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Grumpus -> RE: why not a open beta? (9/1/2005 2:44:39 AM)
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There are several reasons why not to do an open beta. Bear in mind that I am DEFINITELY NOT speaking for David nor anyone at Matrix Games. I'm speaking solely from the perspective of a developer. They may have completely different reasons for not doing an open beta. I'll list a few common ones, though that probably might maybe have a lot to do with it.
1) If the game is open you end up with a very poor signal to noise ratio. By this, I mean that you invariably have a lot of people who aren't reporting bugs or interface/usability issues, but rather, they are petitioning for new features to be added. As you can see by these forums, there are already discussions with folks who are upset that such and so won't be included in the initial release. There are also, invariably, people who can't communicate very well - be it because of language differences or simple unfamiliarity with the terminology used in either/both computer game development and/or football. So, you get a bunch of reports of bugs that are probably real and valid, but they are very difficult to track down because the person either didn't bother to or was incapable of properly describing the bug so that it could be duplicated and tracked down.
But, if you screen everyone and ensure that they have a good level of understanding (in this case, they need to understand Football, Computer Programming, or preferably, some of both), then you can be reasonably sure that the bug reports are going to be easier to track down, and thus, they can be fixed quickly. Thus, there are no "I know there's some sort of "3rd and Goal" bug in the game, but I can't find it - guess we'll have to hold off releasing it until I do..."
2) Costs: During beta testing periods, updates can come quite quickly. I've worked on projects where we were releasing updates twice a day since our programming team was on both sides of the Atlantic. Two updates a day - almost every day - for about 3 weeks. If we had opened it up to everyone, and lots of people had signed up, our bandwidth costs for updating everyone would have been outrageous.
3) Piracy: If you go with an open beta, you need to add things into the software - stuff that makes it expire after a certain period of time, or do something to make it so that people actually have to buy the game when beta is over. (For all I know, this has already been done for this game - I'm not privy to such things, obviously). If it's an open beta, a hacker will get their hands on the software anyway, so that protection is useless. With a closed beta, though, there are only a handful of people who have access to the game and the odds are pretty good (if the screeners are any good) that you're not going to have to worry about it.
And finally - a beta test has nothing to do with marketing. In fact, one of the biggest risks a software developer can run is to let too much out of the bag before everything is ready to go. This is especially true for small developers. Since so few people have had their hands on this game, and I'm sure David doesn't have a bunch of different computers with varying configurations lying around, there are likely going to be hiccups on various things - whether it's a rogue video chipset that messes up the player meshes on the screens or whether it's something getting divided by zero on an old Pentium machine. Basically, there are lots of problems that can occur on some systems and which won't manifest themselves at all on other machines. And, of course, what if there is a game siutation or program usage that wasn't considered for whatever reason? What if it is a big problem?
With open betas, each of these little problems gets amplified and often blown way out of proportion (I've seen it happen). Because everyone has access to it, everyone is talking about it - and you know that everyone ends up focusing on the bad stuff over the good. So, IF (and everything may be fine - which is why I labeled this section as a "risk" and not an inevitability) something goes wrong, it can hurt the game's marketability before it even gets released. Things like "Holy cow - that beta I tried was so full of bugs! There's no way I'm going to pay $30 for that game when it comes out!!" can kill you.
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So, anyway, those are a few that popped into my mind off the top of my head - it's faster, more efficient, cheaper, and safer. Plus there's no chance of bad press about that status of the game should a bunch of unforseen bugs pop up. (I should note that bugs ARE inevitable in a beta, and sometimes - not even really the fault of the programmer - there are lots more than were expected because of hardware and OS variances and so on. So, it really is quite risky to let it out to the general public before it's been put through its paces).
Matrix and David may have additional and/or a completely different set of reasons for doing it this way. And, in fact, I would guess that they probably won't feel obligated to answer in anything more than in vague and general terms because it's really a matter of internal policy and personal preferences.
But, it should ease your mind that in nearly 100% of all cases, closed beta products move through testing and into production considerably faster than ones with open betas. The signal to noise ratio I mentioned above is a really critical element to getting it fixed quickly and correctly. So, hopefully, we'll be playing this game before Thanksgiving. (That's what I'm hoping for! But it could definitely be sooner, I suppose).
G.
P.S. Matrix Folks and Dave - hope I didn't step on any toes here - I was merely hoping to explain the concepts in general terms and I tried to be clear that I wasn't speaking on either of your behalves.
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