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."

Comments

Ding! Wrong answer.

[pcgamez]

"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."

That is precisely what I am NOT seeing. One if the biggest problems with reviews is that the reviewer rarely depends on the product (or even pretends to). For instance, take a new car review. The reviewer might mention (this happened in a long term study in a major car magazine recently) that they had to have it in the shop on average once every three weeks for eight months. For those of us in the real world, being without our vehicle for at LEAST 2-3 hours (often 2-3 days) every month would cause major problems. For them, it is a minor issue because they are not dependant on the product.

The same applies to gaming. If I purchase a product and it won't work correctly out of the box on my system (most recent example: galciv2), I can't play it. This is because I have one decent gaming system. Sure, for those out there that have more than one gaming system it is a minor inconvenience, but for the other 99%... Reviewers constantly ignore this. If they have that issue they simply use another review system and note it in the review. The game may lose 2/10 points for that. Unfortunately, saying a game is say 7/10 including that issue does not reveal the actual rating of the product, because many people will be unable to use it, making it a 0/10.

The response to this is often "just wait for a patch." Fantastic. I paid $50 for a game that by the time it is playable for me the retail price has dropped to $40 and I am just then getting to play. Can I take it back? Nope, not under current laws. Does the consumer get screwed? Yep.

Is this the case anymore?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I know I complain when people whine about news being old, but I think this story missed the mark by about 10 years.

It used to be that any game I bought had about 10 patches before the month its was released changed.

Now, it seems like game are in perpetual development, NOT being released to customers, ever (Duke Nukem Forever). Games like Half Life 2 and Quake 4 were in development for years and missed umpteen deadlines before they finally came out, and the developer's excuses were they wanted to make it perfect.

While I don't play the whole plethora of games available today, I still usually pick up the popular titles. I find very few times that any of the big releases have any issues that prevent enjoyable gameplay. When a patch is made available (months after release), it usually tweaks games settings or fixes (usually) any multiplayer networking problems. These kinds of issues can only be encountered once something enters wide release. No beta environment could every duplicate what the open market can find for bugs (re, beta testers are usually people in the know, real life is actually filled with morons and people without a clue).

I seldom ever find myself using a game that feels like a beta.

The problem I have is, I would rather a company release a game that might still have a few lingering issues, and then patch it later, rather then holding a game from release for 12 - 18 months to make it perfect. As long as those issues do not interrupt gameplay, or are only encountered infrequently or very randomly, then I won't mind playing the game. What I can't stand is the idea that developers spend 3 months tracking down a bug that maybe only 5% of the market would ever encounter, and that only being once in their life time.

HL2 and Duke Nukem Forever are extremes in this case, where people make it a career to hype about a game that takes years to develop, and then keep postponing it indefinitely. For the most part, I don't need a game to be perfect on release, just good enough to play without too many interruptions or problems. I would be hypercritical of a game that has bugs but was still delayed 12 - 18 months to make it perfect over a game that was released too soon but has a quick patch cycle.