This was a post I wrote for another forum about 9 months ago… I re-read it and I like it a lot so I’m re-posting it here…
Just like a fairytale…
Once upon a time there lived a village of game developers. These developers led their games through pre-production, alpha and beta stages, finally culminating in a completed game. Pre-production was for the game concept and outline, to hire the workers, etc. The game moved into Alpha once it became playable at any level (any sort of working engine). Once the coding was done for it (but being bug-ridden at this stage) it moved into Beta. And once the bugs were worked out, the game was released.
In another village lived game players. They experienced the game only after it was released. Pre-production, Alpha, and Beta were mysterious concepts. For them there was ONE stage, the finished game.
Then something remarkable happened. Through a medium called the “Internet”, the two villages communicated closely for the first time. Gone quickly were the mysteries of Pre-production, Alpha, and Beta.
Something else left too. As developers needed to cater more and more to the public far BEFORE their game was ever released, a bit of marketing was in order.
Its all about the Beta.
Historically, once a game went to Beta the gamer village got excited.
GV: “The game is almost out! Yippee!”
The developer village saw this excitement and began to capitalize on it.
DV (with a conniving look): “Hmm… if the word Beta excites gamers about our game, how about we simply call the game “in Beta stage” earlier? The gamers will be excited earlier which will give us an advantage over our competitors.”
And to add fuel to this fire, gamers PLAY the game in Beta stage, some playing more in Beta stage than in Gold stage! What more reason to call a game “in Beta stage” at as early a time as possible!
So now games have Beta 1, and Beta 2, and Beta 3, and Beta 4, and Beta enough already! They have Open Beta, Closed Beta, Half-Open Beta, Mixed-the-fuck-up Beta.
Nowadays developers are calling their games “in Beta stage” when its a semi-playable engine with a few things in it. A game which USED to be called “in Alpha” now proudly proclaims itself “in Beta stage, accepting applications for Open Beta!”
Beta is no longer simply a ground for stomping out bugs. Its now a ground for adding entirely new features, adding new areas to the map… creating much of the context for the entire game!
Nowadays when a game enters into Beta I don’t get excited. I instead think “Hmm… maybe in another year the game will be out”.