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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."
I just hope that the PS3 with hard drive isn't going to allow game developers to skip QA the way they do with PC games.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I agree that the number of games released in a buggy state is getting way out of hand. When I buy a game, especially for $50, I should be able to take it home and play it. Since that never happens, I just play the waiting game. I almost never buy a game when it releases; instead waiting a few months. The price goes down, and patches come out, so I pay less for a game that plays better than at launch. Sure, I don't get to be the first guy on the block to play, but that's not a big deal when I'm saving $10-20 bucks a game. And it's not like the game is any less fun if you wait. Hearts of Iron II is just as fun when it came out as it is now. Plus it runs smoother thanks to patches. And cost about $30. Seems like a win/win scenario to me.
This will only change if all you idiots will stop buying buggy unfinished games!
As long as you keep buying beta-quality stuff, and the companies keep making their sales and profit goals, they'll keep doing it.
Duh.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
This is why I like console games a bit better. There's exceptions, but they tend to just work. They're kind of the Macs of the gaming world: just one system to design for.
Pretty much since the internet made it plausible to distribute patches. Most games have had significant patches since at least 1996. So the article might better say: game devs are still relying on users to discover significant bugs in their products, and this status quo has maintained its strength in spite of a decade of complaints from pseudo journals.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Yeah, but Google's betas are actually labelled as such and given to the people testing them for free. That's a lot different than selling something as a release and letting your paying customers do the testing for you.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Aside of having cheap beta-testers (and this practice continuing as long as we're dumb enough to jump on every hype the studios present us): It's another anti-cracking feature.
When a game is released, the cracking groups jump it and try to beat each other in the attempt to release the 0day. But a crack for a patch? Has no priority. You will more often than not notice that the game is cracked the day, or before the day, it appears in the store. A crack for a patch can be delayed by days, sometimes even more than a week.
Of course, this also serves as an annoyance to those who use cracked games. They have to get the patch, and the corresponding (not any, but the corresponding) crack.
Let's face it. Game studios have many reasons to release buggy betas, and zero reason to provide us with finished games. So why should they? As long as we buy their buggy betas, this won't stop.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
back in 1998....
The more things change the more they stay the same I suppose.
Monstar L
A few years ago I downloaded the demo of Sim Golf and loved it. So I went out and bought the game. BIG MISTAKE. That game was horrendously buggy and most of the bugs were glaringly obvious too. Token example: golfer complain about having to walk up hills, so you get them golf carts. When driving a golf cart up hill... they would complain about walking up hills. They fixed this, but it's the kind of thing that struck you instantly and should have been caught. Add in bugs that prevented you from editing your courses, playing your courses, and other such things and the game became almost unplayable and lost all it's fun.
This is one of the reasons why I stick to console title now, but as I've said I rent them because this kind of stuff is starting to creep in (combined with just plain bad games). This is a real shame because if I find a game that I really like, I won't buy it because I beat it while it was rented and I have no reason to go buy it since I won't play it. It is a very rare exception that I buy the game (Frequency and Amplitude are about the only two).
There are only a few companies and game series that I will buy without playing first. Nintendo is probably 90% of that. Harmonix is another company that has achieved that status for me. Other companies that had it decided they didn't care and lost it due to blunders (bad games, buggy games, whatever).
If you buy a game and it's buggy... RETURN IT. COMPLAIN to the company and the retailer. It is DEFECTIVE. If you put up with that kind of treatment, it will only get worse (as history has shown).
I think a good test is the zero day patch for game-play. If there is a patch out when the game is released (or within any short time frame) that fixes game-play bugs (hardware compatibility stuff is OK) then that company just doesn't care. Don't give 'em your money.
Let's look at Nintendo. I can't remember experiencing any bugs in their games (I've seen them in plenty of others). Do you remember what happened when it was found out that Pokemon Gold & Silver wouldn't let you harvest berries after you had been playing for a year or two? Many companies would say "too bad" or "here's $5" or "send it it, but you'll lose all your data". Nintendo fixed it. For free. On a two year old game. And then even gave you a rare item or a rare Pokemon as an apology gift. Pure class.
And notice it took like two years of playing to find that bug. I realize that Pokemon Gold and Silver are less complex than Oblivion and other recent games... but the sheer number of bugs in such a large volume of games can't be blamed on complexity alone but hubris and an uncaring attitude towards the consumer.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
First off, I should probably lay out my credentials. My name is Michael Russell, and I'm the QA Manager for Ritual Entertainment. We're going to be releasing "SiN Episodes: Emergence" over Steam on May 10.
In some ways, Greg Atkinson is absolutely right, but he seems to be right for the wrong reasons.
There are three global problems in game development: marketing usually promises a date that cannot be met, throwing more people at a problem cannot fix it, and bugs found at the end of a project are hard to impossible to fix.
The marketing date is a huge issue because 90% of the time, the people making the game have no buy-in regarding it. They're working towards being done when it's done, and then when they get told that they have six months when they need a year, things get implemented too fast and half-assed.
Of course, here we are at six months out with no testing so far. In fact, the game is generally in an untestable state due to the huge influx of new, untested, unstable code and/or assets. Several major developers and publishers are now moving to the "monkey" model of testing: hire 100 temps for six weeks at the end, have them hammer on the game, and the end result is 5,000 bugs with little time to fix it.
So, the team gets the game to a basic level of functionality, throws it in a box, and gets to work on the patch while the box winds its way to retail.
Until the industry as a whole learns that QA is no longer just a line-item expense but a necessity, we're going to have issues like this.
Console developers are starting to get it, but mostly because the platform holders have a set of tests that every game released on the console must pass. Fail one test or a permutation of one test, and there is a high likelihood that you won't ship. Suddenly, spending an extra few dollars on testing early to find and fix the problem doesn't seem like a big expenditure compared to the nightmare that is missing your street date.
I'm happy that we've had testing on "SiN Episodes: Emergence" from day 1. Are there still going to be bugs? Always...there's nothing you can do to eliminate bugs entirely. It's the nature of software development. But by getting on the project early and testing through to the end, we're able to make sure that the game is stable, completable, and fun out of the box.
And for a game, that's all you can ask.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
It usually isn't the game developers that push out buggy games, but the publisher.
When the publisher isn't the developer, it's the publisher who sets the release date. Then everyone complains about bugs and the developers go back and fix everything they would have caught with sufficient testing..
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Honestly, what impact would random hardware configurations have?
We've got either Direct3D or Direct3D for our graphics API. DirectSound or DirectSound for our audio API. DirectInput or DirectInput for our input API. (I do realize I'm discluding OpenGL and SDL, which are both great tools, but it's to make a point).
So with Direct3D, DirectInput, and DirectSound wrapping different hardware, what's the big deal? I can buy the argument that console games will be more optimized because you can get up close and personal with the hardware, since everyone will have the same damn thing.
No, the differences will be things like games crashing or the computer crashing due to bugs in the DirectX side of the driver, or the kernel-side of the driver.
So what about gameplay? With gameplay bugs, that's logic in the program. If I shoot you and you don't die, that's not because I have an ATI video card instead of an nVidia card, it's because the hit detection algorithm is broken.
Non-fixed platforms mean I have to deal with lower performance (often poorly tuned game design is the major factor here) and maybe crashes, but it doesn't mean I should put up with broken game logic.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
[Crap, I knew I should have pressed "Preview"]
Publishers set the release date. Really? And HOW do they set the release date? By asking the developer, "when will this be ready?" So the developer's failing to deliver the product on in time is not the publisher's fault.
The problem, as you say, is with inexperienced developers:
11 months later...This is obviously the fault of the developer, who should have simply maintained, "It will take 24 months."
http://outcampaign.org/