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Everyone's A Beta Tester
kukyfrope writes "Many people dream of being videogame beta testers but, in reality, a lot of us already are. GameDaily's Greg Atkinson discusses how developers are using the ability to patch games as a crutch for launching games ahead of schedule, using a 'we'll patch it later' mentality, as opposed to extensive play testing." From the article: "What's going on lately that so many games are being released unfinished? Why are the people now paying to essentially beta test the games rather than purchasing completed games? ... If you scan through the PC reviews, on this and any other site, you will notice an overabundance of games that lost points or otherwise hampered their players' experience by being unpolished, full of bugs, and sometimes downright annoying to play. Everything from controls and camera movements to balancing issues, broken quests, and of course graphical errors are abundant in probably half the titles on the shelf these days. It's become habit to look for any patches to a game while I'm installing it, and that's not right."
Not a quality function. Yes of course users are doing Beta testing, the whole purpose of Beta testing isn't to find bugs in the product, but to find out if you're hitting the market and providing the features that people want!
Alpha testing is actual testing, and what game testers who work at places like EA do. Not Beta.
That used to be true.
But I've found bugs in every game I've played on the XBOX lately. Prince of Persia 3 has sound bugs (sound doesn't stop playing even after you've left behind the area that was 'generating' the sound - e.g. a water fountain), game-freeze bugs, and control bugs. Lego Star wars has a game-freeze bug - very reproducible, just hang out outside the Cantina long enough. Tomb Raider has "Lara gets stuck" bugs. I could go on.
Bugs, bugs, bugs. They're everywhere. You know how some sites break down their scores - Audio, Graphics, Tilt, etc? They should add another one that conveys how many bugs you are likely to encounter per hour of gameplay, and how catastrophic they are.