate or fix these problems?

Comments

Re:How to solve it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...the developer signs that contract with all those milestones on it. That means that they believe they can complete the game by date so-and-so. Yes, everybody admits that a certain amount of slippage is going to happen...but would it kill a developer to scale their development to the time period they have agreed to?

Also, I've seen situations where small developers basically extort money out of a publisher by delaying their milestones once a project gets late in the dev cycle. The developer will then claim they can't finish it on time and plead (accurately or not) possible bankruptcy should they not get additional payments during the extension. The publisher ends up getting caught in a catch 22 - if they dont' pay, they lose all of the money which has already been invested.