Are gamers not ready to alpha/beta test products?

filmoret

I don't know how many times I've seen loads of gamers cry about alpha and beta stages of games.  They say how much the game sucks and give it bad reviews and visit their forums for years on end saying the same stuff they encountered during beta testing.  You do realize that alpha and beta aren't really the game?  Heck even launch isn't good for almost every mmo out right now.  Take GW2, ESO for example both had shaky launches and lost tons of players in beta phase.  Yet look at how they have turned into some of the best mmo's on the market.  Yet they continue to have haters who haven't played since the first week of launch or beta testing.

Honestly I don't think the majority of gamers have a maturity level that can handle alpha/beta testing a game.  A lot of them shouldn't even try to play a game until it has been launched for a year.  And then we look at H1Z1 and my entire argument is blown out of the water. 

muffins89

when the developers market and sell alpha or beta for a game,  it is then open to public scrutiny in my opinion.

stayontarget

muffins89 said:

when the developers market and sell alpha or beta for a game,  it is then open to public scrutiny in my opinion.

I cannot agree more, alpha and beta's should not be sold period. 

rojoArcueid

stayontarget said:

muffins89 said:

when the developers market and sell alpha or beta for a game,  it is then open to public scrutiny in my opinion.

I cannot agree more, alpha and beta's should not be sold period. 

Spot on, they want to make money out of testing periods so they should not complain when they get criticism. However, the majority of the "testers" dont care about testing the alpha/beta, they are paying to have access to the game to see if they like it or not... which is silly too.

Sovrath

Well, we used to "alpha and beta test" games. Problem is that alpha and beta tests are being sold by developers so they really aren't for testing.

waynejr2

Companies can do whatever they want to do.  Selling alpha and beta is up to them to decide.  Even when we were doing real alpha/beta tests, analytics were the critical metric and players often thought their feedback was more utilized than they thought.

As a software engineer, I am disgusted with the sorry state of alpha/beta testing.  But it is what it is and we shouldn't dwell on it.

Theocritus

The problem is that many of these newer MMOs are charging for people to play alphas and betas......Once people start paying for a game they feel they have the right to complain and rightly so.

BanyoHD

Theocritus said:

The problem is that many of these newer MMOs are charging for people to play alphas and betas......Once people start paying for a game they feel they have the right to complain and rightly so.

Exactly. As mentioned in many other threads here on the forums, testing used to be a "paid job". Now players willingly join Pre-Alpha, Alphas and Betas by paying for an entry. Often charging as much as up to a hundred dollars and more for you to take the game out for a spin.

As long as we gamers keep buying founder packs this trend will continue. If you charge money for your product you should be ready for critiscism. If the title is too rough around the edges when you let people playtest your game for cash, you have to be ready for the backlash which it may cause. 

waynejr2

Robokapp said:

the pay to play industry moved in pre-development areas to justify failures. gamers see through.

Next thing you know they will start asking for money before they start development!  Oh wait..........

Wizardry

First of all ,the past has proven that Alpha/Beta tests ARE most certainly the game.
Secondly if we want to buy into your thought process,then why are the developers charging money and opening full out cash shops if the game is not even fit for sale?In otherwords the developer is most certainly treating their game like it is released so why would we think otherwise?

I can simply point to a popular and well know game ...H1Z1,now 9 months after the fact  and i could count on one hand the effort that has gone into the game since it's initial cash grab.The effort would amount to what 1 person could do in 9 months working 1 hour a day and watching game shows eating doughnuts the rest of the time.

Loke666

Alpha testers should be paid, beta testers should be volunteers. 

When people pay to play something they expect a finnished product and that is actually what they in my humble opinion should get.

Now, I can live with 3 days headstart but charging money from alpha and beta testers is counter productive. Payed and volunteers will actually care about reporting errors and other issues instead of whining about them on public forums and a lot of people consider it fine to make a review of a game once they charge for it which means you get low scores since the product really isn't ready yet.

If you need money that badly you should look on alternative ways to get it in (like charging more for the game or make an expensive collectors edition, people who would pay for an Alpha surely would buy that anyways).

As for charging monthly fees for a game in alpha state we seen where that leads to with Pathfinder.

Gaming.Rocks2

Read the reviews, watch the videos and let it patch a few times before you buy a game.  That's how a buyer should behave. There's still a good chance that you'll get disappointed. 
I don't know how people expect to never get disappointed a good several years before all that. 

On the other hand I believe when an alpha/beta stage sucks (besides bugs) the game is still going to suck. I have never hated a game in alpha/beta then loved it when it was released - but that's just my personal experience. 

And another thing, indie projects that give early access masqueraded as alpha stage, are not really in alpha stage. Alpha is when you begin software testing. It's true that you add features during your alpha as well and alpha ends when feature freeze occurs. But you don't spend 6 months in pre-alpha then 4 years in alpha! I guess it's harder to "sell" pre-alpha though. 

And please don't mix crowdfunding with this. 

SpottyGekko

Let's be honest here, 95% of people who buy alpha and beta access are not there to test anything. They are there so that they can be "one of the first to play the game" and possibly also to gain as much knowledge as possible so that they have an advantage when the game actually launches.

Their presence on the servers would certainly help the developers to gain better metrics on performance and player activities, but the players themselves are mostly not there to fill in detailed bug reports with accompanying screenshots and/or video clips.

Besides, no developer has the capacity to process a few thousand bug reports a week. Instead of employing proper testers, the developer would have to employ dozens of "bug report analysts" to process the massive volume of duplications produced by tens of thousands of "real" player-testers.

filmoret

Yet they do clearly state that the game you are paying for early access isn't finished.  We all know alpha/beta isn't a finished product but somehow because we paid money we are expecting it to be different?  Maybe we should just be smart enough not to throw money at something knowing that the developers are clearly saying it isn't finished yet.  Like I said its the gamers who aren't mature enough to handle such a thing as alpha/beta testing.  ESO is a prime example and that game was free to alpha/beta test.  But Archeage had the best alpha/beta testing success of just about any game ever and look how that turned out.  Because Archeage wasn't a finished product and now it is.  The unfinished Archeage was better then the current finished one.

CrazKanuk

muffins89 said:

when the developers market and sell alpha or beta for a game,  it is then open to public scrutiny in my opinion.

Absolutely not. Apart from what you believe to be true, alphas and betas really are "testing" phases, and they SHOULD be seen as such. There are  NDAs in place specifically for the reason that they are NOT open to public scrutiny, because the game isn't done! Here's some quick history. See the whole idea of an alpha or beta is to test. There were times when ACTUAL testing took place, believe it or not. However, then betas became to "coolest" thing. They were exclusive, so everyone wanted in. So much so that there was a whoooole market for beta keys. So, then, betas became valuable. So you got people signing up using hundreds of emails just to try to get their hands on as many keys as possible. So the process of reviewing those incoming requests became a nightmare. In addition to that, you were handing keys over to people who's intent was  to sell it, which meant that there was little or no investment on the part of the beta tester to actually test the game. Shoot! Blizzard is a perfect example. I remember seeing Hearthstone beta keys for hundreds of dollars. 

So, the real question is, why not? 
1) You're getting shitty testing either way
2) Your game is getting torn a new asshole either way for quality issues
3) You have a relatively low percentage of people reporting bugs either way

The biggest difference, the money goes into the pocket of the developer. As far as I'm concerned, this is a solution, not a problem. It's a solution that allows developers to capitalize on their own IP where others were before. That's not greedy, that's just good business. Nobody says you need to buy into a Beta/Alpha. In fact, if you're complaining about buy in, then I would suggest not, because you probably won't be helpful anyway. 

LynxJSA

rojoArcueid said:

stayontarget said:

muffins89 said:

when the developers market and sell alpha or beta for a game,  it is then open to public scrutiny in my opinion.

I cannot agree more, alpha and beta's should not be sold period. 

Spot on, they want to make money out of testing periods so they should not complain when they get criticism. However, the majority of the "testers" dont care about testing the alpha/beta, they are paying to have access to the game to see if they like it or not... which is silly too.

Agreed. Almost all the problems with perception regarding alpha and beta have been brought on by the devs themselves. It's the price they pay for their early hype and funding. 

Amathe

Every time a beta test takes place, it comes with a slew of posts to the effect "I am a worthy beta tester - you are an unworthy one who just wants to play." 

Developers are sophisticated enough to set the bar for admission to their beta wherever they want it. If they picked someone just because they needed a player with a certain specific set of hardware, then that's what they got. They can also remove and replace people they feel are not contributing sufficiently.

Probably what they don't need are players who are critical of their fellow players, players who waste time boasting of their believed beta uberness, and players who have an opinion (and a corresponding need to express that opinion) on literally freakin everything. 

Octagon7711

Something I read long age, "Money amplifies things."   When you add subscriptions, packs, ships, cash shops into an alpha or beta you get greater feedback both positive and negative.  The more money involved the greater the feedback.

mmoguy43

Most gamers probably aren't prepared for the rough state at Alphas but they have proven they are more than willing to throw money at anything in almost any state. Both sides should be more responsible once there is money being exchanged.

[speculation below]
In SOE's case they got far too comfortable spending more of Sony's funding $ than they could realistically recoup. Then Daybreak happened. H1z1 launch was probably half overconfidence and half $ desperation. While they did have funding, Landmark for the most part had a really fast development cycle and was promising future for EQN; right up to Daybreak, when they are just short of pulling the plug.
After Daybreak they have had a long stretch of slow development and a poor effort to build on the core gameplay of all their games because most of effort is being redirected into making their games profitable.

olepi

Alpha and beta tests have a real meaning in the software world. But "testing" in the game world has become another term for "early access". The developers are selling early access, and they deserve whatever criticism they get. Charging for early access means the game is released, no matter what they try to call it.

jalexbrown

In this modern age of MMOs, alpha and beta tests are done for one very simple, business-oriented reason.  It's not about the quality of the game, really, because that will all get fixed internally.  These games that offer paid alpha/beta access still have internal testers to find the bugs.

Of course our modern world of paid alpha/beta access is in part a cash grab, but it's not even entirely about that.  It's about finding the people that are early adopters.  It's about finding the people that will pay and put up with the bugs and the lack of polish in alpha/beta and still praise the game.  They need to find the early adopters that love their game, because the early adopters then go and evangelize the game to majority.  This way on launch day there is some sort of mass-market buzz around the game.  This is the Law of Diffusion.

jmcdermottuk

Unfortunately the terms Beta Test and Alpha Test have been as badly corrupted as that old chestnut MMO. I beta tested quite a few games in the past and they were proper beta tests.

Then SOE offered to sell a beta entry to, I think, SWG. I might be wrong on the MMO but it was definately SOE that did it. They wanted $5 for a beta CD to be sent out and access to the test. This was before broadband and most of us were still on 56k dial up. The $5 was for the media and the postage.

Now we have $100 early access packages or "Founder Packs" that get you into Alpha/Beta. We have F2P games in  so called Beta with a working cash shop, I'm looking at you War Thunder. Beta is now a marketing tool or just an excuse to start charging for shop items early in an unfinished game.

Now we have Star Citizen. What is it 90 million now? For what? A dogfight module and a hangar with some nice ships to look at.

And people fall for it.

I'm not surprised these games get slagged off on forums when they're charging people good money for an unfinished product. They deserve to be called out on every fault found and hounded relentlessly. I think it's an abhorrent practice and it should be outlawed. If anyone should be paying money it's the devs who should pay us for testing their game for them.

BigRambo

Considering most MMO's "released" since 2010-11 are still in beta for the most part, it's kind of easy to understand why people are "crying" about not wanting to play or "test" a game in alpha / beta anymore. And it's even more degrading when a game in Alpha has a 100% functional cash shop.  So yeah, not that hard at all to understand why people are fed up.  

grimal

I try not to beta test products any more.  I just don't find any value in it, aside from trying out the game before I potentially purchase it.

Why do I not find value?

Return on investment.  I get very little back after reporting a bug that I may have spent some time trying to isolate as such.  There is no guarantee that the bug report submitted will amount to anything, and more often than not, I usually don't see a fix within a reasonable time frame (I think it took a year or two for one of the bugs I reported in a previous beta to be addressed).  So it amounts to a lot of my time (which I value) to be spent on something that essentially provides no benefit to me.  I don't get compensated for this time and I usually just become frustrated after the experience.

The last beta I participated in was Archeage.  I thought I isolated a problem, identified it and sent this to the bug team.  To this day, the bug/inconsistency has not been addressed.

I find that life is too short to waste on trivial matters like these.  Unless I am going to be reimbursed for this, it's just not worth my time and frankly, this is free work being done on your time for the devs and publishers.

It's free labor.  Might be fun if you are bored or have a lot of free time, but as an adult I do not.

stio89

Most players don't play alpha/beta to find/report bugs or give feedback like intended, They play alpha/beta to get early access and exclusive ingame stuff. To answer your question no most gamers aren't ready/good at testing alpha/beta products but we are where we are and devs make money off it now so no going back.

This is why the vast majority of mmo's these days turn out to be trash.

Albatroes

Seeing as most alphas/betas are bought into now, companies aren't going to take criticism seriously anyway. But do you really think that someone that buys into a alpha/beta will be able to seriously test/critique a game? I think not.