Does the video game industry treat us as beta testers?

  • Two Factor Authentication is now available on BeyondUnreal Forums. To configure it, visit your Profile and look for the "Two Step Verification" option on the left side. We can send codes via email (may be slower) or you can set up any TOTP Authenticator app on your phone (Authy, Google Authenticator, etc) to deliver codes. It is highly recommended that you configure this to keep your account safe.

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
10,065
218
63
somewhere; sometime?
idea for this thread was taken from the following exchange:
Very few games are perfect on launch day.
I disagree. Most of my favourite games were finished on release.
Raise your hand if you're sick of paying to beta test some ****.
it's not really that bad.
is it?
maybe it depends on the type of game you're playing, or what you plan to use that game for the most (ie. singleplayer vs. multiplayer).
or maybe it's just you and your cynical personality that exaggerates every little flaw you find ;)
in my personal experience, it seems like the majority of my favorite games have been nice and polished right out the box. though I also do the majority of my gaming on the PC as singleplayer. pretty much the only time I play multiplayer is on console, usually 360, with some buddies.

but I started typing out (what I thought was) a short list of the games I've played regularly the last few years which were basically flawless from the get go. and then I stopped, erased it, and started typing this paragraph. because the list of "finished" games was going to be much greater than that of any game I've had a real problem with. in fact, at this point I'd have to do the opposite list; of the only games which have tried my patience. and usually, even with those, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get them up and running. that, or I didn't have to wait very long for the developer to drop a patch which addressed the biggest issues.

that list (in no particular order) looks something like...

  • Fallout 3
  • Grand Theft Auto 4
  • Empire: Total War
  • Black and White 2
  • Test Drive Unlimited
and uhh, that's it. I think.
I mean, I'd really have to think hard or go back a lot further to remember the last time I was playing a game that made me feel like I was performing some second-hand Q&A.

the intention here is not to start another "PC gaming is dead" trend, because I don't believe that's the case at all. in spite of some recent "consolization" (a ridiculously over-used term, I might add) and poor console -> PC ports, I feel like that for the most part the games being released today are just as solid as ever. at the very worst, maybe they're being dumbed down a little. but as a relatively strict PC gamer since at least 1999, I've gotta' admit, I don't see any end in sight. and there are still at least 4 to 5 new games that I'm really looking forward to (and really end up enjoying) every single year.

seems like a lot of people are simply overreacting lately.
is it justified?
I dunno.
you tell me.
 

Capt.Toilet

Good news everyone!
Feb 16, 2004
5,826
3
38
41
Ottawa, KS
All 3 of those examples are from the Black Ops thread and for good reason. They obviously released a version of the game that didn't go through any sort of play testing, and I think releasing the game in such a state is what invoked those peeps to scream beta tester. The last game that I have played that had any sort of non playabilty was Sonic 06, and before that I have no idea.
 

Fuzzle

spam noob
Jan 29, 2006
1,784
0
0
Norway
It's just cheaper to release it earlier, I guess. Plus the fact that how huge and complicated games are today compared to back in the day, I suppose you're more likely to see a glitched npc in fallout3 than you were in the first zeldas.

I don't really mind unless it's really bad, like "what were they thinking" bad. As long as I enjoy the game overall I don't mind occasional hickups. On a pretty regular basis I'll be enjoying a game, then run into just a minor thing that barely catches my attention, except if it weren't for the guy going "this is the buggiest game I've ever played!".


I think Anarchy Online is the most messed up post release game I've ever played. It would chug so hard in towns even if you met the requirements that you had to look straight into the ground not to freeze up and be able to navigate. One of the better bugs was that the game would kick you out but you were still logged on, and you wouldn't be able to log back on until you timed out, which took literally days. It took them several months to implement LoS checks - even for melee, so indoor missions was just tabbing through and attacking targets you couldn't see.
 
Mar 19, 2002
8,616
1
0
Denver Co. USA
Visit site
Of recent releases (that I've played) there hasn't been much to complain about, really.

A really annoying bug in Dark Sector where if an enemy was firing an automatic weapon, your camera would start skipping all over, almost in rythm with the gunfire.
I blame Aspyr for that though, since all their ports are crap, and they don't listen to people or release patches.

I had to jump through 3 or 4 hoops to get sound working properly in Bioshock, even post-patch, and trying to exit back out of the Medical Pavilion would crash the game.
 
Last edited:

Hunter

BeyondUnreal Newsie
Aug 20, 2001
7,417
61
48
37
...Behind You...
www.unrealfans.com
F1 2010 had loads of bugs on release which should have easily popped up in the smallest testing session.

Madden 11 has a number of bugs which should have been picked up just by playing the game, one which could stop any online MP gaming (now patched) loads of commentator bugs which gets really annoying the list goes on.

Borderlands (PC) had a bug on the final boss that meant you couldn't get the kill shot zoomed in on a scope.

Just a couple.
 

tomcat ha

Well-Known Member
Feb 2, 2002
2,819
56
48
35
Visit site
Armed Assault 1 and 2 were fairly buggy but then again both are very ambitious titles by a small studio which admitted that they ran out of money so hard to release. The patch support for both these games is excellent.
 

Hadmar

Queen Bitch of the Universe
Jan 29, 2001
5,557
42
48
Nerdpole
In Ghostbusters one of the opra singer ghost things managed to get so high that it was unreachable with the beams. It also was pretty much stuck in mid-air. Had to reload the scene. And the game gets a frame rate drop down to almost zero every couple of seconds unless you set the priority of the game's process to low(!).
 
Last edited:

Sjosz

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Dec 31, 2003
3,048
0
36
Edmonton, AB
www.dregsld.com
In the case of open beta for any game that openly lists it as an open beta: Yes.
In any other case where you happen upon bugs: No.

Most bugs you are able to find in games that ship with bugs are bugs that the developers are most likely aware of (instead of 'wtf horrible QA department') but could not fix within the given time. (because at some point beyond the schedule it'll easily cost the full team's development per day you hold out to fix issues)
And bugs are almost never stand-alone issues that are a '5 minute fix'. There are always repercussions, more often than not repercussions you won't be able to be aware of until it happens.
People largely overreact to finding bugs in games.
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
8,408
0
0
The 'open beta' is simply a new word for demo and it makes people playing them feel special ...

The only reason why 'the industry' treats us as beta-testers is because we allow them to.
We accept patches at release-date.
We accept patches and then thank them for 'supporting' their game.

Consider the fact that if you bought a real product (like a car).
Would you accept the fact that critical features were missing or poorly implemented ?
Of course you would not. In fact you'd either never even consider it as a viable purchase or demand a refund. You would never accept role of tape and instructions to use it as a 'fix'.
Yet that is what we do accept for software.

As a developer myself I really wonder why the average consumer is so willing to accept what basically is a broken product for them. Why does anyone accept our promise to 'fix' stuff so easily ?
Maybe it's because non-developers think that simply because it is 'software' it should be easier to fix ?
 

DarQraven

New Member
Jan 20, 2008
1,164
0
0
Exactly my thoughts.

As I posted in the black ops thread, if James Cameron released Avatar with unfinished or missing visual effects for some of the scenes, people would be up in arms about it. If the same thing happens with a game, we are apparently supposed to be thankful the developers even bothered to fix it after release.

It seems to me like the problem is twofold:

1) A system-wide lack of proper planning. There really is no excuse for missing features or game-breaking bugs other than too little time scheduled for testing and finishing up the product.
Every serious project has some 'emergency time' built in: if you need 5 months for it, you release it after 6, just in case. Either games developers don't do this, or the publishers won't allow them to. Either way, there's a flaw in the system/culture.

2) Attitude. Apparently, developers can get away with launch-day patches, so why would they bother investing money in extensive pre-release testing? They know for a fact that the mindless masses will buy anything that's got a big franchise name on the box.

There's all sorts of conspiracy theories about how launch-day patches are actually used to combat piracy, but I've learned that the most obvious and simple explanation is usually correct.
 
Last edited:

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
10,065
218
63
somewhere; sometime?
It's just cheaper to release it earlier, I guess. Plus the fact that how huge and complicated games are today compared to back in the day
We accept patches at release-date.
We accept patches and then thank them for 'supporting' their game.
I'm glad you guys mentioned how "complicated" games have become in addition to how we, as gamers, are accepting of the patches that invariably have to be released soon after a game drops.

do any of you buy the excuse that it's nearly impossible to carry out comprehensive beta testing given the complexity of the PC market itself?

the PC is very different from the console because the PC is not standard.
the console is built the exact same way using the exact same components every single time. but the PC market is like a bunch of god damn snowflakes; no two are the exact same. everybody has a slightly different setup.

you've got all sorts of different GPU's combined with different CPU's running on different operating systems.
is it fair to expect that a developer will be able to weed out potential problems when their Q&A team is testing on a much smaller range of setups?

obviously this theory only applies to PC games.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
My opinion on this is that there are really two issues at play here.

1) Games today have far more branching gameplay and a lot more scripting that takes place so it is impossible to cover every single case. The example was given in the OP of Legend of Zelda. In terms of scale, the old Zelda games were far smaller and the gameplay was far more basic than games of today. And if we pull forward to Twilight Princess, for example, even that game has several little issues in various areas. In Black Ops, I had an event not happen because a guy got stuck on a barrel and forgot where he was going so he didn't move. That probably happens so rarely, though, how could the QA team have found it?

2) Publishers set a release date, and every day you miss that date costs your company money. To support a game after release only costs some development hours. To delay a game could cost what amounts to hundreds or even thousands of man hours. It's better to release "on time" with some bugs than to lose a ton of money by extending the release date out further. For some games, like UT3, this can completely ruin the game, though. So it is definitely a balance. I think the key is convincing the publisher that the timeline needs to be extended to move units.

Let's be honest with ourselves, though. PC games have ALWAYS had this problem. I remember finding bugs in Wolfenstein 3D and Wacky Wheels. Also, some people are just lucky enough to find every bug there is, JD for example seems to have every problem a game ever has, while I usually tend to not have many problems, even with extremely buggy games.

As far as hardware goes, you have to keep in mind that DirectX/OpenGL and its friends are supposed to make it so you don't care about the hardware. You communicate with a library and it communicates with the drivers. Obviously you should do spot tests, but it is impossible to test every scenario (even with consoles you can have this problem, newer incarnations or the console could cause issues).
 

DeathBooger

Malcolm's Sugar Daddy
Sep 16, 2004
1,925
0
36
44
The entire COD brand is just a mad rush to get a new game out so Activision can make more money. They don't care about bugs. You would think everyone would have picked up on this by now. They do this for all of their game brands. Guitar Hero 57: Uncle Wilbur's Banjo Hits. Tony Hawk 12: Wheelchair Rail Grinding.

Look: http://www.activision.com/index.html#games|en_US
 

M.A.D.X.W

Active Member
Aug 24, 2008
4,486
5
38
GTA IV was pretty funny when it was released. I cried for 3 days.

Also over reacting is what people have been doing best for the past 2,000 years at least.
 
Last edited:

SlayerDragon

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLADIES
Feb 3, 2003
7,666
0
36
40
If you don't like the game being sold, don't buy it.

How do you gauge the game being sold? Previews and such can be extremely misleading, and reviews are often paid for. Someone has to actually buy the game and try it and tell me about it. Perhaps I'm just a bit bitter about games I've bought that turned out to suck.

APB is an extreme example of this, but a fitting one. How many glaring technical issues did they ever address? The spent their post-launch development cycles working on game balance when a large portion (probably a majority) of the player base was having a terrible playing experience due to latency and low framerates. Would working on those have saved the game? Probably not, they were doomed before launch. MMOs are in general at the extremes of this particular issue, due to their massive nature. I know the early days of World of Warcraft were rough, mostly due to the fact that they were completely unprepared for the absolute flood of subscribers. The game wasn't even complete then, the hunter class didn't even have a talent tree!

APB had a beta test, from what I've read around the interbutts it was more of a publicity thing than an actual testing exercise. The complaints that were issued by the beta testers were not addressed, for the most part.

UT3 was brought up. I played the demo, I enjoyed deathmatch and decided I would buy the game. When I bought the game I was surprised to find that it was less than polished, this coming from a game studio who had been there and done that and who had already delivered some high quality games. Overall it felt more like a tech demo of Unreal Engine 3 with an unfinished and clunky interface that made the process of configuring the game and finding a server to play on a pain in the butt. Sure, they ended up fixing a lot of that, but it was too little too late for the most part. Why did they "fix" what wasn't broken between UT2004 and UT3? I guess that's neither here nor there.

An example of misleading previews I would say is Bad Company 2. The demo for that was awful. I really did not enjoy it. But I got a chance to **** around with the full game on my buddy's computer and I loved it, and then I got to buy it for $20 so I did. If I had to go solely on the demo I would never have purchased the game. That blade swings both ways, and can easily stump the developer.

So, yeah, I guess it is a balance. Nothing is perfect, and in particular software can be a very complex world of interlocking quirks that topple like dominoes and cause extremely bizarre problems. I'm not saying patches should never happen, that's one of the nice things about PC gaming: broken doesn't mean forever. But if you release your game and people aren't able to even configure or access their dedicated servers from your glorious One Server Provider to Rule Them All, and the vast majority of people are experience debilitating lag and framerate issues, then I think perhaps it can be said that didn't try real hard and probably don't deserve my money.


EDIT: I just wrote a dissertation on video games. What have I become?